HEY, I’m typin’ hea’

It also means decoupling the recommendation system from people’s feeds.

Having a “you may like this” section is a lot less abusable than “the next item in your doomscroll is <recommendation>”.

Bluesky is just another Twitter. Everything that happened to Twitter can happen to Bluesky. It’s not fundamentally changing anything except trading Elon for a different owner.

It’s not a bad change, people want Twitter after all… but it isn’t fixing any problems in the underlying incentive structures or algorithm control.

The core problem is that curated feeds allow the owner to substitute their recommendations in place of recommendations that would interest you.

Until the owner can’t do that, the social network is always one sale away from being the next Twitter/Truth Social.

Bluesky is fixing social media by changing the owner, Mastodon/ActivityPub is fixing social media by getting rid of the owner.

I think the latter is the better choice for how to structure these things.

They’re good at predicting what people want to see, yes. But that isn’t the real problem.

The problem isn’t that they predict what you want to see, it is that they use that information to give you results that are 90% what you want to see and 10% of results that the owner of the algorithm wants you to see.

X uses that to mix in alt-right feeds. Google uses it to mix in messages from the highest bidder on their ad network and Amazon uses it to mix in product recommendations for their own products.

You can’t know what they’re adding to the feed or how much is real recommendations that are based on your needs and wants and how much is artificially boosted content based on the needs and wants of the owner of the algorithm.

Is your next TikTok really the next highest piece of recommended content or is it something that’s being boosted on the behalf of someone else? You can’t know.

This has become an incredibly important topic since people are now using these systems to drive political outcomes which have real effects on society.

Some things are incredibly appealing to everyone and also bad for society. We have to treat those things responsibly.

Recommendation algorithms can be useful, to assist you in discovering content. But only as a tool that you can choose to use. If I can select a person that I like listening to and get a list of other people who I may be interested in (assuming that the algorithm is simply matching me to similar peers and not also adding in some “also Elon/Bezos/whoever really wants you to see these guys” skew)… that would be a useful tool.

However, the recommendation algorithms should not be used to make the second-by-second decision about what you see next. The next item in your feed should always be there because of a decision that you make, not as a means of “maximizing engagement” + whatever skew the owner wants to add.

Of course people like these features, these algorithms are literally trained to maximize how likable their recommendations are.

It’s like how people like heroin because it perfectly fits our opioid receptors. The problem is that you can’t simply trust that the person giving you heroin will always have your best interests in mind.

Recommendation algorithms are a useful tool but, only when used in moderation. Attaching a recommendation algorithm directly to your brain via a curated content feed is incredibly unhealthy for both the individual and society.

For stuff like Twitter-likes and TikTok-likes I want an algorithm.

Until recommendation algorithms are transparent and auditable, choosing to use a private service with a recommendation algorithm is giving some random social media owner the control of the attention of millions of people.

Curate your own feed, subscribe to people that you find interesting, go and find content through your social contacts.

Don’t fall into the trap of letting someone (ex: Elon Musk) choose 95% of what you see and hear.

Algorithmic recommendations CAN be good. But when they’re privately owned and closed to public inspection, then there is no guarantee that they’re working in your best interest.

He’s ancient, eats like shit and takes amphetamines. His cardiovascular system is shot.

Trump isn’t competent enough to plan any of this. If you watch him at an EO signing, he looks like he’s hearing about the for the first time as they’re being put in front of him. He gets to surround himself with people who tell him he’s a special boy and gets to receive bribes while golfing every week. He’s a stooge who thinks he’s the King.

Trump isn’t the scary thing. He’s the clown that the scary thing propped up in order to appear foolish and incompetent while implementing the early phases of it’s takeover. By the time Trump has a heart attack, the scary thing’s plans will have been advanced far enough that opinion polls don’t matter because there will be nobody left to oppose it that it doesn’t own.

Because the Internet was smaller and was made up of select demographics.

Now, something that’s completely unacceptable to some of the population won’t even register with the majority.

☝️🤓

Everyone who is like “we only want more people who understand the fediverse” are is stupid.

Everyone are stupid ❌

Everyone is stupid ✅

People like this are married, there’s hope for anyone.

Happy late Valentine’s Day 😅

No thanks. Anything that requires that much work to bake is not appealing to me.