Dedicated Trending Section

[Mennaruuk]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, Bluesky lacks an Explore tab. There are some users who want to curate their feeds and only follow a handful of accounts. However, there are others (like me) who want to know the chatter around the town and what's popular at a particular moment.

Describe the solution you'd like

Twitter had a cool Explore section until recently. It used to take multiple factors into account, such as the volume of tweets discussing a particular subject, the rate at which they are being posted, user engagement, and what new topics are gaining lots of traction all of a sudden. It can also be personalized, so if you're living in one city you may see what's trending in your city rather than another city.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Discover exists, although it's not topical. The strength of Twitter's Explore section is that it shows a list of the most discussed topics or hashtags. That way, I can press any of them and be redirected to tweets about that particular topic. None of Bluesky's feeds can do this at the moment.

Additional context

I want to mention that Twitter's Explore tab isn't merely a collection of the most popular posts about a topic sorted from most liked or retweeted to least. It's more of a random amalgamation of what's most trending.

Also, there are different themes to choose, such as Sports, News, etc.:

[mmangopear]

Did the devs ever see this or add it to the roadmap? I feel like this is one of the few big missing holes

[gcjbr]

Would be down to work on it if I had confirmation this is of interest of the maintainers

[surfdude29]

FYI @pfrazee said earlier today:

... I've got a proposal for how to do Trending Topics. 🤞

https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3l2zpqqyb762x

[borysmarceloherrera]

Jun, 29 and this major improvement request remains Open.

X platform in Brazil is back online so for the more tha 8 millions brazillian users this feature now is irrelevant. Too late too little.

[ajalaca]

While the trending feature is certainly attractive and has the potential to make Bluesky more active, we believe that the trending feature also carries a significant risk of inviting conflict and division among users.

I believe that such a conflict-free atmosphere is one of the main attractions of Bluesky and should be protected in the future, so we should be cautious about implementing the trending feature.

[gigacee]

Given the current state of the trending in X, I don't understand the attempt to reproduce that hell on BlueSky.
There's no need for us to get angry by clicking on trending words like politics and gossip.
We want to use SNS for fun, not for anger.

[yoshimoto-shinichi]

I think the trending feature on X is a big part of the problem with hate and conflict there. It's one of the worst things about X. I've seen so many people use it to stir up trouble just to get attention. That's why I came to Bluesky. If Bluesky adds a trending feature, I'll probably quit social media.

[pan090908097]

No, no need
That trend is already x and it is not working.
It is being used as a political campaign tool and people are angry when they see scary incidents.

[Invertex]

I agree that it is a big source of conflict/division, and I'd made it possible to simply hide it in my Twitter extension, but it's also a powerful feature that can greatly improve reach for people/causes when something trends.

Perhaps by default it could filter out political terms? Just try to keep it to as low-conflict of topics in a "better than nothing" type of solution. Perhaps have popular trending tags be checked out by moderation to see if they should be added to a Trending filter and allow reporting of trending tags for that specific purpose as well.

Any time anything trends tends to invite some bad actors trying to sew conflict, Discovery/What's Hot isn't really much different in that respect. Trending would just be What's Hot, but for tags.

People should definitely have the option to disable the Trending section if it was implemented though, which I think would also help the issue. (and even the ability to set their own filtered tags in their profile settings)

[pan090908097]

In the old days on Twitter, newspapers and others would feed into the trending tags and provide biased summaries.It is important that each of us can choose what we want to see with the feed function.We don't need to impose.

[borysmarceloherrera]

Fellows, in any app or tool or system or backend or anything that we have many integrations and data we must see what is going on. That is called nowadays Observability. Bluesky should not be different. We need to know hot trending topics throughout the world like SARS COV19 pandemic. EPOX etc.

We are not living in forests anymore.

[pan090908097]

It is also a kind of neurosis to always try to observe anomalies in the whole world. There is no need for all users to constantly monitor the earth. I leave that to you. use X

[gigacee]

I get hot trending topics about world affairs (especially recent events are serious...) directly from experts in each field through books and videos, not from X Trending. It would be far much more efficient and reliable rather than wandering around in the desert of political maneuvering and public anger in SNS.

[BarterClub]

Trending should be added. Without the ads. This is a way to see what is going on in the world. It should be allowed to be hidden for users who don't want to see it.

[preetecool]

Trending topics is a great idea. To avoid unwanted exposure to tags, users may chose to avoid seeing trending topics, or chose what tags to add to their ignore list.

I think it's a great way to start conversations about what people are talking about today.

