the "what's hot" feed is really an accidental feature (which we've mentioned many times). the plan has been from the start to be using custom algorithms and user moderation, not any baked in algorithms
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TBH, at low enough user count it was a perfectly valid way to solve the discovery issue. I wonder if community is looking at surfacing trending topics and hashtags, might be a good value add for those folks.
I’d be tempted, but mountains to climb learning the protocol etc. first
as with any product there's a dual pressure to get the MVP out to people asap while you also want to get the product finished. once the core experience was going, we began to bring people into the beta
the surprise that's been perennial is how quickly people came in
when we added "what's hot," there wasn't a lot of people or activity and our chief concern was that the app would feel like a ghost town. we figured, okay easy fix, toss in a temporary algorithm while we wrap the real system. so we threw in this thing which was anything with N likes (we chose 5)
Yeah, there's a world of difference between a "temporary fix" on a mature system that's likely to fossilize in place and iteration on a system that is deployed every day (AFAICT, and maybe even more often), in the feature rush that comes immediately after MVP.
then ... I think it was 3 weeks ago? things kind of exploded. and that's how we got caught off guard -- our timelines got totally exploded. so our iteration cycle has been short, to say the least
(see, for instance, how I broke the whats hot language filter this morning)
we had to rearrange the priorities so that T&S features matured much more rapidly, and therefore custom algos slipped. so whereas custom algos were supposed to basically solve this question of curating for NSFW/not as expressed by the algorithm being chosen...
...we now found ourselves controlling the one algorithm and having to set content policies for it. Which is, like, exactly what we don't want to be doing because it's counter to how we think this kind of thing should work
as of this week we're regaining some semblance of control over prioritization so I think we'll have news for custom algorithms pretty soon. it's not a situation we want to leave sitting, especially because I don't love what this policy does. folks being safe & respectful should be able to have fun
I know there'll be a chance to build your own timeline acting with @atproto.com But for non-tech people, will be there any different tab from Following and What's Hot in the future? Like an algo based one?
I prefer no algo. To see what those i follow post in real time. Maybe let me give them weight in my timeline. For instance I could like them 1-10 times. 10s would always show ahead of 9s etc.
I figured. The idea of stacking likes to give users individual algorithm control was something we planned to implement with voicemarkr before our lead dev moved into a leaky sailboat and disappeared.
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I’d be tempted, but mountains to climb learning the protocol etc. first
the surprise that's been perennial is how quickly people came in
I appreciate and enjoy the openness and engagement with pure chaos!
(see, for instance, how I broke the whats hot language filter this morning)
https://blueskyapi.io/docs/api