Nostr Web Client

all nostr clients use algorithms

most just choose the algorithm of sorting messages in timestamp order

this is the most neutral algorithm, it’s attractive ideologically

it’s a stark contrast to the corporate-controlled engagement algorithms we’re accustomed to on the rest of the web. It feels like a breath of fresh air. it makes nostr feel peaceful

but it also makes it hard to find areas of activity and energy which might match my interests. what happened while I was gone? what do I not know about yet, but might I find interesting?

if an algorithm is designed to attempt to bait me into anger/rage for the purposes of serving me an ad, then this is an algorithm I would like the power to opt out of. It’s designed to serve me an ad, not to inform me

I want to choose algorithms that serve my interest to learn from people I trust (e.g. show me the notes from people I don’t follow, but who are most zapped by people I have zapped; surface notes that are replies to notes I may have seen and zapped but which are gaining a lot of zaps/replies themselves)

we can create algorithms that serve the needs of users and not the needs of corporations. They can be transparent (how do they work?) and pluggable (add/remove which algorithms you see fit). This is a different approach with different incentives from any existing algorithms in social media. “Show me the incentives I’ll show you the outcome.” We’ve never seen the outcome with this set of incentives.

I want a nostr that’s more alive and points me towards hubs of energy/activity, but is structured in service of me

fiatjaf 1y ago

Maybe we should keep basic feeds sorted by timestamp, and have algorithms as opt-in optionals that people have to click to go to every now and then? Like different tabs in the UI.

Once you make one algorithm the default way of browsing it's hard to not imagine things going bad.

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Discussion

David King 1y ago

I would suggest prioritizing user-choice as the north star when thinking this through. A default sort by timestamp could be good for many cases.

I could imagine different tabs in a UI being good ways to navigate different algorithms, but there are probably lots of alternatives creative developers could come up with which solve different problems for different kinds of apps. nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg, for example, chooses the UI of a filter icon in the upper right to select different algos. I could imagine a subreddit/stackernews-like view of the links being discussed/zapped in my nearby network recently. It would make it a lot easier for me to “catch up” if I’ve been away for a day. I haven’t seen a good example of an interface like this being explored yet with nostr.

I’m not convinced that letting people choose an algorithm as their default way of browsing has to go bad. I would want to know more about the following: “what are the goals of the algorithm?”, “can the user evaluate the purpose simply?”, “is the user empowered to change the default algorithm if they don’t find it’s serving their needs?”.

I just think the goal should be that the algorithm is in service of the user’s needs and not just attempting to generate incremental page views to serve more ads (like a corp algo is usually designed to do). Having algos with very different goals than we’ve seen before could help us discover a way where things go very right.