[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a self hosted recommendation feed t...
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Show HN: I built a self hosted recommendation feed to escape
Google's algorithm
I created this chrome extension for myself where I track my own
behavior locally and recommend myself content from platforms I want
content from (youtube/twitter/quora/etc) in a feed. I made it
public just in case anyone else was interested. I would rather
have control over my own algorithm and own the data. Also, it gives
me flexibility. Turns out I do like these feeds just not when I
don't own it haha. Let me know what you think of my implementation?
Author : jawerty
Score : 179 points
Date : 2022-07-19 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| aliqot wrote:
| mt_ wrote:
| It's not just that Google is evil, but going after what the
| algorithm recommends is what is most dentrimental. It's like
| getting hooked on cyber cigarettes.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Is there a tool that automatically forwards every URL + HTML of
| the page you visit to a webhook so you could write an endpoint
| that would index everything?
|
| If not, I would love to see this add a "forward to webhook"
| option. I would be happy to write up a real backend that parsed
| the content and indexed it.
|
| Actually, there are lots of OS projects for this:
| https://github.com/quickwit-oss/tantivy,
| https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic,
| https://github.com/mosuka/phalanx,
| https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch, etc...
|
| I would think that with the thousands (tens of thousands?) of
| pages I would index just browsing each year it would be
| relativity easy to find ways to automatically expand the index to
| include links that appear multiple times in those pages or some
| other heuristic
| [deleted]
| jawerty wrote:
| That's really interesting. In general indexing with this is
| something I havent thought too much about. What would you like
| about a tool like this?
| quest88 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, I've been thinking about this too. But I've
| also mulling over whether spending my time looking at _any_
| endless algorithm suggestions is what I personally need. You
| know, happiness and meaning and all of that.
| suketk wrote:
| Exactly, algorithmic feeds as a whole are the problem.
|
| I wrote about this on my blog [0], but in a nutshell they slow
| you down, take you in unwanted directions and encourage
| consumption over action.
|
| [0] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I'm about to nitpick, so first I want to say, nice job. It's a
| cool project. Don't let me being a nitpicky curmudgeon discourage
| you in any way.
|
| Ok, so, my understanding is that self-hosting is running a web
| service for personal use. This isn't self-hosted. It's a Chrome
| extension. It's like saying that you're "self-hosting" Microsoft
| Word because you have a Word window open on your desktop. (Or,
| slightly more similar, you're "self-hosting" magit because you
| have emacs installed locally.)
| jyrkesh wrote:
| As someone who hangs out in /r/selfhosting a fair amount, I get
| what you mean. But I also see it used frequently in the
| vernacular to distinguish between a managed/hosted web service
| (which may simply be a web "application" as far as the user is
| concerned), and software you can run on your own machine. To
| extend your analogy, running Word locally is in some sense
| "selfhosted" as opposed to using Word Online in a browser.
| (Though I'd argue that this isn't a great example because of
| how much the Word desktop app increasingly uses cloud services
| in order to work.)
|
| IMO, selfhosting here was descriptive in that the Chrome
| extension is storing all data and generating all
| recommendations locally, without the use of a managed service
| that would presumably be storing all of my history in someone's
| cloud instance. (I'm sure you're a great person, OP, but I
| wouldn't want to give you my entire browser history.)
|
| Yes, it's shipped in the Chrome web store, so OP could
| theoretically ship different code than what's showing in the
| open-source repo, but you actually _can_ selfhost even
| "further" by building the extension yourself (even if
| installing unsigned extensions in Chrome is harder than ever, I
| think it's still possible, and certainly Edge still allows it
| via Developer Mode).
| jawerty wrote:
| Couldn't of said it better myself also another reason why
| it's open source always the option to take the code directly
| and load it into your chromium browser.
| upupandup wrote:
| The problem with Google enhancement tools is that I almost always
| end up uninstalling it and going back to Google for the
| algorithm. Yeah I don't like it but for example Startpage was
| problematic. For some reason if it thinks you are searching porn
| (you are not) it wont show you the results. Not only this, the
| results end up being quite slow and lot of things I took for
| granted are unavailable. Like I got used to just using the
| address bar as a calculator/currency/stock look up. I don't even
| land on the Google page, just do the calc or look up info in the
| address bar.
| jawerty wrote:
| Yea I've had this as well. I made a tool like this specifically
| for YouTube 2 years ago and almost gave up on it because I kept
| going back to the regular algorithm. Here I tried addressing
| that by pruning the algorithm more for discoverability across
| the web. Im exploring content I never would have found with the
| regular algorithm. But this is also why Im working to make it
| extensible so people can cater what they want to discover and
| not
| synergy20 wrote:
| "It tracks and stores your browsing habits (searches, clicks,
| content engagements, text input) locally" -- how is this
| technically possible, that a chrome extension can 'monitor' all
| my search/click/etc?
| Doubtme wrote:
| by giving it permission
| jawerty wrote:
| Yes you give the extension permission to store the data in the
| browser using `chrome.storage` API. Also, part of the reason
| why I open sourced it is so you could see the implementation in
| case of any privacy concerns.
