RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]

I mean that shit is legitimately funny. Personally, I don’t care that much that these people are using the current fad* to (potentially) destroy the business model Adobe popularized. The real questions are this:

• Is this project even maintainable?
• will a community of maintainers even exist long term?

Is Tumblr good? I feel like the thing I used to use the internet for doesn’t really exist anymore, that being, fallowing artists who post their art. In the early 2000s I remember being on a webforum where that was the whole deal, just artists posting shit, and I if I remember right, some people came out of that forum and went on to do cool stuff professionally. I don’t remember what it was called now… but they would have competitions and the like. I remember it being really fun. My impression is that maybe Tumblr has that vibe, but I have no idea where that impression came from.

Sure, people should just log off. Honestly though, my real problem is that chronological is also just an algorithmic feed. You’ve just decided that the algorithm that drives the feed is one that takes all posts and sorts them in decending or assending chronological order. I’m sure for all the posturing by the US Feds here, there is probably enough gray area in the law that allows them to still deliver you some kind of currated feed with residual harmful effects. Since “algorithmic feed” is not a narrow enough term to identify exactly what is problematic about the current implementation, it means that the law will be vague enough to bypass. Or to argue the very nature of what is “algorithmic” in a way that makes the whole law useless.

Ultimately, the issue is the inputs to whatever algorithm is being built, not the algorithm itself. If the law stipulated that users must be allowed to opt into a curated feed where only the posts timestamps were considered when ranking them, then that really locks people into a specific design: chronological. If a law were written that said it would be illegal under massive financial penalties to use a person’s viewing history, duration of session, time spent watching individual content, likes, demographics, and comment activity when ranking the content for their feeds, then that also really narrows down the kinds of algorithms that can be implemented.

Not a defense of “Algorithmic Feeds” but imagine trying to use the TikTok “for you” page in chronological order.