#heres my algorithm rant i promised earlier this week i will not be reblogging any algorithm panic going forward | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

machinedramon · 11 months

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ok I've kind of been able to sit with my thoughts a bit (and I've just woken up so forgive ant incomprehensibility) but I am begging people to stop turning the word "algorithm" into some bizarre boogeyman of websites.

tumblr already has an algorithm. despite every single post out there claiming to the contrary. there has ALWAYS been an algorithm. it just sucks. anyone who has ever seen the For You page, or the posts below a hard link to a specific post, or seen the "we think you'll like" posts on desktop, or even been into a tag will have seen the algorithm at work.

because websites like this literally cannot function without a sorting algorithm.

the problem is that the algorithm is simultaneously inattentive AND hyperactive. trying to find specific posts by their tags is a nightmare because the algorithm ALSO reads post content AND the OP's tags including your own. trying to use the "my art" tag as your own personal art tag on your personal blog that you reblog a ton of art with? get fucked, you're also seeing anything else that the OPs of those posts ALSO tagged with "my art", AND any posts that include the phrase "my art" within the post body.

it's also why u run the risk of posts that you haven't tagged as something ending up in tags. if you write a vent post abt how fans of x media are insufferable, and use the whole name or a fandom acronym of x media, it has the very real potential of winding up in the x media tag. because the algorithm reads post content for tag sorting.

if u click on an op of a post (or to a smaller degree, even look at the post), even to block the OP, the algorithm IMMEDIATELY assumes that This Is The Content You Want To See and floods your recommendations with potentially triggering content. I can't tell you how many hours of my life I've spent mass blocking nazi and proana and terf blogs because they Just Kept Showing Up in my For You page, before they added the ability to block the OP from the post itself. Because you had to interact with those blogs to block them, and the algorithm was too stupid to account for that.

all you ppl out there saying that There Is No Algorithm On Tumblr are flat out wrong and essentially spreading misinformation. this website could not function even as poorly as it does without one. the problem is, once again, the algorithm fucking sucks.

it probably hasn't been updated in any meaningful ways in at LEAST ten years. they probably keep adding clauses to it that allow certain things (such as spontaneously reading tags AND post content to allow for word filtering) but the fact that the core is still trying to run for a website from 2013 is the issue. it very much needs a complete overhaul in order for the site to remain usable.

hopefully as well, upgrading the algorithm to one that is actually made for a more modern website will improve the search function. perhaps tumblr can even figure out how to have both word filtering AND tag-only searching simultaneously.

an algorithm update is a good and necessary thing. the thing we should be demanding is making sure that they don't target specific words for censorship to make the website palatable for advertising.

algorithms are needed for websites with user-made content to run effectively. yall are just reactionaries.

#yall will hear the word algorithm and act like the entire world doesnt run on them #heres my algorithm rant i promised earlier this week i will not be reblogging any algorithm panic going forward

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