| frozencell wrote:
| It is self hosted and open source right, you can look if there
| is no communication with a server.
| jawerty wrote:
| Here's a discord if you want to are interested in getting
| involved with the project or want to contact me directly :)
| https://discord.gg/C6sYF48f
| [deleted]
| akomtu wrote:
| How much work is it to get feed from others you've subscribed to?
| Crowd-sourced discovery of interesting stuff, basically.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Personally, I think the biggest problem with "the algorithm" is
| the fact that it is an algorithm. People often distinguish
| between things that they enjoy and things that they would
| recommend to others, but algorithms aren't easily able to make
| that distinction.
|
| However, all of what I just talked about is just a hypothesis and
| I'd be curious about how it works out for you and what traits it
| shares with other recommendation engines and what ends up being
| more unique. For example, does your algorithm just end up pushing
| for engagement (which also tends to push towards showing
| extremist content), or is it less likely to get caught up in
| rabbit holes?
| jawerty wrote:
| Thank you For the point. I've tried to mix up the sources with
| alternative media and there's a 33% of randomness (still with
| engagement but all engagement not just what you have frequency
| with) I could try seeing how to experiment with adding topics
| that are completely outside your engagement I think I would
| find that useful as well.
| rolisz wrote:
| Looks really cool! Is it hard to port a Chrome extension to
| Firefox?
| jawerty wrote:
| Thanks! For this implementation I don't think it would be too
| hard since I'm using pretty basic features I would have to
| rewrite some of the message handling. However, chromes new
| manifest v3 would make it harder.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Please do show HN once you have Firefox version. The idea
| looks very promising, but using Chrome is a show-stopper for
| me.
| jawerty wrote:
| I absolutely will!
| splitrocket wrote:
| Gab. Yikes.
|
| https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/gab-ceo-andrew-torba-broa...
| narrator wrote:
| Imagine being able to operate toggles in the program to not
| include news sources you disagree with. The horror of freedom!
| [deleted]
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Besides that...
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > BitChute is an alt-tech video hosting service launched by Ray
| Vahey in January 2017. It describes itself as offering freedom
| of expression, while the service is known for accommodating
| far-right individuals and conspiracy theorists, and for hosting
| hate speech.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Odysee is better anyway. I tried using Bitchute because I
| wanted an alternative to YouTube, but the formatting is
| trash, and politics is the only form of entertainment there.
| It is also very much a free speech platform, but I find that
| the community is much better. At least with Odysee you can
| get documentaries and other forms of entertainment besides
| politics
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Any website that believes in radical freedom of speech will
| have far-right, right-wing and left wing content. The
| question is, does it also have other content?
| [deleted]
| namecheapTA wrote:
| MoOmer wrote:
| Forgive me if I've missed something, but what's the connection
| here?
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's one of the 6 options for content sourcing, which seems
| like a massive over-representation if you are only going to
| have 6.
| capableweb wrote:
| Are people really rejecting a whole project because one of
| 6 options is Gab?
|
| Do you people not use yt-dlp (or youtube-dl) because some
| of the sources they support can have more "extreme" content
| as well?
|
| I'd understand it if the project was built by the same
| people who work at Gab, or meant for Gab, or something like
| that, so there really is an associated. But there is not,
| so why blame the project for it?
|
| For all we know, the author could be reading Gab because
| sometimes you're curious to see what all the extremists are
| up to.
| Grollicus wrote:
| yt-dlp supports a lot more than 6 sources (check out
| https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-
| dlp/tree/master/yt_dlp/extracto...) so I don't think
| that's a useful comparison
| omniglottal wrote:
| The matter under discussion revolves around a matter of
| quality, not quantity.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's about both actually.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Are people really rejecting a whole project because one
| of 6 options is Gab?
|
| Seems like you are drawing conclusions that I, at least,
| never said.
|
| > Do you people not use yt-dlp (or youtube-dl) because
| some of the sources they support can have more "extreme"
| content as well?
|
| I don't think this is at all a fair comparison, as a
| simple glance at the front page can see. I also
| specifically tied my comment to there being only 6
| options.
|
| > For all we know, the author could be reading Gab
| because sometimes you're curious to see what all the
| extremists are up to.
|
| Why would you want a recommendation feed for it then?
| Wouldn't you want to see it without the algorithmic
| distortion towards what you would prefer to see?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > Why would you want a recommendation feed for it then?
|
| Reading a site out of morbid curiosity doesn't mean you
| never want to follow a particular topic, and what is
| recommendation if not following topics without having to
| list them explicitly.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a good faith limb here, and
| postulate that OP may have added Gab, Odyssee, et al
| because they're not yet completely walled gardens, and
| it's easy to integrate with their APIs for discovery
| without hitting API limitations.
|
| If I was building something like this, I'd start with
| something I use a lot (like Youtube), even if it required
| screen scraping, and then I'd move on to everything that
| had a dead simple API without low limits.
|
| BUTTTT looking at the code, it would appear that they're
| screen scraping everything. But maybe it just so happened
| that the shape of Twitter's DOM is really really close to
| Gab's and it was super easy to add.
|
| Or maybe this is a totally trojan horse approach to
| getting HN users on Gab. Who knows? But at least there's
| an easy way to turn it off. Not going to stop me from
| trying the extension, at least. (And as someone who tries
| to expose themselves to content bubbles that I consider
| insanely off-base, whether for education or
| entertainment, maybe I'll leave it on to see what kind of
| insanity is going on over there.)
