Now we're talking! It's algorithm time.

Trending is an attention mechanism. It directs individual and collective attention which we all kind of like because you know, shared experience and whatnot. But what kind of experience? How should all that wonderful attention be directed?

Obviously like everything else on Nostr, this is a choice that should be available to each user, but we're lazy and so a few simple options would be  great. Unfortunately, at this moment, there aren't enough good options. Primal's is the best, but as you highlight some users seem to have cracked the secret.

If I had my choice, the algorithm would highlight important new information and thoughtful conversation about it. Perhaps this could be driven by comment counts and lengths, assuming spammers stay tf out. Truth is no one knows the exact formula but here we have chaos on our side. The thing to do is try lots of algorithms and see what wins. To make that happen, and where have I heard this before, we need to open source the algorithm.

As for Primal's current situation, one might label "always the same people" as the brass ring phenomenon. It seems to arise in networks where there's no ceiling on influence. Cap that influence and we may see more variety of people represented.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.