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!Friendica Support Do we have an idea...?


Why is my news feed schizophrenic?


@Eugen Rochko

My news feed on Mastadon/Fediverse has a split personality. Sometimes the feed is filled with a certain profile of people (teenager/cutesy/twee/animal pictures/lefty) sometimes another (more right/way older/etc). It looks like there's a bot or a series of bots switching between two sets of k means clustered sets of profiles and I have no idea how this is happening or a way to tailor what I want to see. How is the set of posts determined?

If this turns out to be algorithmically determined again like on Facebook I'm abandoning ship.


Friendica has several feeds, including "Latest Activity", "Latest Posts", and the local and federated network feeds. As far as I know, not one is generated through any sort of "engagement" algorithm like on Big Social. The closest is Latest Activity, which is nothing mysterious, it's exactly what it says on the tin: it shows the posts that have most recently been acted upon by people you follow. I wonder if this person might be seeing different trends based on who, globally, is in a waking time zone at the time.

Given the tone and tenor of that person's other posts, they seem quick to anger and judgment. I hope they find answers to their question, and also, thank you for alerting me to someone I prefer to defederate from.
@Spencer It's much easier to call a person crazy than to investigate their claim. I dare you to sign up with any pleroma account with more than 20 users and start making waves. I double dog dare you.
@Peter Weyand Apologies. I just forwarded your post because it looked as if you were searching for support for Friendica rather than Mastodon. I understand your point but don't share your problem here so I can't be of help myself.
@Spencer@Friendica Support
@Kristian You can search by following #hashtags. I have no problem with my global timeline on Friendica, as the accounts I follow (about 500) and my followed #hashtags (about 50+) dominate it. Of course there is other stuff, but I do not mind. I still have not all the news, I had on Twitter, which I left. I joined the Fedi about 10 years ago. Fedi was for conversation, Twitter was for news. But I feel I have replaced Twitter for about 90% ATM.

Filtered word: nsfw

@Kristian I even follow #hashtags which' search yielded no result. That's a kind of catching net for me. It works. For the other stuff (in terms of ...), I block rubbish. I had to do the same on Twitter. Thanks for your estimation of Pleroma. I heard similar of Misskey myself. I think Friendica instances differ a bit from each other. I changed to another and the timelines are not the same, at least the timing is different.

@Kristian @VegOS @Peter Weyand

I absolutely can confirm Peter's claim, same over here.

Not going to discuss this, much less with some maybe bot that's set to make me loose time or energy.

The issue ends up on the instance level, big instances, no check on the users and abusers .. bad.
From that perspective @ Eugen has or might have some issues because the biggest instances are build by him. I recon that's good for several reasons, like testing and scaling, but if they become polluters, I'm going to do the same with them than I did with some chatBOT that just ran out of code when I called "him" out.

The world we live in is not Eugen's fault.

If this goes on I'll start to publicly call out sites that apparently are the worst representatives as unsave, block them and ask my respective admins and community to block them to.

Those are our tools and we'll have to work it out.


Anyone really believes "they" will allow us to happen just like that?

@Peter Weyand Hmmm, I'm still a tad lost, not sure whether I'm too blind to see the obvious, as I feel there's quite a mix of technological and social aspects in your posts. Is your core issue that you have content and people around who you don't trust, who you don't know whether or how they are trustworthy or just manipulative? It feels a bit like this, but I want to make sure before thinking any further...
@VegOS
@Peter Weyand@Kristian@VegOS Friendica has a setting to let you see only conversations started by your follows, so that you aren't exposed to the conversation from accounts you don't follow which your follow reply to.
@Hypolite Petovan Oh. Cool, haven't consciously noticed so far. Another good reason for Friendica I guess.
@VegOS
@Peter Weyand
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
@Peter Weyand Hmmmm. There are valid questions in there, but I wonder whether you can name any kind of medium available to a large audience that has solved these? TV? Printed newspapers? Any other digital format? And again, what would be your suggestions to fix that, on any particular level? What means do you see to make a system prone to intentional abuse in such a way? The best and maybe only approach I see, at the moment, is trying to educate people to think twice, question things, try to figure out - and at some point be aware that these kinds of abuse are possible, always, just looking at wartime propaganda and manipulation in "old-fashioned" media channels. That's tough, but I really don't have any better idea.

