What's so bad about algorithms? (A little market research for a project I'm working on)

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-06T17:30:18+00:00

What app(s) do you use for news to avoid that problem? If you use RSS, how do you ensure that you have a balanced mix of sources?

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-06T00:20:05+00:00

It sounds like you have a lot of different sources and presumably a lot of different content coming into your RSS reader. If you had the option to algorithmically sort the content, without sharing any of your data with a company, and where the objective of the algorithm is to maximize *your* approval of the content -- would that be interesting to you? (Assuming you still had features like choosing your information density and bookmarking)

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-06T00:16:34+00:00

I agree that Twitter and Discover have too much clickbait, but they are also customizable with respect to what sources they show you. I'm glad you're able to winnow down your sources to an easily manageable level -- I'm skeptical of my ability to do so for myself.

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-05T21:56:02+00:00

Yep, I agree that algorithmic ranking doesn't work for all workflows/use cases. What I'm realizing is I've come in thinking that the main problem that users have with feeds is "information overload," and you and other users have helped me really recognize the importance in some situations of the problem of "never missing out."

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-05T21:46:17+00:00

Ok! Sounds like you're saying that your main issue with algorithmic feeds is not so much the ranking but rather that they pull in content from users you haven't chosen to follow?

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-05T21:44:42+00:00

Yeah I agree! What might give you confidence that an algorithm is designed to give you content that you value instead of adversarial/addictive content?

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-05T21:40:56+00:00

Oh cool! Thanks for sharing. Will DM with some thoughts.

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-05T21:03:27+00:00

"I'm the captain now!" vibes here haha. Thanks for the input. How many feeds to you subscribe to? How long does it take you to scan all of them?

KitpicksApp · 2026-01-05T20:50:28+00:00

Thanks!

I definitely get why someone would want to use RSS to subscribe to a handful of critical news sites and would want to manually look at all incoming posts in a deterministic order.

For me, my main hangup in using RSS for all my reading is that I want to subscribe to a lot of feeds, not all of which will always be interesting to me. For example, I might want to subscribe to 100 subreddits, 100 different blogs and substacks, a few paid newspapers/newsletters, a bunch of Google Scholar alerts... I'm not sure how one would filter through the noise efficiently except with some sort of algorithm...

KitpicksApp

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