this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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I wouldn’t call reverse chronological order with blocks accounted for an algorithm.
Twitter didn’t always have an algorithm.
Mastodon does not have an algorithm. Or am I not being inclusive enough in my definition?
Yeah an algorithm is a series of mathematic instructions so from my armchair I'd say sort by date is not an algorithm. But to complicate things further there seems to be a sticking point with some that social media uses heuristics and not algorithms. I don't really understand the difference nor do I really care as this is all too much about semantics - /u/grue's final point is still spot on IMO. Why mess with letting a billionaire toy with the minds of your citizens? Let the USA have twitter and all that chaos to themselves.
You should take your armchair to be reupholstered or something, because sorting things is like the primary type of algorithm. Even if it's as straightforward as "sort by date", since objects in the database are not stored by date, they have to be sorted to get them displayed by date.
I wouldn't say primary type, they just happen to be the primary example that theory (complexity analysis etc) is taught with. Hence also the veritable zoo of very very bad sorting algorithms that still have proper names. There's no quantum bogosort for string search.