Ideas, discussions and prototypes for social feed algorithms that give the users what they are interested in but also sparks new ideas.
This project intends to solve the issues of common newsfeed-algorithms using some new approaches.
Social networks are a great way to express, learn and teach or just hang out. But not everyone is using a network the same way, some are looking for information, some for connections and others just watch funny cat videos all day long.
So how could an algorithm look that counters these inherent issues? What formula could be smart enough to brighten any users view if they just want to?
No one can checkout 100+ Virtual Friends across networks each and every day and you'll surely miss something great in between!
In common networks you built out your bubble over time and that's it, most people will never see anything outside their own bubble because it's simply to much content.
We all know that moment, you talk with a friend about an article you've read online and you can't remember that important piece of information then on your hunt to look it up you find yourself in a wild google search session.
There is at current no relation between content, you've got your post on network x and it's comments, maybe some likes for dopamine.
We all at least heard of someone beeing hacked sending messages around that look like they've been sent by a fellow. People commonly trust their peers on messages if they're privat or public.
okay let's do it one by one.
missing out on fellows
one way we could solve this would be to give boosters into users hands. Think of it like mana in some rpg game as a resource that you can spent to "boost" content. A portion is consumed when used and it fills up again over time or by certain actions.
- the main feed
- suggestions for topics
- suggestions for peers
the main feed itself can be sorted and changed using the algorithm building the feed.
Throwing in a booster for each user, the issue would remain because there's 200 peers that boosted their posts.
A few considerations to fight this:
- highlight important information and remove topic suggestions
- while scrolling through a piece of content (or even scrolling newsfeed) change highlighted "suggestions" so they rotate when the user has not reacted to it after 3 times seeing it
- peers are the blood of social networks, users however should decide by content if they want to follow or not
TODO: how could that post boosting work?
self-censoring
Users tend to self-censor. This usually happens during the onboarding process of social networks these days. The user is presented with several topics/interests to pick from, they should follow some people and once they have a few they can get started.
This is good and bad at the same time and it's also a common chicken-egg problem since you don't want to guess what the User may likes and with a bit of input you can feed some algo to get content suggested by Graph or alike.
But now our User is stuck in an artificial bubble he does not even notice.
How to get out? Stairs! Wait what? Yes you heard right, built some stairs or a lift! Okay enough jokes. Have you ever thought what facebook would look like without notifications (or let's call them distractions for that part)?
So to burst the bubble we want to add something like this:
needle in a haystack
have related links and content at hand not somewhere on page 3854. "Follow the white rabbit principle". However the Network should not automagically link content and only do what it's job is, link the content by Topic. All other connections should be added by users.
So as an example: User A posted some content and User B wants to complement it with a link to another Post or even some external information (wiki, youtube video or something).
In the old we embedded the content and done. However these embeds get lost in a wall of paginated comments and maybe lost forever. Instead we decouple comments, discussion and information.
idea: remember these old a-z navigations? let's mix that up with a date or date range because a letter is easier to remember than a clickbait title might be.
COMMENT
first: what is a comment? It's a thought one has on a specific topic right now. So a comment is very neutral when it comes to that something like "hey cool", "wow that looks great" or similar. BUT this is not useful for a discussions or conversations.
In fact any like (no matter which emoji you pick) on facebook is a comment as well, an expression of a quick thought or mood. To form knowledge however we need to go deeper.
DISCUSSION
another tab below some content. A discussion works much like the word says and as you know it from the real world sitting in a room with 3 friends having a chat on how we can protect nature and have a safe and healthy environment for EVERYONE.
For a discussion to happen we need arguments and not statements (like comments). An argument has some value in it so there's a minimal count of words to argue properly. Each argument can be questioned by others and it can be flagged as pro or contra argument by the author. Questioning an argument of another user requires a minimal Wordcount as well as some VP (Voting Power).
INFORMATION
an information can be anything from a link embed, to a video, some text, a list or anything else that enriches the content with more information.
Information can be only added by others, not by the contents author. All information has to receive at least x upvotes for beeing properly researched and valid before it will be displayed in public.
lose couples can still be friends
how do we relate content? there's no post types, only content. How can we forge knowledge instead of wasting time scrolling some endless wall of maybe-bullshit content?
Topics! We don't need fanpages when we can have topics. So see a Topic as a page where users collaborate on in different ways. A Topic is for example "Society & Social" and "Environment & Nature". Any users content posted with that topic selected will also show up on that "page".
What about Tags? No, we don't need them. They make things worse because they create more bubbles and we want to have less of them. However you can mention content @SuperLongPostTitleStillGoodToReadThanksToCamelCase in addition to users.
What happens when someone mentions content? The content will be related to each other ofcourse! It will appear under the same topic, clicking the mention will take the user to the topic main page with the mentioned piece of content which in turn contains more useful information on that topic.
trust the sender but not the message the internet is full of fakenews and false messages which intend no good to the readers.
however instead of deleting fakenews we could take the approach to clearly flag them by crowd. This will enable users to hook them up again anytime among all the proof related to it so they can send it to others. Away from single source of truth to crowd verified information.