> there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human
This is spot on, and why I become more of a free software radical every year. Even though these UX experiments roll around in my head, I doubt you can make any algorithm that is "unbiased" and perfect for all people.
Ergo the only real solution is to let a thousand algorithms bloom, and give people the ability to select the ones they want; this is getting back to the idea of the software being a "user agent" that fetches content for you and does what you want it to do, as opposed to being an advertiser's agent. Maybe there's some alternate reality out there where everything was AGPL'ed from the get-go and Facebook et al got forked a thousand times and had to compete with forks that were more user friendly. Or barring that maybe the problem gets solved in 100 years with a dozen Mastodon forks blooming, I don't know, but I'm sure if you could choose your algorithm, it would look nothing like the Instagram app in particular does today, which is my personal choice for the most mind-destroying software I find myself sometimes using
Or maybe if the government succeeds in breaking the monopolies that rule over both social media and the online advertising industry...?
> there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human
This is spot on, and why I become more of a free software radical every year. Even though these UX experiments roll around in my head, I doubt you can make any algorithm that is "unbiased" and perfect for all people.
Ergo the only real solution is to let a thousand algorithms bloom, and give people the ability to select the ones they want; this is getting back to the idea of the software being a "user agent" that fetches content for you and does what you want it to do, as opposed to being an advertiser's agent. Maybe there's some alternate reality out there where everything was AGPL'ed from the get-go and Facebook et al got forked a thousand times and had to compete with forks that were more user friendly. Or barring that maybe the problem gets solved in 100 years with a dozen Mastodon forks blooming, I don't know, but I'm sure if you could choose your algorithm, it would look nothing like the Instagram app in particular does today, which is my personal choice for the most mind-destroying software I find myself sometimes using
Or maybe if the government succeeds in breaking the monopolies that rule over both social media and the online advertising industry...?