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Establishing a new Fediquette
(lemmy.world)
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
It is in fact an algorithm because it's choosing what posts to put in front of you based on multiple criteria (time since it was posted, votes/number of comments/time since last comment). They are relatively transparent and well documented criteria, though.
However, it's not a personalized feed based on your interests and unsolicited data collection, which is what people sometimes mean when they say "the algorithm."
It's not just a personalized feed, it's also that the algorithms of commercial social media are created to keep you engaged for as long as possible, so you see more ads.
Turns out that people are more engaged with outrage than puppies, so the feed can easily become a super negative thing full of false information, which affects the person viewing and eventually the whole of society. E.g. I am certain that the fact that youtube's algorithm so easily takes you into the conspiracy territory has caused a lot of people to end up on the fringes of society, causing shit like storming of the Capitol.