@Hypolite Petovan@VegOS@Friendica Support@Peter Weyand
@Kristian@Hypolite Petovan@VegOS@Friendica Support

In a media empire there is an editor and someone who is ultimately responsible for running the business. The buck stops at someone. There are W2s so you know which reporter is being paid to write what story.

This is an entirely other beast. This will end badly.
@Peter Weyand So trust is all about money then? Would you trust the "owner" responsible for running the business? Why should they lie to you any more or any less than anyone else out there? And worse of all: Maybe they're not even lying or trying to manipulate but just are totally _convinced_ of a certain world view which should be rejected by all means? And we're really talking _mass media_ here, media even reaching people who don't have access to computers or the internet. That seems a gross oversimplification of things, and at least to me it seems to boil down to the same question: Who do you trust and why - and how to detect manipulation in reasonably complex media structures. I don't have a solution, but I don't see any on your side, either. But, as this is where we started, I still fail to see what specifically on level of a technical protocol could be done to fix this.

@Hypolite Petovan
@VegOS
@Kristian@Hypolite Petovan@VegOS@Peter Weyand

Although the description of the problem itself is true, and the level of language quite outstanding, we are just facing same problems, same shit, in a different way.

For example, algos to feed us what we want to see (or the contrary) are normal on the other sites. So that "lady" normally just sell's you some ad's or lure you to sex.com. AI as in the means of understanding and semantics interpretation is a real threat and danger to society, I guess much worse in wallet gardens as out here where we are, where we might uncover them or evade them easier.

btw
friendica has also a positive server list as restriction too, that's most likely one of the features to have in mind also.
@Kristian@Hypolite Petovan@VegOS

It's always about the money.

Sad, but true.

People aren't making these botnets for no reason other than the lolz - OK maybe some are. What the majority of them are doing is they are attempting to convert attention into money, by cornering the market.

You don't know who they are. With a newspaper you do know who they are. That's the difference.
Natürlich ist Manipulation mithilfe von Bots (künstlich eingerichten Accounts) und KI auch hier nicht ausgeschlossen, je mehr das Fediversum an Bedeutung gewinnt. Aber die Manipulation von Timelines wird ja bislang von den Protagonisten des Fediversum ausgeschlossen, entsprechende Algorithmen, die Beiträge je nach Inhalt mehr oder weniger sichtbar machen, gäbe es nicht. In diesem Beitrag wird allerdings das Gegenteil behauptet.
@MrGR Welche Lösungsansätze gibt es?

