this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
152 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37735 readers
51 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Algorithm-free solves a lot of problems.
I'm not sure you understand what an algorithm is. They're simply a sequence of steps you apply to get some end result, comparable to eg. a recipe in baking.
Lemmy still has multiple ways for you to choose how posts are sorted; "hot", "active", "new" etc. Each of those is an algorithmic sorting, and there's literally no other option except to have an algorithm that is used to determine which posts you see
edit: I think many people who think Lemmy is "algorithm-free" may mean that it has a transparent algorithm for post selection. It's still an algorithm, but we can all go look at source code and documentation to be able to know exactly how it works – with eg. Facebook the exact workings of the post sorting algorithm is secret
I mean, I have a BS and MS in computer science, so you can use that as guidance as to whether or not I know what an algorithm is. :)
In this context, though, it should be clear that "The Algorithm" refers to a specific social networking algorithm that chooses the content you see in order to maximize advertising revenue.
So yes, Lemmy has algorithms that show different content based on your input, but that's a wildly different animal. Notably, I'm the one deciding, and also they're not trying to maximize ad revenue.