Musk's declared objective function for Twitter is likely to approximate time spent. Optimizing for highly valuable experiences would be a better path, but that may be at odds with business goals.
Personally, what I would love is more control over my social media feeds (more customization). Imagine that you could choose from the following feeds as mood fits:
totally makes sense. I'm hopeful that experiments with decentralized social media protocols (ActivityPub) will make this possible sooner rather than later. I'm hoping our group can help build some meaningful experiments toward this in 2023.
What I really like is to be in charge of what's going on. Not some algorithm determined by others but one determined by me.
Ideally a way to do that where I don't tell those who run the site very much. (People who run social media have proven to me, time and again, by their actions that they are the enemy. Sad, but I can't think of anybody I've discussed this with who feels differently.)
A move in a better direction is illustrated by the Goggles feature on Brave Search. I envisage something in a similar spirit.
That makes perfect sense. Mastodon and its protocol (Activitypub) provide a way for people to bootstrap experiments with algorithmic choice and transparency and I hope this can be a lever toward achieving this. I'm hoping to build some collaborations to this end this year and I know of a few other groups doing similar work.
Thanks. Good to hear about your upcoming exploration of this space.
Sometimes I don't want a feed with all sorts of things mixed up. I want something focused. I can do a lot of that with simple fixed URLs already. I find that more satisfying to use than the mixed up, algorithmically confused, type of feed.
I'm still getting used to some features of Mastodon which still seems quirky to me. My sense is that writing a handler to fetch and send things to Mastodon isn't as easy as I'd like. (Something like NOTR may be easier but that's in Alpha at present.) I'll try some tests with Mastodon to see what I can achieve, with simple approaches. (It doesn't have much of a search API which will limit what's achievable.)
It’s so true that reading 1 tweet or 1 post is not necessarily regrettable. It is only when too much time elapses that it feels wasteful. Is it possible to have extended and repeated social media experiences that consistently add value to our lives (as they do take time away from real life experiences)?
It certainly is possible at times for many. I can think of many times I've been informed of important life events or great moments or meaningful nostalgia via social media....Or learned something that I carry with me to this day. but it likely is an open question and depends on the person as to how "repeated" and extended such experiences can be.
Personally, what I would love is more control over my social media feeds (more customization). Imagine that you could choose from the following feeds as mood fits:
- Reverse chronological feed.
- Usual engagement focused feed.
- Usual feed without suggested content.
- An aggregated feed from my geographical area.
- Etc.
totally makes sense. I'm hopeful that experiments with decentralized social media protocols (ActivityPub) will make this possible sooner rather than later. I'm hoping our group can help build some meaningful experiments toward this in 2023.
What I really like is to be in charge of what's going on. Not some algorithm determined by others but one determined by me.
Ideally a way to do that where I don't tell those who run the site very much. (People who run social media have proven to me, time and again, by their actions that they are the enemy. Sad, but I can't think of anybody I've discussed this with who feels differently.)
A move in a better direction is illustrated by the Goggles feature on Brave Search. I envisage something in a similar spirit.
That makes perfect sense. Mastodon and its protocol (Activitypub) provide a way for people to bootstrap experiments with algorithmic choice and transparency and I hope this can be a lever toward achieving this. I'm hoping to build some collaborations to this end this year and I know of a few other groups doing similar work.
Thanks. Good to hear about your upcoming exploration of this space.
Sometimes I don't want a feed with all sorts of things mixed up. I want something focused. I can do a lot of that with simple fixed URLs already. I find that more satisfying to use than the mixed up, algorithmically confused, type of feed.
I'm still getting used to some features of Mastodon which still seems quirky to me. My sense is that writing a handler to fetch and send things to Mastodon isn't as easy as I'd like. (Something like NOTR may be easier but that's in Alpha at present.) I'll try some tests with Mastodon to see what I can achieve, with simple approaches. (It doesn't have much of a search API which will limit what's achievable.)
It’s so true that reading 1 tweet or 1 post is not necessarily regrettable. It is only when too much time elapses that it feels wasteful. Is it possible to have extended and repeated social media experiences that consistently add value to our lives (as they do take time away from real life experiences)?
It certainly is possible at times for many. I can think of many times I've been informed of important life events or great moments or meaningful nostalgia via social media....Or learned something that I carry with me to this day. but it likely is an open question and depends on the person as to how "repeated" and extended such experiences can be.