this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] Izzy@lemmy.world 120 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

There are only feeds for Subscribed, Local and All. Things can only show up there is they fall under one of those categories. Then the secondary filter determines the order. New is going to be chronological, Hot is some formula of votes per hour, active is some formula of comments per hour, old is probably reverse chronologically. etc..

It won't ever factor in what you visit and engage with on its own.

[–] cia@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Thanks that makes sense. I get why some people are against it, but ranking on your engagement can be super useful imo. Like if I comment on a couple niche communities a lot, I don’t want those to be drowned out by the much larger communities.

[–] there1snospoon@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So check on those couple niche communities more often. All and Local feeds are not meant to deliver you custom content, Home is a curated list that you create, and if there’s anything you want to see more of, visit it directly as often as you like.

[–] twotone@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It'd be nice if each one was weighted and we could adjust the weights to see some more than others. By default it would just be as it is now.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Even simpler, I think being able to "favourite" some communities and (optionally?) applying a greater weight to those communities in a user's feeds would solve the problem quite nicely.

I can't really imagine wanting to do the reverse anyway (subscribed to a community but I want to see less of its content)

[–] twotone@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can see someone getting tired of a sub and wanting to see less of it but not wanting to unsubscribe

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are people who sort by new posts, or new comments, it's not as common but some people do sort by it so in a way you're helping to spread

Edit: oh, you asked if it would show up more in your feed, not others'

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I thoroughly enjoy being able to design my own feed, and not have some corporation shove stuff down my throat in order to keep my engagement up. The past couple times I've checked facebook (primarily to check events) I've left again almost immediately, because I'm so put off by the way they shove stuff in my face just to find out what I'm interested in. I've even noticed that if I spend more time looking at a post from some source (no clicks/interaction, just reading text on an image) they start funnelling more of that into my feed.

[–] glorious_albus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I think active has got something to do with some formula of comments per hour.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I've been using "Subscribed" and "Top Day" for a while. Works well for me. If I used "All" there would be a large number of communities I'd need to block. Easier to just join the ones you want to see.

[–] candyman337@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

To add to this, hot seems to be local, top day seems to be lemmy-wide

[–] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 56 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is currently no engagement-based individual curation on Lemmy. The two most commonly used ranking algorithms (Hot & Top) are based strictly on votes. Top sorts by the total number of votes from within a given time window while Hot considers all votes against a steep time-based curve.

Not coincidentally, this is the same algorithm methodology used by Reddit. Two Reddit users subscribed to the exact same communities will see the exact same Hot/Top feeds, regardless of how much or little they individually engage with specific posts. Lemmy intentionally copied this community-based engagement methodology, presumably because it's part of the secret sauce that makes Reddit-like platforms special.

[–] cia@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

That was true at one point, but reddit has had personalized rankings for a while now. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/7hkvjn/what_we_think_about_when_we_think_about_ranking

But your point stands; reddit's earlier ranking methodology was obviously pretty good since it made the site so popular.

[–] jayemecee@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't want to have any sort of curated content. Is not subscribing to anything the best way to achieve that?

[–] alex@jlai.lu 5 points 1 year ago

Go on the All tab with the setting New to see all posts that can be read by your instance. This still allows you to subscribe to some stuff on the Subscribed tab without having any curation in the All tab.

[–] Firefly7@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Subscribing to a community does not curate content. All subscribing does is add it to your list of subscribed communities, so it’s one of the ones that shows up when you look into your Subscribed feed (sometimes called the Home feed). Subscribing to a community will not impact the Local feed or the All feed.

Lemmy does not have “curated content” outside of your subscriptions adding to the Subscribed feed, and your blocks taking away from all feeds.

[–] jayemecee@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Perfect, this was what I wanted to ear. Thank you

[–] bric@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

There will always be some form of algorithm that decides which posts go to the top of your feed, but lemmy gives you lots of options to control how you want it to work, and none of them are curated by anyone specifically. There'll never be no algorithm though, you'll always need to pick something

[–] nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de 55 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, if you want to see a community more, subscribe to it so it shows up in your subscribe feed. The "Hot" ranking is only based on the age of a post and the score, "Active" is similar but using the time of the last comment instead.

The feeds are "All", including every post on Lemmy, "Local", including only posts to your instance's communities, and "Subscribed" showing subscribed (joined) communities.

[–] siyuze@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't "All" show all posts from communities on your own, and other instances when someone on your instance has joined them? Or is that no longer the case and did I miss that?

[–] bric@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, but thats because your instance doesn't start federating with another instance until someone subscribes to a community from the other instance, your instance just won't have any posts to display

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I do see some clumping of communities in /all. Sometimes every other post will be from a certain community. I notice it most of its something nsfw.

I do not know what it is that the sorting algorithm decides that I'm into short haired ladies this one day and into furry the other, but somehow it does.

[–] cerevant@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think what you are seeing is a small number of users making a large number of posts to certain communities in a short time. Lemmy isn’t large enough to have an organic flow of content from different people, given that most users are lurkers.

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah I figured something like that. It's just curious to be assigned a certain 'flavor of the day' in such a random fashion/

[–] 6xpipe_@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I do see some clumping of communities in /all. Sometimes every other post will be from a certain community

I had to block Star Wars Memes.

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Wat, we have like, 2 or 3 memes a day

[–] synae@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

I haven't even seen that show up yet 🤔

It uses a ranking algorithm. You can read more about it here but I don't think it's done at an individual level like Reddit.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] kava@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think this is inherently a bad thing. It helps you find things you may be interested in by using statistical analysis. I think the problem is when it's designed to maximize your engagement or to cater you towards specific content they are trying to push

Of course it can lead to echo chambers, but I think as long as its transparent and not the only option then I don't see the harm in it

[–] kratoz29@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Some hashtags "algorithm" like Mastodon does would be nice, but I think it is very similar to your subscribed feed already, but it could work for something like "powering up" your interests.

[–] kakes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

Not that I'm aware of. Someone could look at the source code to find out for sure, though.

[–] eee@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think lemmy is still new enough that there isn't a personalised "algorithm" yet, for good or bad.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's good. I don't want posts to be catered to my own biases. I want to see the same content everyone else is seeing. Keeps me in touch with reality.

It's one of the reasons why I miss pre-Google YouTube. In the past, likes, views, and subscriptions were what drove videos to the front page. Now the algorithm just feeds you what it thinks you want to see. For people with extremist views, that is a very dangerous thing to be exposed to.

[–] Solarius@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

that's just what All view is for tho. I don't think there's anything wrong with personalized algorithm for your subs

[–] nix@merv.news 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Im glad it doesnt by default but it would be nice if people could create and share custom algorithms like Bluesky/atProtocol allows