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > But there is not, so why blame the project for it?
|
| Because it shows a significant lapse in judgement.
|
| > the author could be reading Gab because sometimes
| you're curious to see what all the extremists are up to.
|
| Then they should say it. You can't assume good intentions
| when anyone willingly includes Gab because they'd be an
| incredibly rare outlier.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| > You can't assume good intentions
|
| Ouch, this really hits me. I've seen so many issues
| lately because of this belief.
|
| "Oh, but this one is justified!" they all say...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's also an essential rule if you're building anything
| that accepts user input.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Certainly, but there is a difference in application here.
|
| Viewing people as evil is different from guarding against
| evil input you might receive.
|
| I don't have to assume everyone is a murder just because
| I also have a home alarm system.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| If I'm pitching a product or open source item, I'm not
| linking it to Gab. I don't want the baggage associated
| with it to cast a shadow over what I've worked to
| accomplish. It's completely unrealistic to throw out some
| charitable and benign reason for folks to have that in
| their top X platforms.
| mmazing wrote:
| Further, if you come across a project that does utilize a
| far-X leaning platform, it's safe to say that the
| maintainer is a supporter of their message.
|
| If they are willing to publicly throw support (and
| jeopardize their user's opinion of them) at an extreme
| platform, what other explanation is there?
| danjoredd wrote:
| Agreed. This can be a helpful tool, even if one of the
| sources is kind of lame. Besides, since it is open source
| we can just erase that or add a different source.
| warbeforepeace wrote:
| I like https://techurls.com/ for my tech news. It aggregates most
| of the common techsites into a single place. They also have other
| versions for finance and a few other topics.
| danielcberman wrote:
| Installed the plugin and very intriguing MVP. Thank you for
| pulling this together. I have two questions/feature requests.
|
| - Have you thought about adding edit functionality to your
| content sourcing under feed settings to add or remove sites?
| Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and other sites come to mind.
|
| - Have you thought about adding an report export functionality of
| links recommended? Basically to help an individual understand why
| their copy of the algorithm is recommending specific items.
| jawerty wrote:
| Yes 100% i'm working on making it so you can add sources you
| want. Also going to most likely add the ones you mentioned as
| default sources. Also I didn't think about your 2nd point but I
| like it going to add to my todo list
| collegeburner wrote:
| this is kinda off topic but do anybody know about tiktoks
| recommendation algo? i've been working on a little algorithmic
| newsfeed project but wanna improve the recommendation system.
|
| im wondering if it's harder to get the same quality data as with
| short video, but still curious to know how they got
| recommendations that much better. is it just more/better data
| into the algo, like with rewatches etc tracked? or actual tech
| improvement?
|
| bc yt shorts and ig reels don't have the same recommendations
| even with about the same data.
| [deleted]
| jawerty wrote:
| I don't know what Tiktok does personally but I would guess
| there is something to do with comment engagements like most
| recommendation algorithms we use. From viewing to liking to
| commenting.
| O__________O wrote:
| While I completely get being in control of your feeds, from
| rolling your own to understanding how & why the feeds you
| subscribe to work -- also feel like it's just as important to be
| aware of significant topics and beliefs that are not in your
| feeds.
|
| Case in point, as another commenter pointed out -- it appears the
| OP feels GAB, commonly viewed as a far-right social media
| platform, should be listed as one of a handful of default
| sources.
|
| World needs more systems that actually reflect how the user fits
| into the world, allows people to understand differences and find
| shared beliefs -- not systems that create information bubbles,
| enable isolation, and increase the likelihood of extremists.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Doesn't something like 40% of Americans believe in literal
| creation? As in the earth is 10k years old or something like
| that?
|
| Then the question is what makes it far right: far from our
| point of view, or far from the normal point of view in the US?
|
| Because I strongly suspect that what we consider normal is not
| the normal and so what we might think of as far right is not
| that far from the center.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| GAB is a type of bubble, and definitely a (US politic) right-
| leaning discussion forum, but my ears perked up when you used
| the term "Far Right".
|
| Is there such thing as a moderate-right social media platform?
| Does far-right mean "not supported by a majority of right-
| leaning people", or does it mean "extreme from the perspective
| of an average left-leaning person"? I'm not going to either
| defend Gab or put it down, but even if you deconstruct your
| statement, it's the product of an information bubble. And it
| can have different meanings depending on what type of
| information bubble you live in.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| The front page is just posts making fun of the president
| (acceptable), and tweets from Donald Trump (a patently
| treasonous figure, by any sane means of logic and reporting
| including the report made by mueller, who's not a
| journalist), and Dinesh DSouza, a felon out and about only
| because of a pardon from above mentioned treacherer.
|
| I'm not American BTW. Just an external observer who's just
| flabbergasted how much a developed country can revolve into
| questioning of such obvious facts in the name of "both
| sides."
| mwint wrote:
| The "out and about only because of a pardon" bit is false.
