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

Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

beige.party

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 209 posts

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#91

Post by famahar »

flancian wrote: post #81
j_maffe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but your comment comes across as very pedantic. In the context of social media, people mean highly optimized algorithms for maximum retention.

I respectfully disagree, I think it makes sense to stress the distinction. Along the lines of: let's reclaim 'algorithm' from the entities that made the word into a bad thing for so many.

It would be nice to make the term more neutral again. Many people feel like they have no control over the rules of an algorithm they interact with. I like how Bluesky gives complete control back to the user. First step in changing how people feel about the term is showing how it can provide a more pleasant experience and be less of a scary black box.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#92

Post by fireflash38 »

lukan wrote: post #69
dbspin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutey rock hard disagree. I'm old enough to remember when twitter and facebook used to both have a chronological feed without algorithmic sorting. Facebook (trash today of course) was an incredibly useful way to find out what your friends were doing on a given day by just reading the chronological feed. You could also trivially see which events were going on in your locality and which friends were attending. At t…

To quote the sibling content: "And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm." Apparently people understand different things by "algorithm". I also use the general one and not "algorithm" as a special algorithm that tries to find things I might like based on my past interactions, but mainly tailored to keep my engagement high so I watch more ads" I would like th…

Treat the word algorithm as a "magic black box". Because that's what it is, 90% of the time. It could be that chronological sort. It could be a rage engagement sort. People don't know. It's not a consistent thing either, since pretty much every social site out there that people use is constantly tweaking it, A/B testing it, or having it modify itself to an extent (that is, I assume randomness is built in).

I do think the internet would be a better place with more openness about those magic black boxes, even if it's just an ability to tweak it yourself without having to do some arcane incantations and rituals (ever gotten your YouTube recommendations completely fucked? How do you unfuck them?).

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#93

Post by squarefoot »

miki123211 wrote: post #54
IoI_xD wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never said no algorithm. I don’t know where that meme comes from. It comes from the people who don't know what an algorithm is but heard that Twitter has it and it's making them doomscroll so it's bad (which is not to defend Twitter or other social media's algorithms, but to say that some people seem to have a blind hatred of them entirely due to misconceptions)

And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm.

That's so true. Could we then use a new word, say malgorithm to denote algorithms that don't work in the interests of users? Just as with we did with malware?

btw: The Malgorithm does actually exist, and ironically is the name of a electronic music device that applies bit-crushing (undersampling and/or bit resolution reduction) effect to audio signals, that is, it mostly makes the signal sound worse although it can be used creatively, which however occurs very rarely in pop music.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#94

Post by lifthrasiir »

squarefoot wrote: post #93
miki123211 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm.

That's so true. Could we then use a new word, say malgorithm to denote algorithms that don't work in the interests of users? Just as with we did with malware ? btw: The Malgorithm does actually exist, and ironically is the name of a electronic music device that applies bit-crushing (undersampling and/or bit resolution reduction) effect to audio signals, that is, it mostly makes the signal sound worse although it can…

I think the "user-uncontrolled" or possibly "user-oblivious" algorithm (if you believe that the mere controllability is not enough) is a clear enough term.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#95

Post by ck2 »

People are going to nit-pic and while some of the concerns have some weight to them, so far they are trivial IMHO

The fact is we need an alternative to X because the current owner has done and will continue to do terrible things not just to the service but apparently on a personal and political level that is beyond distasteful to a HUGE chunk of the users (if not even greater than 50%)

And Threads isn't going to cut it for similar reasons.

So in an imperfect world Bluesky is what we get and it's a legit alternative that's better.

The fact a MastodonBluesky bridge exists says A LOT. Good luck ever getting something like that with X without paying a literal fortune for it.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#96

Post by echoangle »

ttepasse wrote: post #78
lukan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if i don’t like the servers it federates with, that’s totally ok. i start my own and federate with who i like." So everytime you move, can you take your existing network and posts and messages with you, or do you have to start from scratch every time?

You can take your existing network with you, Mastodon has Accounts redirects and follower migrations. Your own content not yet. While Mastodon-the-software has an export function, there is no import as yet. But that is a solvable problem. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

Does the migration also work if the server I’m migrating from actively wants to prevent me from taking over my stuff? If they ban me from their server because they don’t like me, they aren’t going to set up a redirect for me, right? Is this a real thing that happens?

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#97

Post by rsynnott »

maxlin wrote: post #37

[flagged]

I mean, Twitter itself borrowed most of its concepts from either the user base (@ mentions, replies, retweets, quote tweets were all informal behaviours before they were features) or other social media platforms, particularly Tumblr. It is very much a field where doing it well beats being the first.

Of course, if you’re earlier you have network effects, but Carface seems doggedly determined to compensate by driving the existing network away.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#98

Post by rsynnott »

bowsamic wrote: post #5

I'm not really sure what the benefit of BS over Mastodon is anyway. Everyone interesting is on Mastodon

Bluesky’s more accessible to the general public. I’m on both, though use Mastodon more (partially due to _far_ better third party clients available); it’s a very different crowd.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#99

Post by j_maffe »

flancian wrote: post #81
j_maffe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but your comment comes across as very pedantic. In the context of social media, people mean highly optimized algorithms for maximum retention.

I respectfully disagree, I think it makes sense to stress the distinction. Along the lines of: let's reclaim 'algorithm' from the entities that made the word into a bad thing for so many.

It is indeed a bad thing when the algorithm's objective is to manipulate the end user. It's dangerous and can (and has) lead to abuse. Also, there's no need to "reclaim" anything. I don't think anyone mistakes criticisms of algorithms in social media to the ones doing sorting in Excel.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#100

Post by eru »

gary_0 wrote: post #86
miki123211 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm.

We're also using an algorithm right now on HN, to sort comments and posts by freshness, votes, and reply count (plus manual moderation fairy dust sprinkled by dang and friends). Some people have even criticized it or dislike it, because everyone has different criteria for things they want to see. It's easy to forget there's a gray area between "unsorted feed of all posts" and "nothing but insane rage-bait to maximize…

Funny enough, depending on your exact definition of 'algorithm' either essentially everything you can do on a computer is an algorithm or there some weird and annoying exceptions.

For example many definitions include the requirement that an algorithm has to terminate for every input. And I suspect that there are probably some bugs lurking somewhere in the HN codebase that make it go into the occasional infinite loop. So technically it's not an algorithm by definition.

(And even weirder, because I just suspect it might have those bugs, but I don't know for sure, I have to admit that I don't know whether HN is powered by an algorithm.)

I agree with you that for practical definitions we can go by a definition that's essentially: 'by algorithm we just mean "computer program", but we want to focus on the abstract things it's doing, and not details of the concrete implementation.'

Post reply on HN