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Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

theregister.com

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Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#111

Post by hedora »

dxbydt wrote: post #48

> Algorithmic feeds are always hostile to the user….They limit what a user sees…never encountered a situation where an algorithmic feed made things better I don’t know if Github should do algorithmic feeds. That said, my literal job description is to design an algorithmic feed for a tv news app. That’s what I’ve done - written an algo that decides what news gets shown, in what order => implicitly means a whole bunch…

> How else would you do it ? There are literally 100s of 1000s of newsclips per day!

No offence, but honestly, that scale doesn't require automation, and probably suffers from it. I'd rehire the full time editor (singular?) that you replaced, probably at 50-75% your salary.

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#112

Post by eloisius »

dxbydt wrote: post #48

> Algorithmic feeds are always hostile to the user….They limit what a user sees…never encountered a situation where an algorithmic feed made things better I don’t know if Github should do algorithmic feeds. That said, my literal job description is to design an algorithmic feed for a tv news app. That’s what I’ve done - written an algo that decides what news gets shown, in what order => implicitly means a whole bunch…

I’m not sure what kind of news app you work on, so maybe this doesn’t fit, but what this makes me think is, you’ve optimized for putting the “best” stuff in limited real estate, but why does there need to be news headlines algorithmically ranked and dumped in front of me in a place that I’m not looking for them (e.g. the “home” screen of my smart TV)? If it’s an app where you are consciously seeking news headlines, maybe there’s a good case for collapsing the raw deluge of news into a recommended front page, but I still feel like we’re losing something.

Recommendations are never good, and always corrupted by what the business wants to push on me, but even if they were good, the hyper personalized world is just weird. I’ll never be able to ask someone, “did you see the paper today?” Instead I wonder if they’ve been pushed the same stuff that I have and if we live in the same universe.

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#113

Post by version_five »

bfdm wrote: post #106

GitHub has a feed?

Exactly what I was scrolling though here looking for a discussion of. I'm assuming (I'm on my phone and not going to check) that if you go to github.com there is a landing page with a feed?

I use github 90% of the time for interacting with my / my companies repos, and the rest to peruse a repo I've been directed to for whatever reason. I have never been to the homepage (except maybe to sign in), and I have never used it to get news or find new repos or whatever a feed is for.

I can see the potential to turn it into social media, that's fine as long as it doesn't bleed in to the actual repository management functionality.

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#114

Post by tunesmith »

dgritsko wrote: post #102
eloisius wrote: post #6

I look forward to the quasi-spam slurry of infiniscroll feed crap once growth hackers start trying to game the algorithm to get more traction for their project. I don’t think you can introduce a recommendation algorithm without it having a negative effect on the content it’s supposed to aid discovery of. Pre-recsys, the content is made for human consumption, but once you add the recsys, the AI itself becomes part of…

> I don’t think you can introduce a recommendation algorithm without it having a negative effect on the content it’s supposed to aid discovery of. This feels like it ought to be a corollary to Goodhart's Law ("When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"), or perhaps a specialized application thereof. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

It's just not always true though, like in the case of "proper scoring rules". So it would seem at least theoretically possible to create a recommendation algorithm such that trying to "gamify it" would only increase the utility of its output.

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#115

Post by rad_gruchalski »

u2077 wrote: post #108
Destiner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their latest code search thing [1] is pretty powerful already imo. [1] https://cs.github.com

Sweet! Joined the waitlist.

Alternatively, until that becomes available: https://sourcegraph.com.

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#116

Post by version_five »

everdrive wrote: post #5

Algorithmic feeds are always hostile to the user. They limit what a user sees, and slowly infantilizes them by teaching them to passively consume rather actively seek information. I've never encountered a situation where an algorithmic feed made things better. At best, they make things more addictive.

Worse, they incentivize "creators" to post "refrigerator door wisdom" type stuff optimized for likes or clicks or whatever (or outrage-bait, but that seems to be more in non-professional forums).

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#117

Post by rad_gruchalski »

vivegi wrote: post #84

How long before GH starts pushing email spam with digests of "Projects that might interest you"? It would be great if they could instead redirect efforts to tie their recommendation engine to their search results. User intent is clearer and serendipitous recommendations surfacing in the results would actually be of value.

https://cs.github.com and until that's publicly available: https://sourcegraph.com.

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#118

Post by eloisius »

lukevp wrote: post #41
charcircuit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They limit what a user sees No, a screen has limited real estate. There is only so many things that can be shown to you at once. So on youtube for example there maybe only be room to show 8 videos. Ideally I should find all 8 videos interesting. If I don't, that's a waste of space and a waste of my time. Algorithmic feeds serve to improve the results such that I am more likely to watch a video that is put in one of…

The problem with this is that your suggestions are based on past viewing history, which isn’t always related to future needs. Examples: on one youtube account we primarily watch different types of media on, we watched a Labrinth music video. Neither my wife or I like labyrinth, but now our music section in YouTube is completely consumed by labyrinth music videos. One or two viewings isn’t indicative of us being labri…

God. You watch one ICP video so that you can laugh at the “fucking magnets, how do they work?” line…

Re: Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

#120

Post by eloisius »

chockchocschoir wrote: post #35
da39a3ee wrote: post #15

I've used GitHub intensively for 13 years. I've never looked at the front page or "feed". Why would you? GitHub is for working with git repositories, it's not a social website.

That's great, if you never look at the front page nor the feed, you're not even affected by this change. Leave the "outrage" for people who are affected by it.

No one is worried about a page you can ignore. We’re worried about the second-order effects that trying to game that page will have on the rest of the site.
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