this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Fixed it to be more precise.
I suppose whether it's an algorithm comes down to which definition you use.
I think the colloquial definition is something which is user-dependant and very complicated.
However, the dictionary definition is "a finite set of unambiguous instructions", which fits my initial usage.
Strangely though, the colloquial definition doesn't fit the dictionary definition, because the YouTube/Twitter/Facebook algorithms are so ambiguous that the people designing them don't really know what they're doing, since they are evolving by themselves.
Yeah it's semantics, but to me an algorithm includes some kind of code to do something I'm not aware of or have control over, like a section of code that does a job in the background. In this case I think of something that pre-selects which content to put on my front page based on some logic I have no control over.
So... Elsewhere in this thread you keep stating that explaining why something is edited is not useful. But here I have no idea what your previous statement was or what you edited, and because you didn't explain why you edited, I'm left guessing what your previous statement was.
This is precisely why people explain why they edit, otherwise the conversation loses context as edits occur. Hopefully you can step back and see why explaining edits is useful?
You actually don't need to know what my previous statement was, because it's totally boring.
I changed "algorithm" to "algorithm/engagement machine" because the first posts were about how the word algorithm is used.
To clarify, my gripe was not with edits, it's to state that you edited for typos specifically.