Bluesky is ushering in a pick-your-own algorithm era of social media

It's true, of course, that the "chronological timeline" is an obvious and straightforward default, but I think you are being unfair to the position you are critiquing.

Many (90%+ I would say but the exact proportion doesn't matter for this) people do not have the time to process every social media post from every person they are connected to. They are only going to see N "posts" (videos, texts, questions, etc) per time unit (day / week / bathroom break). It is 100% genuinely and obviously worse to, if someone only sees...3 posts on your social network for those posts to be [someone complaining about commute, breakfast photo, angry election post] as opposed to [wedding announcement, request for a resource the user has, a close friend sharing something exciting that the user hasn't seen]. Telling users that you are showing them less interesting stuff because "they happened in chronological order" is a bad answer.

Of course social media companies do a bad job at this! They push high-conflict high-engagement content into our feeds because it makes them more money. But I think the problem of "there is a lot going on and you would like a machine to help you prioritize how to process things" is genuinely one of the pressing problems of our age and I get so frustrated when people downplay it. There is more stuff happening in my social world than I have time to fully process - that's just true. I am not interesting in living such a small life that I have time to fully engage with every single happening - I would like a machine to help me.

> I would like a machine to help me.

Cool. I would not. It would be nice to have that option.

> Many ... people do not have the time to process every social media post from every person they are connected to.

Then they are following too many people. Decades ago, a professor at school quipped "if you can't keep up with your news feed using 'more' to read the spool then you follow too many newsgroups"

I genuinely don't understand the desire to engage with so many folks on such a superficial level.

Like - if the only way you're going to know about someone's wedding is from a social feed... you aren't friends with that person, you're just acquaintances.

Most folks do a great job at informing you of the things that are relevant in your relationship with that person when you... talk to them.

> I am not interesting in living such a small life that I have time to fully engage with every single happening - I would like a machine to help me.

You think that life is small... but I think yours is utterly dehumanizing. You aren't interested in engaging with individuals, you seem to just want their life's highlights thrown at you repetitively until you've burned yourself out on them, like slamming the oxytocin button for your brain without actually doing anything nearly so drab as actually talking to someone.

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I think my reaction to your comment is driven by your idea that friendships and human interactions are formed over big events (like weddings or exciting happenings). I'd argue fairly strongly that they're driven instead by precisely the small, boring, daily things you're not at all interested in: Commutes. Meals. Emotional responses to small things (politics or not).

I find it distasteful to think you're friends with someone when you only give a shit about the big exciting news they have to share. That's not friendship, it's a weird twisted form of paparazzi/voyeurism. You don't want to know them, you just want their life's highlights presented to you...

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Emotional response aside - Hard disagree on

> It is 100% genuinely and obviously worse to, if someone only sees...3 posts on your social network for those posts to be [someone complaining about commute, breakfast photo, angry election post] as opposed to [wedding announcement, request for a resource the user has, a close friend sharing something exciting that the user hasn't seen]. Telling users that you are showing them less interesting stuff because "they happened in chronological order" is a bad answer.

>You think that life is small... but I think yours is utterly dehumanizing.

The person posted (barely) 3 paragraphs. Like, less than 10 sentences.

Seems pretty hasty to label their life "utterly dehumanizing" from that. Your whole next paragraph is drawing a lot of (frankly, quite rude) conclusions based on nothing. You've read so much into their short comment that you've created an entire fictional person, and then got angry at the fictional person you created.

Looking at their comment and your reply, I would say they have a healthier approach to socializing on the internet than you appear to.

Eh - anger isn't the same as disgust or confusion. And it's not really pointed at the above poster explicitly, it's pointed at the culture that results from the attitude that human interactions should be prioritized on the scale of "entertain me" by a digital algorithm, and that that's a good thing.

And while you might wish it's fan fiction... it's the very real reason we see things like nation-wide social media bans by age. Calls to reduce or reform social media in general. And a huge number of negative social outcomes since the advent of that style of social media.

It's really, really hard to argue that form of media consumption is healthy. Or appropriate.