Das Blocken von Instanzen ist ein schlechtes Mittel. Das Blocken und/oder Stummschalten einzelner Accounts wird schnell zur Mammutaufgabe bei steigenden Nutzerzahlen, so handhabe ich das aber derzeit...
danke für deine Ausführungen! 👍
@AGVEiz das glaube ich so nicht, dass botnetze das Fediversum kapern. Klingt für mich wie eine Verschwörungstheorie, dass dies sogar gefährlicher als bei zentralen proprietären Sozialen Netzwerken sei.
du beschreibst andere Probleme, die es bei dezentralen Netzwerken gibt. Da stimme ich dir absolut zu! Ein Schwachpunkt ist die Moderation, die von Instanz und Instanz sehr unterschiedlich sein kann und dazu führt, dass man Inhalte nicht stehen kann, die man vielleicht gerne sehen würde, aber nicht sehen kann, weil komplette Instanzen oder einzelne Accounts ausgesperrt werden.
Es kann auch passieren, dass man selber gesperrt wird, weil der Moderator anderer Meinung als man selber ist. Die mögliche Zensur, die keiner einheitlichen Grundlage folgt, ist für mich das größte Problem hier. Es hängt also von der Wahl der Instanz ab, wie viel man sehen kann. Auf der anderen Seite wird tabuisiert, dass über dezentralen Netzwerken durchaus unangemessene Inhalte (Nazi, Gewalt, Hardcore Poro, Reichsbürger etc) geteilt werden.
Das ist dann eben nur einen Klick weiter, auf einer ausgesperrten Instanz. Peertube wimmelt geradezu davon. Das ist ein anderes Problem, als Weyand beschrieb. Natürlich hat er in gewisser Weise sogar Recht, dass es auch Accounts geben könnte, die hier mit künstlicher Intelligenz betrieben werden. Aber dass die das Fediversum kapern, halte ich für eine Verschwörungstheorie.
Letztendlich liegt es in der Verantwortung eines jeden Einzelnen, kritisch zu überprüfen, ob die Inhalte hier wahr sind. Aber das gilt grundsätzlich für alle Inhalte im Internet.
@Georg aus Bakum Ja, mindestens diesen Punkt sehe ich eben auch. Es wird darauf hinauslaufen, kritisch zu bewerten, was man liest, und das wird umso schwieriger, je "besser" eventuelle gefälschte Meldungen oder Inhalte sind - sowohl des "Formalen" wegen (weil es mit ChatGPT und Freunden viel leichter ist, "plausibel" aussehende Texte und Inhalte zu erzeugen), aber auch der Komplexität wegen (weil ich viele Behauptungen, Theorien, Thesen, die so durch die Welt wuseln, als Normalsterblicher ohne Expertise auf diesem speziellen Gebiet immer nur bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt werde nachprüfen können). Das sehe ich generell als nix, was Technik irgenwie lösen oder verbessern könnte.
Richtig! Aber dieses Phänomen ist kein spezielles Problem dezentraler Netzwerke sondern ein grundsätzliches Problem jedes Netzwerks, also des kompletten Internets.
@Georg aus Bakum Ja, klar sind das verschiedene Probleme.🙂 Mir ging es eben auch nur um den Punkt: Ich kann bei Vergleichen zwischen zentralen und dezentralen Systemen (oder allgemein bei technischen Lösungen, die verschiedenen Paradigmen folgen) ein "besser" oder "schlechter" selten absolut bestimmen, sondern meistens nur in bezug auf bestimmte Anforderungen und Erwartungshaltungen, mit denen ich 'ran gehe, und die Probleme, die ich lösen möchte. Dort wird es vermutlich auch immer Weiterentwicklung geben und brauchen.
da sind wir absolut einer Meinung! Ich sehe hier einige Schwachpunkte. Es gibt ja auch durchaus Gründe für den einen oder anderen, lieber Insta oder Twitter zu benutzen als friendica, pleroma oder mastodon. Es hängt hier vom Goodwill einzelner Personen ab, was geduldet wird, oder nicht. Bei Twitter und Facebook sind es wahrscheinlich Algorithmen, die Inhalte sperren. Es kann dir hier passieren, dass du der Person unsympathisch bist, die hier moderiert.
@Georg aus Bakum
https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1863-bef6-727e-28a384011484

Können Sie auf diesen Beitrag antworten? Ich kann nicht sagen, ob dies ein Bot-generierter Beitrag ist oder nicht.
Lieber Petr Weyand, ich bin kein Bot. Das sollte Antwort genug sein. @peter_weyand
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
@Georg aus Bakum

Du hast nicht auf meine Frage geantwortet, sondern auf deine Behauptung "Ich bin kein Bot". Ich habe keine Möglichkeit, dies zu wissen, und Sie haben keine Möglichkeit, dies zu bestätigen. Währenddessen zurück auf dem Mutterschiff...


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361651
https://blog.elevenlabs.io/enter-the-new-year-with-a-bang/
das mag sein, aber das kann dir überall im Internet passieren, ist also kein spezielles Problem föderaler Netzwerke.
@Peter Weyand (Back to English for that): How _could_ you ever know without being in touch personally? What kind of proof would be sufficient for you here? And maybe worst: To make sense, this would have to be mutual - I can't know whether or not you're a bot, either.
@Georg aus Bakum
@Peter Weyand@Kristian

> The Activity Pub algorithm enables this by its' design.

As much as anything else that creates something out of nothing.

Sry but you end up talking nonsense, truth as such never has existed except of in terms of cultural interpretation demanding something to be absolutely true and imposing that supposed truth upon others.

A decentralized setup in any case gives you the chance to discover "the brick wall at the back of the theater".
Centralized setups even deny you that certainty or chance.

---

and yes, I'm a bot too.