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

(www.newscientist.com)
190 points amichail | 2 comments | 20 Nov 24 12:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.402s | source
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grishka ◴[20 Nov 24 16:09 UTC] No.42195272[source]▶
> The use of algorithms to filter information has become the norm because chronologically presenting information from followers creates a confusing morass for the average user to process.

Can't disagree more. Call me old-fashioned but I hate any algorithms at all meddling with what I see. If I follow someone, I want to see their posts, all of them, without exceptions. If I don't follow someone, I only want to see their posts if they were knowingly reposted by someone who I do follow. If I want some posts filtered from my feed, I'll set up word filters myself, thank you very much.

It's a recurring theme in the modern IT industry that "the average user" can't be trusted to take their own responsibility. It's sometimes taken as an indisputable truth, even. Why does this keep happening? What can I do to put an end to this?

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1. spoonjim ◴[20 Nov 24 16:52 UTC] No.42195811[source]▶
The two problems with your approach are: 1) There is always some post you'd be interested in that you won't see because it's outside your social network. Different people have different preferences on how much of this they want to see. 2) When you follow someone, you're probably interested in some aspect of what they post and not others. For example, if there's a biologist who is also a big Pittsburg Steelers fan, you're probably not interested in both types of posts.
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2. timbit42 ◴[21 Nov 24 15:29 UTC] No.42205248[source]▶
With Mastodon you can follow hashtags. I primarily do this instead of following people's accounts because most people post on a variety of topics when I'm only interested in probably one of the topics they post on. This gives me a very high signal to noise ratio and I get to see any post with hashtags I am interested in instead of just the ones by people I'm following. If someone misuses a hashtag, I can simply mute their account and never see their posts again.