Flatlander

Working on a feed specifically for Saskatchewan politics. It’s a hot mess right now, but if you want a front row seat to the development you can take a look here: bsky.app/profile/did:...

So.... the new feed has been live for a day or so now. How's everyone's experience? Better? Worse? If you have opinions one way or the other I'd like to hear them!

Last but not least.... the feed is no longer built from scratch and hosted by @joelh.social . It is now powered by @graze.social ! If you want to see how it works, the feed and it's components are public and available to copy/remix over at graze.social

You can now click on the "show more of this" or "show less of this" to tweak what content you see.

Basic AI filtering is applied to posts that are included in the feed due to their content. There is a maximum threshold of negativity that will be filtered out from the feed.

This is not applied to people from here. We're allowed to complain.

The feed is not longer strictly chronological. Posts with likes, replies, and re-posts will be given a probability of appearing earlier in the timeline. Interactions from people subscribed to the feed are weighted higher than those from outside the feed.

In addition to people that follow the @flatlander.social account, posts of people that make mention of Saskatchewan in their profile bio will now have their content appear in the feed! You should be seeing posts from a much more diverse group of people now!

The Flatlanders Feed has been updated with some significant changes to the algorithm. Short thread 👇

In summary, this platform will allow me to focus more on fine tuning the algorithm rather than trying to keep up with code fixes, etc. It's also much more cost effective (free?).

Check it out and let me know what you think!

In terms of content, it's very similar to what the current feed does, however it's also using user's profile text to determine if they are "flatlanders". It is also not strictly chronological, and it supports the "show more" and "show less" buttons.

I've got something cooking thanks to @graze.social ... a new version of the feed NOT hosted by me with code also NOT written by me.

It's what I would call a beta, and you can check it out here:
bsky.app/profile/did:...

Naturally the feed has started to act weird all fall behind the live feed.

Looking into it, it might be unstable in the short term, sorry about that folks!

Hey, so ah, how’s it going out there?

Nothing to report on the feed. It’s just kind of running without issue and it’s a little weird.

The Flatlander feed is having a timeout* and it will resume regular operations after it has shown signs of remorse and personal growth**

*is failing to connect to the database

**after I reboot it.

Hey folks, how’s the Flatlander Feed been the past few days? Better? Worse? No change?

More importantly, how is everyone doing?

Hang in there, the snow is almost gone and summer is on the horizon!

Another little update on the way: I’m implementing a mute list of words that if they are included in posts they won’t end up in the feed.

So far it’s just a bunch of spammy hashtags and “Elon Musk”.

I don’t know how much this update will help with that, it’s a tough problem to solve. There are some other moderation tools I could implement though.

The feed still has an issue where posts, usually political, will be spammed with numerous hashtags (like #skpoli) and therefor are indexed as Sask content when they are often more general, or even just spam. Not sure to how to best handle that yet 🤷

I've posted a small little update to the feed:

- No longer including posts that mention "Western Canada" and other vague references to prairie provinces.

- Users that follow this account that are clearly not "flatlanders" will not have posts automatically added to the feed.

The list is here: bsky.app/profile/did:...

There are a number of bots and “spammy” accounts that have started following the Flatlander account, and as such their posts are populating the feed.

It’s an issue that I have a solution for, but I have not had time to release.

Until then, feel free to use the “Not Flatlanders” mute list.

Published a short term fix to the feed that allowed it to reboot after a critical error.

Unfortunately, any posts in the last 18 hours won’t be added to the feed, sorry about that!

Long term I want a reliable way to pick up where the feed leaves off on downtime 👍

Of course as soon as I posted this the feed went down and is now 13+ hours behind real time events.

I’ll see if I can perform a quick patch, and hopefully I have detailed logs to indicate the root cause.

You’re very welcome! It’s been really fun and I’m learning a lot. Having a migration of new users and seeing people make connections has been fantastic.

This is important, I think everyone should have a platform to share and be heard (assuming they aren’t toxic).

There is an algorithm I’ve been looking into that would approach the problem in a similar way, although its rules are different. Every person has a “bucket” and certain actions empty and fill it. When it’s full the person’s posts do not appear in the feed, or something like that.

Yeah, some clear community guidelines and a moderation team of volunteers. The software is actually there already and ready to go, we really just need people.

So, these are things I’m thinking of, and I would like to hear from people. What do you want to see here? What do we need on BlueSky to build a safe, supportive, and fun community?

For moderation, I am also running a labeling service with the primary goal of identifying political content. It’s automatic, but we could have volunteers signed in and actually moderate content manually and respond to reports beyond the current scope.