About CombFlow and HiveComb
10 years of social media on the blockchain. Yes, today is my 10th Hive anniversary!
We started just when the big web2 networks concluded their switch from a chronological feed to an algorithmic one.
We do have our own version of an algorithm, but as that only reflects upvotes its output isn't made to give users content they really care about. And for creators it means you either build something great for hive, or you get a good amount of autovotes, there's no other way to hit trending and be seen.
While "the algorithms" are under constant criticism for being addictive and messing with our dopamine systems, everyone who uses social media today relies on them to be entertained. It's like with any other drug, we know it's bad for us, but life without is just so dull.
For years I have said that this dullness is one of the biggest reasons that Hive is bleeding users. They don't get the hits they are used to get elsewhere. There's nothing to do except writing a post and having look what the people you're already following post. Tags help a bit, but they're a mess with everyonee trying to use them to fish for attention. All of that is especially problematic for newly onboarded users.
Luckily, the state of AI solves a lot problems I had with just going ahead and implementing something. It can create a set of vectors (called centroids) from thousands of posts it autonomously classifies, which then allows a simple comparison of new posts against these vectors to classify the whole blockchain.
So here we are, CombFlow is the first content discovery engine on Hive with real life categories. To show how this changes the browsing experience, it is accompanied by a dedicated user interface: HiveComb
But the real kicker is that the API is completely open, and can easily be used by all Hive interfaces to offer the same filters to their users.
It's far from the algorithms elsewhere, as it doesn't take user actions into account at all. Yet at least. That can only be done on the frontend side, and if it's advisable to have this data stored for and used by a public API is a discussion for another place and time.
About the proposal
The amount is obviously symbolic. It's calculated to cover the server cost and Claude subscription, and it honestly doesn't matter if its funded or not.
What I do need is attention and help though. The list of categories is still worth improving, and there are also quite a few misclassified posts. There's a report feature for misclassifications on the site for logged in users. Every manual correction of current classifications helps to improve the next round of centroid generation.
If you want to get involved beyond that, have discussions about algorithms, user data, and how we can ethically create a more engaging experience on Hive, come and visit the Discord
How that relates to Hivesense?
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivesense
(btw, there's no link to the proposal itself, preferably few because obviously different frontend preferences :-) )
https://github.com/pharesim/combflow
I think having an algorithm is a good idea. I think the main issue with other social media algorithms is the lack of transparency.
I hope people use this and provide feedback to make it better. I’ve already used this some and it worked really well at helping me find posts I am interested in.
Cheers man and good luck with this project. It’s really exciting to see how much you have accomplished with this thing already!
The lack of transparency is combined with a goal of "engagement metrics" and ad revenue rather than truly satisfying the user for web2 sites.
Yea that’s a good point as well. Corporate social media is basically like fast food but for your brain, they are making it as engaging (in foods case tasty) as possible while making it cheap/easy to access.
So they make money at the long term detriment of their own customers.
Luckily Hive does not seem to have that problem.
now we need front ends to integrate this API, it would be useful like in a new tab, otherwise it will remain a nice project used by a niche of users like others
Congratulations on the 10th Hive anniversary, hopefully we will get the attention soon that we deserve.
Seems like a good idea, provided it's an addition to existing feeds, not a replacement for chronological, following, etc.
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I looked and got confused. I have no clue what to do with either of those websites. I wasn't able to find my own posts, never mind some post I don't know anything about.
But this isn't for you to search for your own posts; rather, it's an algorithm that helps you find posts by language and category...
OK, but I still don't have a clue of how to use it. :-(
If I was trying to do some research on a topic, then it might be handy, but otherwise, what am I supposed to be looking for? I find the most interesting topics by chance, not by searching for them.
It could provide an API where you input a username and it returns the categories the user has voted on most recently (for example, the last 50 votes or comments on root posts). That would make it much easier for frontends to implement a recommendation algorithm. Maybe in the future it could even return ready-made post recommendations instead of just categories.
Another idea would be to add automatic translation for posts from the last 30 days into major languages.
What a great initiative, @pharesim! Sometimes you feel like you publish something and the content gets lost quickly, so any tool that helps people find us more easily is a blessing for those who we create content
I fully agree with your proposal! I'll support it!
The idea is good. Not much fun/viral content on Hive though, so the algo can fail just because there are too few cool posts to choose from. If there were an incentive for most viral content, some people would try to create more fun.
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Fun ! I've started to look at content discovery/algorithm feed recently too ! https://peakd.com/hive/@howo/content-discovery-feeds-and-decentralized-social-media
This is very important to make user experience better on hive! Thanks for your service.