I wholly and completely disagree with this and think it's an unethical belief to hold. If you are under the impression that you are perfectly up to date with every detail of every person in your life you are either deeply misguided or dismissive of the inner lives of folks around you.

Yah, 100% - I agree that the chronological timeline should be a default feed alogirthm on every service.

> I genuinely don't understand the desire to engage with so many folks on such a superficial level.

That's fine! I am not asking you to understand that desire. I'm asking you to understand it's a genuinely held desire that people actually want. We can (and will) have different preferences and live in the same society. That's a fine thing.

You have a totally fine and healthy preference for how you manage your own social life, but you are mistaking that preference for a universal standard about how everyone should best manage their social lives. That is the thing I am critiquing. You are allowed to do what you want and I support you! But so often people describe the fact that their preferences are not "the standard" and imply that the balance would be better for everyone - without considering that different people want different things.

Edit: We could also have a discussion about "what is the ideal social model for society" - but that is a different conversation with different claims than the one we are having now. If you are trying to talk about how you think our current society sucks by attacking my points about the benefits of how social media algorithms interact with us - I think you are coming at me in a confused way.

Even if a version of life where we all had smaller social circles and all had less information coming at us was healthier (totally possible!) - that's not the world I find myself living in. I would like tools to help me live in the world I find myself in and I find it distressing that so many fellow tech workers think that's immoral somehow.

P.s. I think you're being quite rude to me and I don't appreciate it.

> Many (90%+ I would say but the exact proportion doesn't matter for this) people do not have the time to process every social media post from every person they are connected to.

Correct, but really don't want to. I want to open the app and get the pulse of what is happening in that moment. Not 8 hours ago. Not 4 weeks ago. Right now.

>Eh - anger isn't the same as disgust or confusion.

Okay, you're disgusted or confused at the fictional person you created.

>And it's not really pointed at the above poster explicitly,

It certainly seems like it is very explicitly pointed at the poster you replied to considering you directly quote their opinion and then, based on that opinion, say that their life is "utterly dehumanizing".

>attitude that human interactions should be prioritized on the scale of "entertain me"

This is not what the parent poster said.

Isn't the point of the comment above to not even want to be up to date with every detail of people that are objectively not that important in your personal life? Not to decrease the social media usage because you feel you're up to date but to do it because it's unnatural and pointless?

You know people are lost in the woods when the they use terms like “100% genuine and obvious. Your personal preferences are not universal and people are not downplaying it the need for controlling feeds. They are frustrated that control of feeds are taken from them from paternalistic profit-driven product managers et al.

I do think the approach of "engaging only in what you can fully take in" is really healthy and sensible and something people should consider. The thing I think is immoral is suggesting that is...the best approach for everyone in all situations. Many people in society simply are not in a position to do that. The president cannot "only engage in what they can fully take in". It's wrong to say that should be the standard applied to everyone - imo.

I'm with the GP here. I don't use social media (currently Mastodon) to check the pulse of something or anything. I just want to see what the people I follow are up to. The last update can be two weeks ago, IDC.

I think at the end of the day, people will flock to the place they love, and that's OK.

What prevents Bluesky from slighyly and slowly manipulating these feeds for their gain in the mid-term?

Bluesky is not like Mastodon. You control own your data, but traffic chokes at a central point, and the firehose is still controlled, AFAIK, so you can't just federate, and run your own algorithm on your instance and call it a day?

I know they aren't universal! I also do not like those product managers. I think you may be mis-reading what I am saying.

“On your instance” doesn’t make sense because the way that the parts are split up isn’t the same as mastodon.

If you write a custom feed, you control what’s in it. If you use a feed by someone else, they control what’s in it.

In theory Bluesky could secretly change their client to mess with the feed subtly, but if you aren’t using their client, then they can’t.

Feeds are on top of the firehose, not below it.

"You're holding it wrong"

> if you aren’t using their client, then they can’t.

This is my point. How many people won't use "their" client, sans the knowledgeable people?

Mastodon is much more fragmented than Bluesky, so an intentional feed manipulation is only visible to the users of that instance.