• Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So stupid. Just use Mastodon. No algorithms. No billionaires. No monetization. No bullshit. And some really great folks, too.

    • Corvid@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      No algorithms isn’t a selling point to the average user. My Mastodon feed is kinda sad and boring, if I’m not on top of it I’ll just miss interesting posts that happened in the days I didn’t open the app.

      Bluesky custom feeds really help with that, while still providing the chronological no-algorithm view as your main feed. It’s just a more interesting experience for people that aren’t chronically online.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
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        2 months ago

        Yep, discovery is still a major pain point for pretty much every Fediverse platform. Probably the biggest issue the Fediverse faces right now, IMO.

        Part of it is due to technical limitations due to the way ActivityPub/federation in general works. But another big part of it is (what feels to me like) a stubborn aversion to convenience, a trend I see a lot in FOSS dev communities. When you have devs that would be content reading a news feed off of a .TXT file passed to them on a 5" floppy, and users who want features on their platform, you end up with the situation we’re in, where it’s impossible to convince the mainstream user to migrate. If the mainstream user doesn’t already know who is even on the platform in order to follow them, and has no effort-free way of discovering accounts to follow, they’re not going to stick around. Especially when on just about any Mastodon server you join, your local/global feeds are almost all politics and high-level tech discussion.

        I think that the average user would be supportive of FOSS and the Fediverse in general, and probably likes the idea of a non-corpo platform where they have more control over their feeds and their content. But I feel that it’s not worth trading away discovery or “algorithmic” tools for most users.

        I think if Mastodon (or a Mastodon-adjascent platform like Misskey or Pleroma) could find a way to develop an algorithmic recommendation engine that respects user privacy (perhaps basing recommendations on a file stored on the user’s account, which they can modify/backup at will), we could see a sizable increase in Fedi users.

        • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          There’s a major section of mastodon users who like mastodon because it doesn’t have any recommendation algorithms. Both from the side of “I don’t want to be told what to click on” and the “I don’t want an algorithm surfacing my posts in a way I’m not in complete control of”

          This might curse it to forever be the platform with the smaller number of users, but the nice thing about activitypub is that there may be other services/clients that will be willing to take up that mantle for those that want it.

          • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 months ago

            Couldn’t there be an implementation thay leaves everyone satisfied?

            Sort of like implementating a new optional tab for discovery and allowing users to choose whether their posts appear on it. The implementation should of course be fully honest without dark patterns, though due to the lack of profit incentive it shouldn’t be difficult to achieve a satisfying implementation.

            • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              I don’t think it would last long as a clean implementation.

              The problem with having a completely open algorithm for discovery, you give spammers an instruction manual for how to consistently get to the top of the rankings.

              Eventually these systems would always get abused and become completely filled with useless nonsense.

              An alternative is to have the discovery completely exist on the client side, but I’m not sure how that would even work given the way activitypub works.

              Personally I think any social media recommendation/discovery system is a dark pattern.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          When you have devs that would be content reading a news feed off of a .TXT file passed to them on a 5" floppy

          As a perpetually overloaded autistic person, yes please.

          Seriously - something like federated Hotline would be so cool. Distributed - even better, of course.

          OK, dreaming.

          • wewbull@feddit.uk
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            2 months ago

            I’d want the floppy disc to be a standard size though. You can’t just chop a ¼" off like that. It won’t work.

      • erwan@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Follow hashtags, not just people. That makes your timeline much more interesting.

      • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        My Mastodon feed is kinda sad and boring

        Either you’re following the wrong people or this says more about you than it does about mastodon

        if I’m not on top of it I’ll just miss interesting posts that happened in the days I didn’t open the app.

        Oh no!! Heaven forbid you miss a social media post!! Whatever will you do?!??

      • erwan@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        How would you say “no obscure algorithm to determine your timeline, hiding posts of people who follow and showing posts of people you don’t” without having to write a full paragraph each time?

    • nutsack@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I very much appreciate the technology and philosophy behind Mastodon, but the content discovery on bluesky is much better. the feeds and the “popular with friends” tab are great. being able to click and see who someone is following is also quite good for discovery, and this seems to be broken for me on mastodon. on mastodon all i have is the wall of everything.

      • quissberry@lemmy.cafe
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        2 months ago

        It’s like subscribing to a YouTube channel if you understand that. Some people consistently post interesting content so by following them, you will never miss out.

  • vzq@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Bluesky is my default social network when I don’t feel like having slap fights with nerds.

    When I do feel like having slap fights with nerds, I come here. Or mastodon.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    With as much bad faith antisocial sociopathic shit Mark Zuckerberg has done, I truly don’t understand why anyone would use anything associated with meta. He’s Elon Musk with more experience at being… that.

    Bluesky isn’t going to be the savior of social media, but with the death of Cohost it’s the least bad option available.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Hes a cunt. Lets be clear, he is an enormous asshole, shut person who is likely making up for having not been liked. He is dangerous.

      But he isnt Musk. There two different enormous turds.

      • erwan@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        I’d say Zuck is smart enough not to show to the world what an asshole he is. That’s the main difference between him and Musk.

    • quissberry@lemmy.cafe
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      2 months ago

      The problem for me is that everyone use Meta stuff so it’s either lose out in making connections with other people or giving up privacy.

  • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    “We’re not like the other girls… we’re not owned by a billionaire,”

    Just founded by a billionaire. I guess it’s nice that they’re a public benefit corporation. Those are supposed to be better than regular corps, or am I being naive?

    • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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      2 months ago

      I really think the blue sky is bad stuff is overdramatic xbox vs PlayStation kind of stuff.

      The fediverse needs a lot of work, blue sky is a different and interesting model that’s different from what we’ve seen so far (even if they haven’t let people start hosting their own blue sky instances).

      I say let them complete…

        • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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          2 months ago

          Interesting, I missed that they’d opened that up.

          Do you have any good information on how the ATProtocol requires interaction with their servers?

          My quick look at it suggests that everything occurs on the same network (presumably there’s some way to override that) but the servers are independent. So you seemingly can “get to everything” regardless of who your provider is.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I really think the blue sky is bad stuff is overdramatic xbox vs PlayStation kind of stuff.

        That’s a very apt analogy, in the sense that they’re both shitty proprietary walled-gardens and people should actually be using something entirely different instead.