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > In 2012, D'Souza contributed [...] Two years later,
| D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony
| charge [...] He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway
| house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation,
| and a $30,000 fine.[29][30] In 2018, D'Souza was issued a
| pardon by President Donald Trump.[31]
|
| Some simple math reveals the pardon came long after his
| "incarceration", and the sentence including probation would
| have been fully served by now (2012 + 2 + 5 < 2022).
| [deleted]
| leereeves wrote:
| > including the report made by mueller
|
| Where are you getting your information?
|
| _The report concludes that the investigation "did not
| establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or
| coordinated with the Russian government in its election
| interference activities"_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
| tomrod wrote:
| A better way to phrase that would be: "could not
| recommend prosecution of a sitting President and
| associate members for conspiring or coordinating with the
| Russian government in its election interference
| activities, but did lay out how prosecutors not under
| prosecutorial restrictions would do so in great detail."
| leereeves wrote:
| That's not what the report says; that's what you wish
| Mueller had written. But I think Mueller is capable of
| writing what he means.
|
| And since you brought up prosecutors, let me ask the
| obvious question: why have none of the investigations
| against Trump resulted in charges?
| nevereveragain wrote:
| > that's what you wish Mueller had written.
|
| Pot/kettle/black
|
| https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-
| investigati...
|
| - Special Counsel Mueller declined to exonerate President
| Trump and instead detailed multiple episodes in which he
| engaged in obstructive conduct
|
| - The investigation "identified numerous links between
| the Russian government and the Trump Campaign" and
| established that the Trump Campaign "showed interest in
| WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their
| potential to damage candidate Clinton"
|
| - Russia engaged in extensive attacks on the U.S.
| election system in 2016
|
| - The Special Counsel investigation uncovered extensive
| criminal activity
| leereeves wrote:
| > instead detailed multiple episodes in which he engaged
| in obstructive conduct
|
| Yes, obstructive conduct. Not collusion with the
| Russians.
|
| The very fact that Mueller detailed episodes of
| obstructive conduct and not episodes of collusion reveals
| how little evidence there is to support allegations of
| collusion.
|
| And as for the obstruction, remember that an FBI lawyer
| pled guilty to doctoring an email that was submitted as
| part of a FISA application used to surveil Trump campaign
| adviser Carter Page.[1] And Igor Danchenko, the primary
| researcher of the infamous Steele Dossier, is awaiting
| trial for lying to the FBI about the dossier's sources.
|
| So is it really a crime to "obstruct" an investigation
| that is based on lies? Such an investigation should be
| shut down.
|
| 1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-fbi-lawyer-kevin-
| clinesm...
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Assuming you're asking in good faith: In the US, platforms
| that do not feel the need to moderate calls to violence
| against Jewish people are generally considered "far-right".
|
| The site received extensive public scrutiny following the
| Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018. The
| perpetrator of the attack, Robert Gregory Bowers, had a
| history of making extreme, antisemitic postings on the
| platform, as well as messages indicating an immediate intent
| to cause harm before the shooting.
| dangus wrote:
| Yes, Gab is far-right, whether you judge it by its owners or
| its users.
|
| If we say that Gab isn't far-right, it's kind of like saying
| Grindr isn't just for gay men. That may _technically_ be
| true, but in practice it 's not.
|
| Also, judging Gab by its ownership, if you look at the
| Wikipedia page for Gab, and go to the Antisemitism section,
| Gab has made multiple antisemitic statements officially.
| Straight from the company. The owners of the site are far-
| right.
|
| Gab only exists because far-right people get banned on other
| platforms for breaking hate speech rules.
|
| The far-left as a group barely exists compared to the size of
| the far-right. Far-left would be advocating for violence to
| dismantle the neoliberal system, these would be your
| anarchist-types.
|
| In real life, I've never met anyone on the "far-left" when
| you describe it this way, while I've met plenty of openly
| racist and LGBT-phobic Republicans who are pro-violence: the
| kind of people who want to, I dunno, be a part of a coup and
| enter the Capitol building? The kind of people who cheer when
| Donald Trump tells police to rough up the suspects a little
| more.
|
| What Republicans call "far-left" is just progressive center-
| left people nonviolently advocating for equality. They don't
| get banned from the generally non-political platforms because
| their speech isn't hateful and it isn't violent.
| Facebook/Twitter/TikTok happily take their money and call it
| a day, they don't care about politics beyond the money those
| politics bring in.
|
| Platforms like Parler are much more blatant than Gab about
| banning liberals who join simply for existing. I guess you
| could say that Gab stays true to its policy against
| censorship, but that policy is there to benefit the far-right
| over anybody else, and I think that's an important detail.
