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So why a News Feed?

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Re: So why a News Feed?

#51

Post by pohl »

hsn915 wrote: post #48

The text on the landing page is odd. It reads: > Remember when social media was fun, introduced you to big ideas and cool people, and actually made you smarter? Remember when it didn't waste your time and make you angry or sad? When you could disagree with someone without being threatened or insulted? We want to bring that back with Post. I remember no such thing. The only difference between the old and the new inter…

Could you give a few specific examples of unorthodox and heretical topics you wish you could find?

Re: So why a News Feed?

#52

Post by shanebellone »

nindalf wrote: post #47
mccorrinall wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty, Mastodon feels like a bigger echo chamber than Twitter. At least for me. The people on the server are somehow all like minded people. There is rarely any disagreeing going on. The missing exposure to diverse perspective makes mastodon boring to me, and is the reason why I stopped using it. Maybe I used it wrong ¯\(°_°)/¯

The penalty for wrongthink on mastodon is banning. This ensures ideological homogeneity within each instance. For many people, this is a feature not a bug.

Literally defined an echochamber.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#53

Post by nindalf »

shanebellone wrote: post #52
nindalf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The penalty for wrongthink on mastodon is banning. This ensures ideological homogeneity within each instance. For many people, this is a feature not a bug.

Literally defined an echochamber.

Thing about an echo chamber is that it feels amazing to be in one. Everyone agreeing with me, slapping my back when I say something to reinforce the groupthink. I feel so smart! Love it!

The negatives of the echo chamber are felt by people not in it, not me and my group.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#54

Post by college_physics »

nanis wrote: post #49
college_physics wrote: post #41

People pay for a place to live and almost every amenity therein except the air we breathe. We pay for the electricity that moves bits around. For telephone lines. For computing hardware. For connecting to the internet. For getting information in print. But for a certain type of software and information retrieval / news exchange, that builds on all this stuff we pay for , hurrah, we dont have to pay, not with money an…

> that is not a public good paid collectively via taxes. Keeping in mind that most things which are paid for in this way do not meet the economic definition of a "public good" and therefore could have been provided efficiently by private entities for profit. "News" is different. At its core, without external regulations, "information" is not rivalrous: If I know something, that does not preclude you from knowing it.…

Rapid digitization (and the automation that can be built on top of that) is the development that makes your points an urgent and hot potato issue - if there ever was one.

Information in its various manifestations (from a song, to a painting, to an answer to a coding question, to a piece of knowledge about the universe, to news updates about states of the human world etc) requires some human effort to be generated but can then be 1) replicated indefinitely at practically zero cost and 2) modified, adapted, integrated, reused in infinite ways using algorithms, to the point of potentially wiping out any original signal in an ocean of digital noise

The impact of this inescapable reality is explosive for all sorts of economic and political assumptions that have dominated practically all our historical experience [0] I see not evidence whatsoever that we are (collectively) coming to terms with this dynamic so the immediate future will continue being "interesting".

The positive scenario is that the zero marginal cost society will somehow find ways to preserve humanistic principles: Find ways to refactor and control all this digital tech so that the focus is once again on humans, their welfare and truthful relations with other humans.

[0] information processing seems to have started with agricultural oligarchies etching cuneiform on stone to keep records of tax and loans

Re: So why a News Feed?

#55

Post by clnq »

pohl wrote: post #50
clnq wrote: post #8

I agree with the ideas in this post but I am skeptical about their implementation. Users are shown a headline, an associated picture, and first 2-4 sentences of an article. Then they can buy the rest for ¢1-5. It feels like something that could be very easily exploited by clickbait. Although it currently does not seem to be. I do like the current assortment of news. It's not like other social media sites where news c…

Been on there since before the “dohicky” days and I have yet to see a post behind such a paywall. I know they want to enable this, but you don’t actually see it in the wild.

On the main page, there are three tabs - "Following", "Explore" and "News". At least that's what I see.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#56

Post by clnq »

clnq wrote: post #8

I agree with the ideas in this post but I am skeptical about their implementation. Users are shown a headline, an associated picture, and first 2-4 sentences of an article. Then they can buy the rest for ¢1-5. It feels like something that could be very easily exploited by clickbait. Although it currently does not seem to be. I do like the current assortment of news. It's not like other social media sites where news c…

Looks like the Fortune Magazine is experimenting with ¢25 articles now.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#57

Post by shanebellone »

nindalf wrote: post #53
shanebellone wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally defined an echochamber.

Thing about an echo chamber is that it feels amazing to be in one. Everyone agreeing with me, slapping my back when I say something to reinforce the groupthink. I feel so smart! Love it! The negatives of the echo chamber are felt by people not in it, not me and my group.

Unfortunately for everyone else, feeling smart does not translate to being smart.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#58

Post by pohl »

clnq wrote: post #55
pohl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been on there since before the “dohicky” days and I have yet to see a post behind such a paywall. I know they want to enable this, but you don’t actually see it in the wild.

On the main page, there are three tabs - "Following", "Explore" and "News". At least that's what I see.

I’m not sure what that has to do with it, but one can add #AnyArbitraryHashtag to the top, too.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#59

Post by tokenadult »

staller wrote: post #6
mostlysimilar wrote: post #3

I can't figure out how to access the desktop version of the site, I'm stuck on the mobile. Any ideas?

they are doing a mobile first approach, there is no desktop version.

Post is currently a progressive web app. There is no immediate plan to build dedicated mobile apps for Post.

Re: So why a News Feed?

#60

Post by CaptainFever »

mccorrinall wrote: post #46
jug wrote: post #38

They haven't even launched yet and are already talking of The Personalized News Feed and the old discussion about a chronological feed is already going in the comments. No thanks. I already see where this one is going. Chronology and non-personalizing has become a good litmus test over the last decade of social. I'll get my news, viral and not, on Mastodon instead. It's such a relief to be there. Like being able to b…

In all honesty, Mastodon feels like a bigger echo chamber than Twitter. At least for me. The people on the server are somehow all like minded people. There is rarely any disagreeing going on. The missing exposure to diverse perspective makes mastodon boring to me, and is the reason why I stopped using it. Maybe I used it wrong ¯\(°_°)/¯

That’s what I found too[0]. Made me realise that algorithms aren’t to blame for echo chambers and outrage; it is us humans that are at fault with this.

Examples of echo chamber behaviour on Mastodon: all differing replies are labelled as “replyguys”, but agreeing replies are allowed. Defederation is common due to drama between administrators. Debates are discouraged and free speech is commonly villianised.

Examples of outrage behaviour on Mastodon: Check out the Fediblock hashtag (don’t), which has a big “outrage of the week” tone, everything from Hive to Raspberry Pi to journalists.

I’ll try to add a bit of value to my comment. The way I’m resolving this is to recognise this and filter them out actively. This is one place where algorithms do indeed make it harder (because it can “sneak back in”). Particularly, I filter out all political posts and any anger posts, especially anger posts about an out-group (“us vs them”).

Is this creating an echo chamber as well? Maybe. But I can try rationalising this by saying that an echo chamber of neutrality is better than an echo chamber of a particular side, political or otherwise.

[0] https://mastodon.social/explore

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