Re:twitter/the-algorithm
by captainmuon on Monday April 25, 2022 @05:28PM
(#31160891)
Well sure there is "ORDER BY" something, and there are batch jobs to calculate this something from different variables. Maybe it is partially a ML black box, but I'm pretty sure they are not flying completely blind. There's got to be an internal Wiki or some PPTs where they list what goes into the mix. Number of likes, retweets. Attached media, hashtags, trending or not. Do they do sentiment analysis and use positivity as a factor? Do they do PageRank so that likes from important people have more weight? Are there manual debuffs for certain topics? Are certain posts removed or added in a second pass? These are all answerable questions in principle.
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Re:twitter/the-algorithm
by jvanderbot on Monday April 25, 2022 @05:41PM
(#31161046)
Maybe not. It could all be event-driven, distributed, and just pulling off various prioritized queues.
Re:twitter/the-algorithm
by stjohnswarts on Monday April 25, 2022 @06:58PM
(#31161910)
that's still an algorithm
Re:twitter/the-algorithm
by jvanderbot on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @04:41PM
(#31185517)
We'll, it's ok if you feel that way given this is entirely subjective, but I disagree based on experience.
I disagree b/c: That's a system. An algorithm is designed, a system will emerge from pieces. An algorithm can be defined, a system's behavior has to be characterized post-hoc. You can characterize a system, but only as a black/gray box. An algorithm has invariants and stateful steps, a system has nearly infinite state and nearly zero meaningful invariants.