bashrc@lemmy.mltoFediverse@lemmy.ml•Much better engagement on the fediverse than non-fedi
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3 years agoThis is true, but it’s not the quantity of engagement that matters, it’s the quality. Also the fediverse isn’t necessarily intrinsically better than a hellish corporate site, but it’s operated more democratically which tends (not always) to lead to better quality overall.
As long as they’re transparent and under user control then timeline algorithms might be ok. However, it would start to become problematic if instance admins could control the timelines of users, and it might become tempting for them to do so for monetization reasons.
Even under user control there would be a temptation for some people to try to SEO against the known algorithms, so that their posts appear preferentially in some people’s timelines, leading to the same set of problems that BigTech has.