|
| And, by the way, if you head over to Gab's homepage it's all
| right-wing political stuff. None of the suggested homepage
| topics are non-political. It isn't teenagers dancing or funny
| skits or cat videos like TikTok. I think that's evidence
| showing that Gab isn't just some impartial algorithm. It's
| curated.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| (I should start by saying that I don't identify with the
| far left or the far right: even if my ideas are outside the
| mainstream, I have a hard time aligning myself strongly
| with anyone that identifies with the major "radical" camps)
|
| First, I 100% agree with you that what the mainstream right
| categorizes as the "far left" is really anyone "center
| left" that they disagree with (or even slightly right, as
| many mainstream neoliberal Democrats fall on the "political
| compass" (though take that with a grain of salt)).
|
| However, there are absolutely folks on the far left
| advocating for violence as a means to their goals. I see
| more of them online, obviously, than in real life (though I
| do know folks who do black bloc, destroy property, etc.),
| but it's really hard to know to what extent that's an
| artifact of their tactical differences with the far right.
| Many on the far left (including anarchists, out-and-out
| communists or AnComs, and even some DSA types) embrace
| anonymity, decentralization, and _not_ documenting their
| efforts as core tenets of achieving their goals.
|
| On the other hand, the far right's strategy is to beat
| their chest and embrace highly visible patriotic pride,
| which they then use to create associations between say, the
| flag, and their more extreme political beliefs. Then, they
| dog whistle and gaslight the other side about the full
| extent of their own and their opposition's goals as they
| move the goalposts towards the right to distort the
| mainstream view of the center.
|
| Theoretical unknown numbers aside, I believe the latter
| tactical posture has been significantly more successful in
| the far right achieving their goals in the political
| mainstream. I also believe the far left's tactics have hurt
| them significantly in being accepted by the mainstream (and
| in talking to many of them privately, they often see this
| as a point of pride, that they're unwilling to compromise
| with the "normie" Democrats who e.g. sold them out throwing
| Bernie under the bus during Clinton's ascent to
| nomination). E.g. even as a small minority of the
| overwhelmingly peaceful BLM protests in 2020, just a few
| guys in black bloc throwing molotovs enabled the mainstream
| and far right to immediately write BLM off as a violent,
| communist, antifa movement that was a threat to democracy,
| capitalism, and the American way of life. So why throw them
| at all? What good did that do? (And could it have ever been
| enough to offset the negative PR?)
|
| Even the slogan that many on the mainstream left embraced--
| defund the police--was a terrible messaging position that
| AFAICT almost always required immediate clarification of
| why that didn't mean "we want to abolish the police, all
| criminal statutes, and let society run wild doing whatever
| they want". I think it would've been a lot harder for the
| right to attack them if they'd have gone with something
| like "fund community outreach [for POC and mental health]".
| And then they could have even found their $$$ in the police
| budget later (a trick Republicans use all the time). Hell,
| they might have even found alignment with Republicans in
| the wake of mass shootings to actually address mental
| health on a national scale (something I'd argue is critical
| to our long-term well being as a country, regardless of
| your stance on their relation to mass shootings).
|
| ANYWAY, I got a bit off the rails there, but far left
| filter bubbles--with calls for violence, personal attacks,
| doxxing, and all the rest of it--absolutely exist on
| Twitter and Reddit (among other places, I'm sure). In
| particular, just pop over to subs like /r/GenZedong,
| /r/COMPLETEANARCHY, /r/Anarchism, /r/AnarchismZ, /r/196,
| /r/2624, /r/JusticeReturned, or many many others. (I'd also
| argue that these transgressions are largely tolerated on
| those platforms in a way that the far-right is not, leading
| to an increase in demand for an increasingly fractured of
| ecosystem of "alternative" platforms where extreme ideas
| evolve and grow, rather than being diminished and ridiculed
| in the light. But that's a debate for another time.)
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't disagree about Gab being far-right, but
| antisemitism is an equal-opportunity form of xenophobia.
| There's both left-wing and right-wing antisemitism.
|
| In the US, the right wing is often bound up with co-opting
| Jews via the term "Judeo-Christian" and supporting Israel,
| even it its worst abuses of the Palestinians. They often
| call-out left-wing antisemitism, which often tries to take
| the form of "anti-Zionism" (but whose information is often
| traced to antisemitic channels).
|
| So antisemitism doesn't by itself demonstrate far-right
| leanings -- even though the far right is also full of
| literal Nazis and those who call them "very fine people".
| But Gab is certainly happy to play host to those, too.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >Is there such thing as a moderate-right social media
| platform?
|
| I mean the knee jerk response for me is Facebook, though I'd
| say it's solidly right overall and not moderate-right.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Facebook, like reddit, is a group of groups. /r/ukraine is
| very, very different from /r/russia and /r/news has nearly
| nothing to do with /r/conservative.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Then why is /r/politics such a left echo chamber?
| lupire wrote:
| danpalmer wrote:
| This is the one that came to mind for me too. In North
| America and Europe, Facebook skews older, and older people
| tend to be relatively moderate-right.
|
| Gab is certainly "far right", but that doesn't mean those
| views are uncommon. Centrist viewpoints have shrunk,
| pulling what was previously considered "far" viewpoints
| into the mainstream. I think it's undeniable that a website
| where many (most?) of the userbase would advocate against
| the peaceful transition of power in the US should be
| labelled "far right".
