Does anyone else feel like Tildes gets less effective at surfacing new stuff the longer you're on it?
I notice this primarily with the YouTube videos. I've started to notice that the videos I see posted in here I have already had recommended to me by YouTube. And I realize it must be because when I watch a video here, the YouTube algorithm decides I'm interested in that kind of thing. So, functionally, by posting and interacting with content in Tildes we are tuning the various algorithmic recommendation feeds that we interact with to view us all similarly.
It's just an interesting side effect I noticed and some food for thought about the effectiveness of a link aggregator or discussion forum at surfacing novel, interesting content we might not find otherwise. In part, this could just be an effect of Tildes being kind of small and having lots of self-selection biases for its user population. Perhaps if it was more diverse we'd be exposed to more things that break the mold and recommendation algorithms won't be able to pin it all down as easily. In fact, we may be able to use this effect as a way to test the breadth and diversity of content and types of people a site is attracting.
Nope.
I chalk that up to having niche interests that are outside the purview of most here. I am generally happy to share my experiences here when those subjects come up, but otherwise I keep up with the content elsewhere. I come to Tildes for one set of content, go to reddit (in the very few subreddits I'm still subscribed to) for another set, and go to various other sources for all the other subjects.
If I came to Tildes and saw the same content I was getting elsewhere I'd have stopped participating. I guess what I'm saying is the same thing I said back in the day on reddit when people complained about reposts. Either seek out diversity or be the change you want to see.
I'll be honest and say I don't click on any of the YouTube videos here. They mostly seem to be video essays I have zero interest in watching. I only use YouTube to watch specific YouTube channels (mostly light-hearted movie stuff like Mr. Sunday Movies or Dan Murrell), or to listen to music, or to watch interviews. I went through my video essay phase a few years back and I'm content with just avoiding all that.
I will say that I see stuff posted on Reddit a lot quicker than on here. Articles and trailers and whatnot. But that's just the nature of a website this small. There's going to be less people on it.
I rarely click on any videos on Tildes. The reason for that is kinda trivial and may only matter to me, but most of the time I'm on my phone and I don't like watching videos on phone. The few times I click on videos here, it's only to put them in my history so I can watch on my tablet or TV later on.
I know that won't happen, but if Tildes had a YouTube playlist with all the videos posted here it would be pretty awesome.
Funny, I usually don't click on them either, but it tends to be because I've already watched them by the time I see them pop up here...
I might watch too much youtube.
Well, at least the technically-oriented ones. The humanities-related or politics-related ones I do tend to skip like you.
I don’t watch YouTube (or videos at all, really), so I don’t notice this. I do tend to see things on kottke.org a few hours before they get posted here, though. Which is fine, since I’m sure others follow that blog.
Honestly yes. But i think that's a function of it being a forum with a smaller community so the churn of content is much lower. I have long since stopped checking in multiple times a day to see if anything new has come up because things move slowly. This isn't a bad thing by any stretch though, i think it's one of the strengths of the site that links to having a healthier relationship with the internet 😊
No?
Then again, I still refuse a youtube account, even though they're starting to make it difficult.
Your theory is 100% correct, assuming you actually click and follow the videos (on a logged in Google user). YouTube's algorithm is ridiculously powerful, and the kind of content posted on Tildes lends itself really well to it.
If I were a bit younger I think I would do a thesis on this. It's so fascinating. Nevertheless, this ONLY applies to videos, specifically YouTube videos. Tildes is a great aggregator when it comes to other types of content. The value-add on videos is the potential for discussion within Tildes IMO.