There should be at least one open social media algorithm, designed for individual and public good, with a substantial number of users.
This is the basic premise of the MySky project. We don’t have to be the biggest or the best network, but we do intend to lead by showing. What each of us sees will be forevermore mediated by algorithms, and those algorithms have consequences. Therefore, there should be at least one social media algorithm that is available for everyone to use, see, and study, which implements the state of the art in doing well for users and society.
So: MySky aims to be an open reference implementation for good social media algorithms.
Open as in open source, public API, open data (within the limits of privacy), and open science.
Reference Implementation means something you can actually use, not just an idea. This also means having real users, because social media cannot be developed in a vacuum. Hence, our algorithm has to be something people actually want to use.
Good means all the things we might want from social media: controllable, transparent, informative, trustworthy, constructive, and more. There are many possible designs, which is why MySky is highly configurable.
Social Media means this is about feeds as opposed to, say, chatbots. Also, we are committed to making MySky genuinely social, something more connecting than television or news.
Algorithm means we are working on the core problem of selecting and ordering content published within a network, i.e. a recommender system. There are lots of other aspects to social media design, for example the user interface can make a big difference, but that’s not our primary area.
We think the world needs at least one example of such a thing. So we’re building it, and we encourage you to become a user. We also encourage other builders to steal our algorithm, because no one should have to start from zero when trying to make their own platform healthier. If this is the world you want to see, join us!