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| > Gab is certainly "far right", but that doesn't mean
| those views are uncommon.
|
| I don't think anyone said those views were uncommon, just
| that they were far right.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Facebook is a bunch of bubbles. If yours skews right that
| says more about your friends and acquaintances than it does
| about Facebook in general.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I think you'll find this experiment really interesting:
| https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en
| [deleted]
| nerdponx wrote:
| Moderates tend not to have their own platforms.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| The one we are on right now feels pretty moderate to me.
| bell-cot wrote:
| HN is _extremely_ pro-text (excellent, in my book), and
| pro-tech (not too bad, in limited doses). And pro-
| Science, which a depressing fraction of Americans might
| regard as extremely bad.
|
| ...and saying that HN is "our own" - vs. "one modest
| Province in our Benevolent Overlord Paul's Empire" - is a
| bit of an issue.
| abraae wrote:
| This comment inadvertantly encapsulates nearly all that
| is wrong with the world today, and from which much evil
| flows.
|
| "Pro-science" is not a position, and being anti-science
| means being anti-humanity.
| gameman144 wrote:
| I'd argue that "pro-science" is absolutely a position.
| People holding this position might argue that science
| isn't the best way to learn information about the world
| (e.g. divine revelation or intuitionism might be
| preferred), or that the application of science to find
| solutions to our problems leads to bad outcomes (e.g.
| Luddites or Mennonite/Amish communities).
|
| Whether we _agree_ with that position or not is a whole
| different beast, but it absolutely is a real and tenable
| position that people can and do hold.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I'd argue that "pro-science" is absolutely a position.
| People holding this position might argue that science
| isn't the best way to learn information about the world
| (e.g. divine revelation or intuitionism might be
| preferred), or that the application of science to find
| solutions to our problems leads to bad outcomes (e.g.
| Luddites or Mennonite/Amish communities).
|
| Wait, this is worded incorrectly right? The pro-science
| position would be the one claiming that science is the
| best (or at least one good) way to learn information
| about the world right? I'd agree in that case that a
| person can be pro-science.
| toofy wrote:
| * i'm fully aware that my comment is about to tread into
| the all-too-common insufferable pedantic trope that
| forums have devolved into. soooo, apologies for the
| obnoxious pedantry ahead of time. *
|
| pro-science also very often veers into anti-humanity as
| well. we like to pride ourselves that we're keenly aware
| of how many unanswered questions we have and the
| _current_ limits of science and technology -- yet it
| seems increasingly common that when we're chasing our
| love for science and technology, more and more we forget
| how these very topics can strip humanity from a given
| situation or conversation.
|
| do i think religion is the answer when society's pro-
| science stance leads to anti-human situations?
| absofuckinlutely not. (particularly organized religions.
| i'd be more open to religions if people could practice it
| as a personal thing. but sadly the religious always seem
| to want to inflict their personal beliefs on others.) the
| answer probably lies more in the region where the science
| minded get a firmer understanding that the human
| condition requires us to understand humanity more, not
| solely science. understanding other humans is a subject
| in which many of us are kinda lacking. i truly believe
| they were wise to require a certain number of humanities
| courses in university. honestly, seeing how terribly many
| of us in science fields struggle with understanding other
| humans, we could probably use a few more in the
| requirements.
|
| in an attempt to tie this rant onto the topic: i've
| maintained for years that even in the best of our current
| iterations, algorithms are just plain terrible when
| compared to human curation. billions and billions spent
| and years and years later, still terrible.
|
| i'm sure some will argue but i strongly believe this is
| true for just about everything, from news algorithms,
| music, movies, literature, art, shopping etc... etc...
| the best recommendations are still coming from other
| humans, by a significant amount.
| delusional wrote:
| You can say that here, because we're all in a space where
| science is unquestioned, but try and say that to my mom
| over the Christmas table and you won't get very far in
| that conversation.
| someguydave wrote:
| > we're all in a space where science is unquestioned
|
| Please consider the contradiction in this quote
| delusional wrote:
| That was intentional.
|
| From the other comment I figured I should probably point
| that out clearly.
| autoexec wrote:
| I have a lot of concerns and issues with science as it's
| often practiced today, but I'd still consider myself pro-
| science. I certainty wouldn't say I accept science
| without question and the very idea of that seems absurd.
| Science isn't some religion that doesn't allow for
| questioning. Science is all about questioning.
| delusional wrote:
| It's not that the individuals don't question science. I,
| just like you, also question science both in form and
| substance. It's that this particular venue doesn't.
| Hackernews is not the space for discussing if science is
| even really helpful or good. It's not the space to have
| lengthy debates about the meaning of science and the
| price of progress. Hackernews is an optimistic
| entrepreneur/technology forum, we assume (by and large)
| that entrepreneurship and technological advancement is
| good.
|
| What I'm trying to say is that all spaces are "echo
| chambers" in that they all implicitly have their own tone
| and angle that all the participants agree to uphold as
| they join. You don't discuss politics at the dinner table
| after all.
