Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Protect me from what I want

tbray.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 225 posts

Re: Protect me from what I want

#181

Post by throwaway290 »

> Mastodon introduces a feature where you can download and install algorithms, which can be posted by anyone. They are given the raw unsorted list of posts from people you follow and use that produce a coherent feed. You might have to pay for them. They could be free. They could involve elaborate ML, or not. They might sometimes pull in posts from people you don’t follow. They could be open-source, or not.

That, or just use a separate ActivityPub client developed with this feature in mind. After all the point of it all is open and standardized APIs.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#182

Post by winReInstall »

I think a happier person produces, does not consume. So a ideal algorithm would be shoving the user towards being productive, creative. To accomplish that, the feed would have to redirected to people who "educate" people to become creators.

Take that nice little austrian post-card creator living in bavaria i follow on twitter. Every now and then a political rant, but nothing.. oh No... oh No No No..

Re: Protect me from what I want

#183

Post by scanny »

winReInstall wrote: post #182

I think a happier person produces, does not consume. So a ideal algorithm would be shoving the user towards being productive, creative. To accomplish that, the feed would have to redirected to people who "educate" people to become creators. Take that nice little austrian post-card creator living in bavaria i follow on twitter. Every now and then a political rant, but nothing.. oh No... oh No No No..

Do you have a link to the creator?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#184

Post by 2mol »

scanny wrote: post #183
winReInstall wrote: post #182

I think a happier person produces, does not consume. So a ideal algorithm would be shoving the user towards being productive, creative. To accomplish that, the feed would have to redirected to people who "educate" people to become creators. Take that nice little austrian post-card creator living in bavaria i follow on twitter. Every now and then a political rant, but nothing.. oh No... oh No No No..

Do you have a link to the creator?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler

Re: Protect me from what I want

#185

Post by dang »

wallfacer120 wrote: post #53
californiadreem wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenting on the naïveté of Mastodon users endlessly repeating the history of modernity is a strange way to affirm any position regarding corporations, but your unsolicited reply is pretty clear that you like them.

Quoted post unavailable.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#187

Post by edanm »

andrewmutz wrote: post #14

I completely agree with the article. There is a vast soup of user generated content that could be displayed and there's always an algorithm of some sort employed, even if that algorithm is "show me only content from people I explicitly follow and sort it chronologically". If you wanted to give the social media companies the benefit of the doubt, you would say "they just want to have a feed that the user enjoys and th…

There is in a sense a marketplace of algorithms, or at least, a marketplace of user experiences. That's the actual marketplace. It's the reason Facebook is losing marketshare to Tiktok.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#188

Post by rsynnott »

jimmytidey wrote: post #112

Am I missing something? I have Twitter set to show the timeline of tweets as they happen, which although I accept it requires a deduplication algorithm is broadly non algorithmic. I realize there is also another 'curated' timeline setting, but you can always switch it off. There are all kinds of problems with Twitter, but I'm surprised to see so many people saying 'the algorithm' is one of them.

That’s not the default, and remember that even if you’re using the chronological feed, the people you follow, who are retweeting stuff, are largely using the non-chronological attention-driving feed. You’re still exposed to The Algorithm (TM), just less directly.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#189

Post by jimmytidey »

rsynnott wrote: post #188
jimmytidey wrote: post #112

Am I missing something? I have Twitter set to show the timeline of tweets as they happen, which although I accept it requires a deduplication algorithm is broadly non algorithmic. I realize there is also another 'curated' timeline setting, but you can always switch it off. There are all kinds of problems with Twitter, but I'm surprised to see so many people saying 'the algorithm' is one of them.

That’s not the default, and remember that even if you’re using the chronological feed, the people you follow, who are retweeting stuff, are largely using the non-chronological attention-driving feed. You’re still exposed to The Algorithm (TM), just less directly.

This is such a fascinating insight, I have not sufficiently considered how many people might be using the algorithmic feed.

The main problem I experienced with their 'curated' feed was that the news was so old. If I'm watching Twitter its because there is a news event happening.

So many times I'd see a tweet "Minister resigns!" and I'd think - "Another one, this is the end of the government!" only to discover Twitter has surfaced a tweet from 24 hours ago.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#190

Post by zmgsabst »

toofy wrote: post #148
zmgsabst wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry — I didn’t realize you were being disingenuous. I don’t believe you’re sincerely unaware of the calls to censor misinformation in media; and we literally just explained which media companies based in politically biased bubbles we were discussing. Have a great evening!

im trying to understand what is being argued here. the person i responded to said it was a fact that "a chorus of coastal media types" are "asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum" the comment said this was a fact. and i still don't think thats a fact. now in this comment you say they're sending "calls to censor misinformation in media"--then sure. are you implying that…

“What calls for censorship?”

“Oh, those calls I already knew about, but pretended not to?”

This is why I think you’re being disingenuous.

Your comment about misinformation ignores that what they call “misinformation” is merely information they don’t like — eg, when they censored the Hunter Biden story during an election, while calling for Republicans and news outlets (eg, NY Post) who told the truth to be deplatformed.

Your vapid replies pretending not to recognize that as censorship are as in poor faith as saying that North Korea can’t be an oppressive autocracy because “democratic republic” is in the name.

Post reply on HN