this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
28 points (75.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

32345 readers
872 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
vatlark@lemmy.world
forkball@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
SuperEars@lemmy.world
28
Lemmy has an algorithm (midwest.social)
submitted 1 day ago by blackberry@midwest.social to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

it's just us, some bots, real world events, and random latency between instances as they federate

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 0 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Commercial website feed shaping algorithm:

  • Promoter feeds you what you want (to addict you), not what you need (to improve your life), manipulating you to make money for advertisers. You may be allowed to follow things.
  • Filter omits what is banned or shadowbanned by the platform owner, manipulating you politically. You may be allowed to mute or block things.
    '

They decide what you think about and don't know.

Lemmy feed shaper:

  • Fuzzy promoter: You choose one from a handful of simple open source ranking algorithms (which can be fooled by bot activity)
    https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html
    Unfortunately the default ranking promotes new content only, so older valuable content is forgotten.
  • Strict promoter: You follow what you want (tediously one by one - there are no associations between similars)
    This too lets older content be forgotten - you have to go and dig up your followeds' content published before following.
  • Filter: You block what you avoid (instances, communities, users), but topics leak between communities (but some apps support keyword muting, which doesn't work on pictures of text)
    '

Fediverse feed shaper lacks a defined topic hierarchy for accurate content tagging (of instances, communities, posts, replies, users) by users, preferably with web of trust between taggers.

Quora had a precise topic taxonomy until 2023 or so - my feed was excellent (except for some spam, because no web of trust). Then the remaining co-founder enshittified it, filling my feed with viral click-hits.