News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Feeds Considered Harmful.

Re:Feeds Considered Harmful by rektide on Friday February 12, 2021 @06:18PM (#26119722)
> A feed is a set of algorithmically generated content provided to the user without explicit input.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh no? Wrong & harmful, out of the gate. Feeds derive from "RSS Feed", which are non algorithmically generated: they are each blog's, person's or site's semi-realtime "feed" of their individual content. They are not customized algorithmic content. Web feeds[1] are feeds of web sites.

There's some ok ideas in this article, but the very beginning is a hard-stop "no", wrong, incorrect. It uses an incorrect definition that dooms an idea (feeds) much older than what the article is scolding.

Feeds are wonderful things that allow users & their user agents to create views however the user wants. What the author is talking about is something different. Polluting the idea of the feed by associating it with this Big Tech walled-garden "personal feed" or what-not does injury to the remedy, hurts the chances of real actual & good feeds being able to counter-act the social-network-monopoly "feed"/ween that big tech has us on. This article is harmful.

If you want to talk about the consumer point of view, of someone consuming feeds, a bunch of RSS feeds when combined together forms a "river"[2]. That, too, is non-algorithmic, is an in-temporal-order view of all the feeds.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed

[2] https://github.com/scripting/river5

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Feeds Considered Harmful by luplex on Friday February 12, 2021 @06:42PM (#26119935)
"feed", as used colloquially definitely refers to what OP means. So, by giving a definition OP makes clear which meaning we're talking about.

Let's talk about the concepts instead!

The main problem is that users don't have control over their feeds anymore. Which business models could change that?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Feeds Considered Harmful by rektide on Friday February 12, 2021 @07:30PM (#26120309)
The problem with feeds is that feeds are not feeds. If instead of feeds we had feeds, users could apply their own algorithmic agents to help them navigate the feeds they subscribe to.

It's an aggregation/vertical control problem. Because big communicative-capitalism commands the means of content creation, content discovery, & content browsing, all mixed together under the vague meaningless "feed" idea, we cant begin to imagine alternatives. If we separate out the content feed from the consuming agent, decouple these systems, we can start to think of different, more pro-user, healthier ways we might approach the feeds we subscribe to. Having everything totalized under one monopoly prevents innovation & exploration of the problem space.

It's important to have the ideas separated out: different channels of information are available to us (a "feed" in the classical/accurate sense). The different approaches to going through the subscribed channels ("feeds" in aggregated/consumed/this-article's sense) is where opportunity lies to find a healthy relationship between ignorance & harmful information-addiction. Currently we have no say in that relationship, other than withdrawl.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Feeds Considered Harmful by myWindoonn on Friday February 12, 2021 @10:22PM (#26121122)
From this framing, though, there's only a few reasonably moral possibilities. Like, surely the system of "feeds" as described by the author is not good and should be destroyed, right? The only way for users to have control over "feeds" is for them to not get their content from businesses at all.
[ Parent | on HN ]