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Comment on Man Opts Out Of The Algorithm By Throwing His Fucking Phone Off A Bridge And Going To The Pub

It’s funny to me that everyone agrees the algorithm is bad; yet one of the common criticisms of Lemmy/Fediverse is its lack of an algorithm - making it less user-friendly to new users.

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sepiroth154@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Which also makes no sense, sorting by new is an algorithm.

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- blind3rdeye@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  True that.
  
  I think when most people talk about “the algorithm”, they are talking about an algorithm that targets each user individually such that even if two people are on the same part of the site at the same time with the same preferences set, they will see different (personalised) content.
  
  That kind of personalised algorithm is certainly what I want to avoid. I don’t really mind how the visible content is chosen, but I do want to have some sense of shared experience so that we aren’t just talking past each other. I want to know that if I tell someone to go to a website then they’ll see what I see.
  
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- TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Random is an algorithm
  
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Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that about Lemmy. It has basically the same algorithm as Reddit. It might work for Mastodon and Friendica, relative to Xitter and Facebook, though.

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- Nath@aussie.zone ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Lemmy is not the Fediverse, and I happen to think it’s pretty easy to figure out. But I’ve come from USENET > Forums > Reddit to get here. Someone who hasn’t had that background sees a bunch of random links that are probably not of interest to them. Reddit has it’s default “Popular” feed, and before that had a bunch of curated default subscriptions to get people started. Lemmy doesn’t. There’s Subscribed, Local and All.
  
  “All” is a mess. It’s super US-centric and all about their politics.
  “Local” is of course dependant on the Instance. I live on ours, so I happen to like it. But, I can see how someone (particularly a non-Australian) wouldn’t find it to their taste. Most instances will have little (or maybe one busy Community) in Local.
  And finally you have “Subscribed”. Which is empty by default. How is a new person who has never been on Reddit supposed to know what to do with that link? It literally has nothing.
  
  Now, take that new person to something like Mastodon. Your default feed there is just the equivalent of All. And odds are someone’s first taste of Mastodon is going to be all about US politics and people yelling about something. Again, not a great first impression.
  
  “The Algorithm” as we loosely define it is supposed to fix this. It is supposed to bring you content you like, learn what you like and bring you more content that you like.
  
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