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?