meldroc

We talk about the Algorithm when we talk about the big social media players - what is their algorithm? It's a mystery, and it's certainly set up to make you see what they want you to see.

What if Lemmy users had their own algorithms? Well, we already have a few - sort by Hot, Active, New, etc. Blocking users, communities, threads, keywords - that's another algorithm - remove content that's likely to be obnoxious. But we can do more than that when the algorithm's working for us instead of a big company...

Could Lemmy have an AI algorithm that over time is trained to find stuff you like? Or trained to automatically catch and flag Nazi content or illegal content - would save the mods some work. Or trained to send you content you find lame when you've been doomscrolling too long.

Or for a simpler algorithm, give the users one of Tik Tok's cheats - behind the scenes, Tik Tok staff would "heat" certain vids from certain creators, or with certain keywords, or that promote certain agendas... Like recording industry payola. What if you had the ability to sort by Hot, but with user-specified heat (or user-specified chill) - you like these posts, so dial up their karma, but you hate those posts, so dial posts with that keyword down, so they get pushed down in your feed.

Better than Meta algorithm Kremlinology, would you say? The one thing I want, though is open algorithms. We should know how they work, and what kinds of content they promote or block. Give the users the keys!

I'll start! There was a lot of absolutist rhetoric there that said things along the lines of "All Christians are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people!" I think a little nuance is in order, no?

This is good for us, and for businesses, influencers and celebrities.

They need to be encouraged to operate their own instances, and not just an account in Threads or elsewhere in Meta.

1. You get to have a "home base" for your presence on Threads and the Fediverse that's independent of Big Tech. Ah, the advantages of owning your online house instead of renting! That's why we have a Fediverse.
2. You get to make the rules, not Meta. You're not getting your content taken down by a faceless corp because some AI software mistakenly concluded you violated TOS. You're not gonna get NSFW'd out of business so some CEO can make bucks with an IPO. And you can kick off the jerkwads that are harassing you when Meta won't.
3. You get to structure communities/discussions on your instance the way you want.

AND, getting enough celebrities, influencers and businesses to operate their own instances will take power away from Meta. If there's a critical mass of in-demand people and content outside of Meta in the Fediverse, and Threads users get access to that content, Meta won't be able to wall up the garden without a riot from their users. Enough celebrities on Threads, but not on their servers, and Meta will be forced to keep things open and make EEE much harder for them.

Now all we need is for a few in-demand people to make that leap...

Thoughts?

Part of this is that I'm new, a Reddit refugee, and still learning my way around.

Part of it was prompted by Beehaw's choice to defederate with lemmy.world & other instances - there's a clear disagreement on how to keep difficult people from dropping turds in the punch bowl.

And part of it is from watching the enshittification of Reddit.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to set up a nonprofit organization for the purpose of promoting independent distributed social media. Conceivably, it could fundraise to help keep servers alive, have some people promoting the Fediverse elsewhere on the Internet, lobby and keep lawyers handy to keep government from squelching free speech. Something along the lines of EFF or FSF.

There could be a mutual agreement among members on ground rules for users (for example, requiring all member instances to ban/block/delete hate speech). Or it can operate services like anti-spam/anti-hate blocklists so mods have better tools to keep the riffraff out. And it can serve as a venue to resolve disputes in a civil way.

And I say it needs to be a nonprofit so it's enshittification resistant. For-profit companies are required by law to maximize profit for owners/shareholders, which makes enshittification inevitable. A nonprofit's mission in life is to perform beneficial things for the community, be it stopping teen suicide, running an orchestra, or promoting independent social media.

Just my random brainfart, I'm sure half of this has already been done.