The Algorithm is such a nebulous term. All programs are algorithms, all it means is a set of unambitious instructions. I don’t think half the people that use it even really know what they mean by it except whatever big tech are doing.

I am kinda sad that the word has now been tainted this way and wish there was another word for a content recommender that’s only goal it to keep users on the platform for as long as possible so as much money as possible can be made from them.

At that point, you could say that almost all technology does. Even a 1950’s elevator with relay logic runs a (literally hard-wired) algorithm.

It’s kind of frustrating because people who don’t understand programming or how the internet works are using algorithm to refer exclusively to the ones used by big tech, with machine learning based on user choices and whatever data they feed it to trick users into staying engaged longer.

Though algorithms are any program or sorting routine, however most people don’t understand this and they just think (even if they’re not willing to tell you) that algorithm just means magic or something like that because they’re imagining the machine learning ones they don’t understand that the simple algorithms like sorting by new or most popular are still algorithms.

Yeeaaah but you know what he meant. There’s algorithms and then there’s “The Algorithm” in common parlance. IMO it’s the obsession on precision in language that makes otherwise excellent FOSS programmers into terrible proselytizers of FOSS services.

When someone complains about “the algorithm” on Twitter, the correct thing to say is “You should try Mastodon it doesn’t do that” not “Technically all sorting is algorithmic but the sorting on Mastodon is less opaque and more verifiable than that which is commonly employed by Meta Systems Incorporated.”

Even if that algorithm is simply “sort by date” or “reposted by your followers”

it’s not profit driven, tho.