| amatecha wrote:
| It is moderate, but it's not some exclusionary, niche
| thing like a "far-right social platform" is. HN is
| generally a broadly-welcoming community that attempts to
| elicit good-faith, well-reasoned discussion. Its actual
| purpose is one of openness and community rather than,
| simply put, "us vs. them" worldviews.
| Kye wrote:
| HN would have continued its slide from idealistic
| libertarianism to extreme right with the rest of US
| politics without dang occasionally swatting people down
| for using it for ideological battle. It's only moderate
| because of active effort on the part of the mod and
| people who bring things out of sync with the guidelines
| to his attention.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's interesting that it's only moderate because it's a
| benevolent but absolute autocracy.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Most people understand that "far-right" in this context means
| that it allows white supremacists and nazis to use its
| platform. It's a far right platform in the same sense that
| any bar that doesn't kick out nazis on site becomes a nazi
| bar, or a bar where cops feel comfortable becomes a cop bar.
| Regardless of creator intention a single customer base can
| shift the entire purpose of a product.
|
| As for what a moderate-right platform would be, I'd actually
| point right here at hackernews. It allows discussion around
| more right-leaning topics, but draws a clear line at outright
| hate. There's progressives too (hi) but you'll find no
| shortage of right leaning people either (like OP apparently).
| The sheer number of libertarians here alone is enough to move
| the needle right of center.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| How are libertarians "right-wing"? Some libertarians could
| be described as extreme "left-wing" depending on being
| social or economic libertarians. I think it is better to
| not have such a simple dichotomy of "left" vs "right".
| People have political beliefs, those beliefs can be very
| complex, and the consistency of the beliefs depends largely
| on the perspective of the person. Having a simple "two
| sides" lined up against each other is overly simplistic and
| has lead to people being shoehorned into "us vs them" and
| feeling pressured to adopt the beliefs of the group they
| are closest to, which results in less diversity of
| political beliefs. I don't think even a circle of beliefs
| is enough, the degrees of freedom in political beliefs is
| enormous, which literally encompasses most of the things
| people believe about the world. It can't really be boiled
| down to a spectrum of two sides.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Libertarians are funny because most other ideologies can
| find some reason to view them in a bad light, but I think
| the reasons to view them as right wing is that they
| commonly have attitudes like, "regulations are bad,"
| "taxes are theft," "leave me and my guns alone," "fuck
| the poor" etc. They're often proponents of private roads,
| private schools, private emergency services, and so on.
| This all offends the left. And of course, they offend the
| right with their lack of interest in policing people's
| personal lives.
|
| I sort of consider myself a libertarian who sees the need
| for a social safety net, regulations, strong consumer
| protection, education, infrastructure, emergency
| services, and healthcare. You know, a democrat. :D
| autoexec wrote:
| There is often a lot of overlap between libertarians and
| the far right, including the racist faction of the right.
| A libertarian might say for example that a hospital,
| school, or restaurant should be allowed to operate as
| "whites only". I think the vast majority of people
| identifying as libertarians would fall farther on the
| right side of the spectrum than the left with
| economic/pro-corporate/small government views being the
| primary driver.
|
| As for not having a left/right spectrum of political
| views at all, I think it's somewhat inevitable in a (de
| facto) two party system, but it's worthwhile to
| acknowledge that virtually nobody is going to fit
| comfortably on one side or the other. People have tried
| for ages to come up with more nuanced multi-axis
| representations of where people fall within political
| spectrum, but even then it often just works out to
| carving out specific flavors of left/right.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Most people understand that "far-right" in this context
| means that it allows white supremacists and nazis to use
| its platform.
|
| That's literally every platform. There's no nazi-or-not
| test to take before you're allowed to use any of them. All
| platforms allow varying degrees of racist rhetoric ranging
| from dogwhistles to death threats and I'm not aware of a
| single platform that doesn't have racists in healthy
| numbers.
|
| I think a better definition of a far-right platform would
| be found in its intended audience or in the percentage of
| racist users/content.
| alfanick wrote:
| What is GAB? I have really no clue, I would need to google to
| find definition of this acronym. (European-based)
| O__________O wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)
| alfanick wrote:
| So now I understand your comment and actually can comment
| back:
|
| > World needs more systems that actually reflect how the
| user fits into the world, allows people to understand
| differences and find shared beliefs -- not systems that
| create information bubbles, enable isolation, and increase
| the likelihood of extremists.
|
| Wasn't the past world of BBS, NNTP, IRC just nice? Everyone
| had space for themselves, there was community moderation,
| sure some smaller or bigger attacks on each other, but it
| always was somehow nice and in balance, methinks. I
| particularly miss NNTP, we could have this discussion
| there.
| pvg wrote:
| _Wasn 't the past world of BBS, NNTP, IRC just nice?_
|
| No. It was just tiny and very non-uniformly sampled so
| you didn't notice where it was heading as easily. E.g.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic
| jawerty wrote:
| I personally wouldn't consider Gab far right but I certainly
| respect your opinion there. What are some sources you'd want in
| a tool like this? Next iteration i want to add Hacker News but
| also make it extensible so you can add sites you like manually.
