• Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    When people say algorithms on social media they usually never refer to the simple everyday algorithms that are easy to understand, they always use that word to refer to the proprietary ones designed to feed you content based on machine learning and data fed to them by the company.

    Though yes sorting by new, or activity, or even by vote count is still in algorithm, just a much simpler one that almost never employs machine learning.

    • Corgana@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Yeah exactly, most people understand to some degree that they are being manipulated by ““The Algorithm”” and would like an alternative service. Responding to that sentiment with “actually all sorting is technically algorithmic” is not the way to make a new Mastodon convert.

    • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachts
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      1 year ago

      I’m aware. my comment was more for the folks who don’t know that an algorithm is simply a set of steps to achieve something specific