Twitter's Jack Dorsey Wants To Build an App Store for Social Media Algorithms (theverge.com) 36
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey imagines a future where you get to choose what you see on social media by picking out your favorite recommendation algorithm, rather than relying on a single controlling company to get it exactly right. From a report: On a call with investors this week, Dorsey expanded on his vision of how a decentralized social network might work -- and why Twitter would want to create a network that's beyond the control of itself or any other company. Dorsey said Twitter would benefit by having access to "a much larger corpus of conversation" from which it can surface relevant content to users. "That's where we will be competitive," he said. Dorsey said Twitter is "excited to build" features that will give people more choice over what they see. "You can imagine an app-store-like view of ranking algorithms that give people ultimate flexibility in terms of" what posts are put in front of them, Dorsey said on the call.
Re:All of these alorithms... (Score:4, Insightful)
... and independence of thought.
Re:All of these alorithms... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the "regulatory escape" for social media companies from the incoming onslaught in various regulations. They simply cannot reconcile the requirements of USA, Europe, LatAm, India, Russia, China, etc.
So people will be getting the "regulatory approved" algorithms for their location. This will get the Social Media companies out of the lose-lose situation where they cannot comply with both USA and other country requirements on what they are allowed to promote at the same time. They will continue being able to strip you from your privacy and shove "anal probe" advertisements into you while keeping the politicos happy.
Is there a free speech algo? (Score:4, Insightful)
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So you want to read obviously false lies, and slander against people, and calls to do dangerous actions based on false premises?
Some of us are smart enough to recognize those and simply ignore them. Maybe you should up your critical thinking, instead of pretending that you're not making excuses for fascists trying to shut down anyone that disagrees with them?
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I have learned that you shouldn't underestimate on how stupid people are.
We just last month had a bunch of people attack the Capital, because they were believing in fake news.
We have people attacking workers who are building up 5G because they think it causes COVID-19.
We have foreign actors, basically trying to schedule Protests for two diametrically opposite things at the same time and at the same place, to force violence.
Sure 99% of the people may be able to spot this as fake news. but in a country of 30
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I am unsure whether any of us are smart enough. I've seen some very smart people get swallowed by those lies because they get just a bit depressed or start reading when they're tired and not using good judgement. Under those conditions, smart people cannot recognize when they've been pulled in. Collectively, we are smart enough... individually? I have serious doubts about every single person, myself included. It's worth continually recalibrating against a collective standard that is broader than your immedi
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So you want to read obviously false lies, and slander against people, and calls to do dangerous actions based on false premises?
Yes, exactly. I can read these and decide for myself. I simply do not trust others to declare anything "obviously false lies" and prevent me from checking their work.
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So you spend all your time fact checking every bit of information that you come across?
Probably not.
You normally will rely on trusted sources. And instincts on how well that information may fit your world view.
If your trusted sources are not doing its work, you are believing false information.
If your world view is mistaken or has gaps, you are believing false information.
There is too much that goes on, for us to properly consume information from the fire-hose. We need short cuts, someone who's job is to g
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I have learned that you shouldn't underestimate on how stupid people are
You normally will rely on trusted sources. And instincts on how well that information may fit your world view.
If your trusted sources are not doing its work, you are believing false information.
Let me get this straight:
Your argument is that because 'common' people are fallible (for whatever reason) we should let 'expert' people decide what information is 'unsuitable' for widespread dissemination because it might be misunderstood or taken as the 'the truth' by aforementioned 'common' people.
The only problem is, 'expert' people are just as susceptible to bias, not to mention other forms of persuasion and editorial control. It would seem to be that you're advocating for an even more dangerous system:
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If your trusted sources are not doing its work, you are believing false information.
Perhaps, but this situation allows me to correct both what I consider trusted sources and what information I believe when presented with new evidence. On other hand, if someone decided for me that something is an "obviously false lie" and hidden it from me, I have no way to do something about it.
Personally, I am more concerned about sources I explicitly do not trust, like woke SJWs in charge of Twitter, deciding for me that I don't need to see something. YMMV.
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Your can point twitter.com to localhost in your hosts file.
HTH, and hi there APK!
New, improved echo chambers! (Score:3)
Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong?
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Chronological Order (Score:5, Funny)
The first to that market with Chronological Order "algorithm" is going to make fucking BANK!
Already been done (Score:3)
We had this "future" 10 years ago; it's called RSS. Though if someone can bring it back after Google practically killed it by discontinuing their reader, I'm all in favor.
The problem is successful algorithms (Score:2)
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This is why, and I shit you not, a bulimic browsing Reddit will get ads for weight loss (look up a video from YouTuber Vikki1999).
I'm not sure why this is a problem beyond the subjective moral one.
Seems like bulimics would be more likely than average to buy weight loss crap, so its smart advertising to target them when you can, and its smart business to charge more to present those ads.
Wealth creation from pure information.
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maybe (Score:1)
getting migraine and high blood pressure while cockblocking your head
The Ride Never Ends (Score:1)
The reboot of last year’s big political flop, otherwise known as Trump Impeachment, hit the big stage in DC this week. The Senate kicked off the show with a debate about the constitutionality of the whole thing. The old rule of vaudeville was that you start every show with some jokes to warm up the audience. It is good to see Washington bringing back the old traditions for their political dramas. To the shock of no one, the Senate voted in favor of the claim that this nonsense is constitutional.
The on
How about I research, listen to, read and watch (Score:3)
Do people really need to be guided by what Twitter sees as approved, pure, true.
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I agree. My algorithm of choice would be very simple: just show me the posts by whomever I decided to follow. Don't suggest stuff. Don't push anything to my wall/stream/whatever you want to call it unless **I** have chosen to receive content from that source. :-)
I'm sure the implementation would be technically trivial
Technological solution to social problem. (Score:2)
This is just asking to have recommendation engines with evil targeting AND malware. The only plausible benefit is that segmenting the space might prevent some postings from going viral because in each sub-space they might not have momentum to break through.
Recommendation engines are a public-health thing. It doesn't do _me_ all that much good to get vaccinated against smallpox, if smallpox is rampant in the population. I mean, it does some good, maybe it reduces my risk of contracting smallpox in a given
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Makes sense (Score:1)
Re: Makes sense (Score:1)
I had the same thoughts a while back as well. Basically you subscribe to what moderation team/company. Many can overlay on top of each other -- not unlike filter lists for ublock. I was also lookingâ at it from a reddit perspective, not just twitter.
Mostly I thought of this for a company like Parler, where the device manufacturer (Apple) and ISP (Amazon) both want you silenced. You basically put the responsibility back on them by picking a specific moderation team to force on their customers. Apple use
hay jack (Score:2)
consider.
maybe a set of algorithms that pick up garbage.
think tornado
The Blues Brothers country music choice (Score:2)
How would you like your feed - liberal, or ultra-liberal?
Simple, full timeline, in order (Score:2)
ActivityPub and RSS? That was easy (Score:3)
No doubt Twitter will be adding ActivityPub federation and RSS feeds in the next week or two and this project will be complete.
Right?
(Hello? Anybody?...)
This sounds like a pretty cool idea (Score:1)
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I too have set aside my cynicism and think this would be a great thing to do. It could spur lots of social media companies to provide something similar. Even just being able to tweak and algorithm would be nice. Like if I could dial down the "outrage me" parameter from 10 to 4.