| pell wrote:
| >I personally wouldn't consider Gab far right but I certainly
| respect your opinion there.
|
| A story about how Republican Ron Johnson is a liability
| because he acknowledges that Joe Biden won the last US
| election is currently in the top 5 on Gab's frontpage. Many
| similar stories are highly ranked as well. It seems quite
| self-evident that Gab's main audience leans conservative (in
| the American sense) and that conspiracy theories a "stolen
| election" are quite popular there. These do seem quite "far
| right" to me even if they might have mainstream support at
| the moment.
|
| Another of your default options is "BitChute" which is a
| platform for similar content.
| nyx wrote:
| Gab's userbase is described as far right in the lede of its
| Wikipedia article[0], which goes on to justify that
| descriptor by describing the types of views (neo-Nazism,
| white nationalism, antisemitism, QAnon, et al.) that can
| commonly be found there. Among the sources cited there is Fox
| News[1], which describes it as "known for attracting a far-
| right audience."
|
| To my understanding, Fox News is pretty commonly accepted as
| a news source that's right of center, and even they've run
| articles describing Gab as far right.
|
| I know it's uncool to do political bikeshedding on HN, but if
| you'll indulge my curiosity for a minute, how would you
| describe Gab's politics if not "far right," and are there any
| spaces you would personally label that way?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)
|
| [1] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/social-media-platform-
| gabs-...
| [deleted]
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I entirely believe that you believe that, and that leaves me
| concerned for you.
|
| Gab is well past "right wing" and well into "company replies
| to the complaints about antisemitism with press statements
| reading 'JESUS IS KING'" territory. The site's content
| basically parrots whatever today's Republican most extreme
| talking point is.
|
| I just opened Gab's front page in an anonymous browser, and
| the first 3 posts were a "Let's go Brandon" joke, a salute to
| Hobby Lobby for defending Christian Nationalism, and a post
| about "Ron Johnson is a RINO because he thinks the President
| won the election." If you can read through this and think
| "this isn't far right," your perspective has been
| significantly influenced by whatever media you're consuming,
| and you need to look into deprogramming yourself.
| mantas wrote:
| It should include both far-left and far-right perspectives to
| show people full scale of the range of opinions.
|
| Otherwise it is creating information bubble by excluding far-*
| or whatever.
| matsemann wrote:
| Nah, I don't really need to hear anything from people saying
| I shouldn't exist because of my ethnicity, sexuality etc.
| Tostino wrote:
| I mean I'd like to be aware it's happening, I just don't
| want to give them any more of a platform.
| mkmk3 wrote:
| Unless you consider the radical and sometimes dubious nature
| of dogmatic politics (left and right) to be a mental hazard
| worth avoiding.
|
| I wonder if theres a way to temper a user, such that you
| expose them to more vitriolic bullshit on either side with
| some survey based feedback, and pull back again to allow for
| recovery, you go to and fro until you filter some undesirable
| components, idk maybe you have this pseudo-personality
| profile you target or you just want to minimise usage of a
| set of biases and you include lessons alongside it.
| [deleted]
| Phenix88be wrote:
| You create a google chrome extension to escape Google?
|
| I understand the purpose, but your browser of choice doesn't fit
| the purpose, it's just a bit sad :(
| nottorp wrote:
| Yep, this is ironic to say the least. I actually wanted to try
| it but the first step of escaping Google is switching to
| Firefox... so I couldn't install it.
| bckr wrote:
| They built an extension to "escape Google's [recommendation]
| algorithm". They're clearly not talking here about privacy,
| they're talking about managing their own attention. Their
| implementation does fit their purpose.
| Phenix88be wrote:
| Yes, I know, it just doesn't feel right to me, that's all
| [deleted]
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That looks really helpful, nice job and thanks for the effort in
| documenting what it's doing.
|
| I have been working on something a little bit related recently,
| related to books. Kind of reverse-discovery, maybe.
|
| I noticed that my ebook libraries in apps pretty much always end
| up in the same ordering, or sets of orderings. So I would tend to
| forget about interesting books I bought, the longer it's been
| since I purchased them.
|
| I wrote some scripts that collect random thumbnail images from my
| various ebook and PDF collections every so many minutes and
| gather them into little collections. Like shuffling cards and
| dealing some out. It's very simple stuff but it's already been
| nice to have.
|
| I also noticed that my collection of Gutenberg texts didn't have
| the greatest thumbnails, so I made a script to pick random
| excerpts from N different Project Gutenberg books at intervals.
| Then it joins then to a single text file. Kind of like visiting
| the bookstore to browse through some books a bit, see what's
| interesting.
|
| Anyway, this interests-related stuff is enjoyable. I really like
| your idea for the discovery side of things, thanks for sharing
| it.
| jawerty wrote:
| Thank you for the words and for sharing. The excerpts into
| thumbnails idea is cool I like the concept of having a library
| where the cover is the first sentence of the first page or
| something like that.
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