See title, but for some added detail: I’ve been thinking lately about how one of the stumbling blocks for folks to federated social spaces is the absence of, for lack of a better word, engagement algorithms.
What I mean by engagement algorithms are the different systems corporate social media employs to drive your continued use of their apps/platforms. Choose a few interests/people/communities, see some suggested topics/people/groups to follow. You follow Mad Max, maybe you’d like to follow Furiosa!
Furiosa liked/shared your photo! You viewed this video, here’s another you might like, and another, and another!
These systems tend to do a few things at once, keep your attention, minimize friction to find more to interact with/view, and in turn discourage actively looking beyond them. Depending on how you use them, or in some cases just how they work, you’re almost discouraged from socializing and instead encouraged to doomscroll/perpetually consume as they tend to work more as broadcasting/advertising platforms at a certain point than social platforms.
Remove most of the engagement algorithms and instead have folks socializing as the “engagement algorithm” and some folks tend to seem a little disoriented or lost (which is sometimes the absence of familiar faces tbh, but not always!). Moreover, some just…Never really wanted to socialize much to begin with, so this may not really translate for them to begin with.
What do you think?
It’s definitely not. Hot or Active just shows you the popular stuff based on what has objectively the most views or comments in a particular timeframe, simply sorted by amount.
The algorithms on YT, IG or TT take into account who you are based on all the data collected about you, and often serve you stuff that’s gonna make you upset because that’s more likely to get you engaged and keep you on the site longer.
Plus serving you content that’s as short and simple as possible so it’s easier to serve you ads without interrupting your 20min video 5 times, which would make you more likely to make you seek an adblocker.
Totally different beasts, these algorithms.
On Reddit if you wanted to see controversial content, you had to choose it. Big Tech social serve you that by default.
Fwiw in relation to DreamButt’s comment, TKC & Sneezy are correct regarding the types of algorithms present on Lemmy, but in relation to the overall thread topic, you’re correct in what I was aiming to address.
Yea I know what you meant.
Ok, I see where you’re drawing the distinction. There’s a huge difference in the intention of the algorithms, and we’re unlikely to see these on Lemmy.
Thanks for taking the time to re-explain.