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The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?
(yewtu.be)
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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Technology
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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.