The Algorithm Takes Hold
As we made the journey to our seats in peanut heaven at Acrisure Stadium the other night before the Monday Night Football game, I noticed something interesting out of the corner of my eye. Out beyond the open end of the stadium near the point of confluence, a swarm of drones lit up the night sky.
At first the drones appeared to be making elegant geometric designs. I thought it was cool and I couldn’t remember the Steelers ever making use of drones in their pre-game program. I paused to watch for a moment and then the designs began to morph into words. First Madame Vice President and then Madame President. Next the drones resolved into the Harris Walz logo.
I thought to myself, “What a subversive and smart advertising tactic!” with just enough time to grab my phone and snap a photo. When we got to the seats, there was still about 30 minutes before kickoff so I posted the photo here on my website with the caption: Harris Walz drone game is on point at tonight’s Steelers game! As with all posts on the site, the image and caption were syndicated to Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads. I then put my phone down and enjoyed watching my Pittsburgh Steelers beat those Giants in primetime.
Throughout the evening, I checked Mastodon a couple of times (per usual) to find a few friends had favorited the drone post. I don’t actively use Bluesky or Threads and I don’t have those applications installed on my phone, so the fact that the post went out to those platforms escaped me in the moment.
I usually try to check in on Bluesky and Threads replies once per day, so when I opened Threads on my laptop the next morning, I found the drone post had gone somewhat viral. At the time of this writing the post has 93K views, 12.4K likes, 246 replies and 292 reposts. Numbers of this scale are new to me. I’ve never had more than a dozen likes or replies to a post on any platform. Somehow the algorithm found this particular post, latched onto it and carried it across the Threads ecosystem.
A quick dive into the replies (I don’t recommend it) surfaces some of the worst of humanity. The comments trend toward distasteful, border on offensive and come from a wide-range of perspectives including crypto bots and MAGA trolls. There is even one commenter who claims it didn’t happen and asserts that I photoshopped the Harris Walz logo into the image.
While Meta and Threads talk about embracing the Fediverse and have taken some steps to walk the walk, their use of and reliance on algorithms alongside ActivityPub troubles me. What was it about this particular post that invited the algorithm to take hold? Was there something about the image itself? Or the caption? Or was it simply the network effect and extrapolation?
Whatever the cause, the experience raises some questions for me about my intention for cross-posting from this site. For now, I think I will disable Threads cross-posting because I’m not interested in going viral due to an algorithm boost. I write and publish as a method of capturing moments, and engaging in meaningful dialog with people about the topics that interest me. Threads does not seem like the place for that kind of interaction.
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