Adding to the chorus: if you need to apply a solution like this, it's probably time to walk away from the platform. (Well, the right time to walk away would have been years ago, but...)
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All remotely popular online public spaces are completely infiltrated by bots/propagandists/trolls/morons/etc. If you could successfully filter that type of content out you'd end up with a much larger pool of valid/authentic content to access than if you abandoned the space altogether and switched to some very obscure/niche space that's yet to be manipulated.
You can already follow who you want on Twitter. The thing is, bots etc take their toll even on the good users.
Bluesky has a default feed that is just the posts/reposts of the people who you choose to follow, in reverse chronological order.
No need for an algorithm to decide what is worth seeing.
Maybe, but no one worth listening to uses bluesky
Incorrect. William Gibson does. And he’s definitely worth listening to.
Twitter/X has the same feature. It is all I use.
Network effects are stronger than we are. People are there because people are there.
And when you are not there you are not there. We are way too obsessed with missing a thing. May it be a popular figure or someone we know in person. The reality is that it's actually not too bad to miss things and most information still gets through. Especially the one that's important. You might even miss out on a lot of crap that is filtered out when it gets to you.
I am happy on my personal Mastodon instance and occasional visits to HN. You might be too if you allow yourself to be.
The problem is that your definition of "crap" is probably a bit different from others. Everyone probably has a slightly different definition. Also, your feed is probably mostly stuff that was posted on X first and replicated over somehow. Network effect is real.
That being said, there are clearly multiple active automated influence operations happening on X all the time. If Elon wants X to stick around, it would be in his interest to put a stop to those. The default feed is full of posts from those bots; that's also a big problem they (X) needs to fix.
> Also, your feed is probably mostly stuff that was posted on X first and replicated over somehow.
Possibly. But if it reaches me anyways then there clearly was no need for me to be there. And if more people realize maybe the discussion might be able to move away from that place.
> The problem is that your definition of "crap" is probably a bit different from others.
I was talking about everyone's personal definition of crap. If it has not enough velocity to leave the sphere it might be only relevant for a small community or just not relevant enough to discuss. Or something different.
My argument stands. It is okay to not be part of every discussion. A lot of people think that they must be on X to stay in touch and be informed. I am not there and I am informed enough and in touch with all the people I want. If you can't be bothered to make an account outside X then we don't need to talk.
yea but which people ;) unless you want to in that in-group, crypto, rage and all, better off without it
I know a bunch of people and companies who happily dumped the twitter cesspool. It has to be > 50% scammers and ragebots at this point.
We have a solution like this for HN, but people don't use it: It's the "hide" button, and it's right next to the "flag" button. Yet, when users see content they don't like, instead of just hiding it, to block it for themselves, they often choose to flag it so that they can block others from seeing it too.
I'd welcome per-user curation tools like OP's which don't affect the content for the rest of us.
I was actually thinking of making a similar app for hacker news comments. Should we all quit hacker news too?
HN is my top candidate for a solution like this, too. Because there's a ton of high quality content here, increasingly buried beneath a small number of sentiments and topics I don't care to see rehashed constantly.
I'd like to see it, too, but for the opposite[1] reason: Others can use this curation (which only affects their own view of HN) instead of flagging (which affects my view and everyone else's too).
I use the flag functionality as per the guidelines:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
> If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Flagging is a way to shape what types of content takes up the finite amount of attention available on HN. If everyone used it (only) in the way the guidelines ask you to, the front page would look very different on a given day.
HN doesn't need it. I'll read this site, not gonna bother with Twitter or Reddit though.
You need to curate your algorithm. Took me 10 years before I started blocking aggressively and now my feed is amazing with 90% bangers. Twitter is by far the best product in this space. Every other platform is 2+ weeks behind. Twitter is where the news breaks.
I had a well curated feed too (even used word filters) and yet I felt compelled to pack up and walk away. It was simply not enough.
The negative effect the various drivel had on me was nonlinear. Even if 99% of posts were fine, if that 1% was seriously upsetting, it just ruined the whole thing.