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When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

(jazco.dev)
768 points cyndunlop | 1 comments | 19 Feb 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.751s | source
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jadbox ◴[20 Feb 25 00:31 UTC] No.43109670[source]▶
So, let's say I follow 4k people in the example and have a 50% drop rate. It seems a bit weird that if all (4k - 1) accounts I follow end up posting nothing in a day, that I STILL have a 50% chance that I won't see the 1 account that posts in a day. It seems to me that the algorithm should consider my feed's age (or the post freshness of my followers). Am I overthinking?
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1. brianolson ◴[20 Feb 25 21:12 UTC] No.43120253[source]▶
I think the 'law of large numbers' says that it's very unlikely for you to follow 4k and have _none_ of them posting. You could artificially construct a counter-example by finding 4k open but silent accounts, but that's silly.

The other workaround is: follow everyone. Write some code to get what you want out of the jetstream event feed. https://docs.bsky.app/blog/jetstream