[ajalaca]

While those who advocate trending believe that “all we need is a hide feature,” I believe that what is important is not simply visibility or invisibility, but rather the creation of a situation where the trending feature can be hacked to incite many users and incite division.

Visibility is a matter of personal discretion, but such an irreversible situation brought about by the trending feature is a problem that strongly affects the whole community.

[preetecool]

If we step back and assess the situation, it's clear that the community is already split between Bluesky and X. To prevent further fragmentation and encourage more constructive dialogue, it's worth discussing the need for a moderation system. This system should be designed to identify and address manufactured outrage and coordinated manipulation. While implementing such a system is undoubtedly challenging, the first step is to define what constitutes manufactured outrage, as well as coordinated efforts to manipulate or hijack trending topics.

[stevenlafl]

Here's my perspective. While true that people could manipulate the trending section, the major benefit is that it highlights ongoing critical news.

An active shooter situation, for example.

I think that as this platform grows it becomes part of social duty to highlight certain things such as this for common good. Can this be implemented responsibly?

[Invertex]

Okay, so apparently this discussion was completely ignored and a Trending section pull request was put up and approved within a week.
Was completely blindsided seeing the feature show up in the app today.
#7144 #7161 #7162

Merry Christmas from us to you 🎄🎁💙 We launched Trending Topics today, and you can find it by tapping the search icon on the bottom bar of the app or the right sidebar on desktop.

— Bluesky December 25, 2024 at 5:09 PM

[stevenlafl]

Okay, so apparently this discussion was completely ignored and a Trending section pull request was put up and approved within a week. Was completely blindsided seeing the feature show up in the app today. #7144 #7161 #7162

Merry Christmas from us to you 🎄🎁💙 We launched Trending Topics today, and you can find it by tapping the search icon on the bottom bar of the app or the right sidebar on desktop.— Bluesky December 25, 2024 at 5:09 PM

This seems disorganized. If this is an open source project, let it be that. What are we doing, folks? I'm very confused by the message this sends. Hopefully the issue queue doesn't balloon and become unmaintainable.

EDIT: I was unaware the merged PR was not linked to this issue and therefore not automatically closed.

[surfdude29]

If development is by Bluesky staff for bsky.app...

Well... yeah? I'm baffled as to why anyone would find it strange that Bluesky developers – who, you know, work for Bluesky PBC – would develop a feature for the Bluesky app?

They accept many PRs from outside contributors, but of course the team of developers who are actually paid to work on the app drive the core development of it. How is this in any way surprising? 🤨

[oracularhades]

if this is an open source project, let it be that. If development is by Bluesky staff for bsky.app then close source it.

"why would they give me their code and a license to go compete against them, why don't they build my program for me". @stevenlafl your mother is open-source, worry about that.

[stevenlafl]

If development is by Bluesky staff for bsky.app...

Well... yeah? I'm baffled as to why anyone would find it strange that Bluesky developers – who, you know, work for Bluesky PBC – would develop a feature for the Bluesky app?

They accept many PRs from outside contributors, but of course the team of developers who are actually paid to work on the app drive the core development of it. How is this in any way surprising? 🤨

Well, not my argument. This is an open source project that accepts issues and PRs. Not all github repositories have these two things turned on for precisely the reason you gave. If issues are ignored, it makes backlog grooming impossible and creates a giant mess. This is an organization issue. If what you are saying is correct, this issue should have been promptly closed. Clearly a reasonable expectation has been shattered. In fact, this issue shouldn't even be open right now.

Also, very surprised by the unprofessional responses others gave. Why exactly do they think people contribute to open source projects? Should I not have submitted a patch to Valve's Proton when there was a crash bug running Half-Life Alyx just because the project is co-owned by two corporations?

Most understand that work primarily benefits a private corporation. Contributors expect they would have at least some input in return, or at the least some better backlog grooming. Otherwise we are all duplicating work that gets ignored. My core goal was to highlight that.

[surfdude29]

If issues are ignored...

You seem to be implying that this issue was ignored by the devs. Obviously I can't know how much of the discussion here they have read, but I can say for certain that someone sent a link to this issue to one of the devs and she replied, saying:

this is definitely something that we are keeping in mind and being super cautious with. i absolutely don’t want to see this get leveraged in the wrong ways. can’t promise we will get it 100% right at first but i can absolutely say we’re doing this carefully with tightly scoped rollout and care

— @hailey.at, 18 December 2024

If what you are saying is correct, this issue should have been promptly closed.

Many issues that are fixed by a PR are linked so that they're closed automatically when the relevant PR is merged. For whatever reason, this issue was not linked so it will need to be closed manually.

If your main concern is that this issue remains open after the feature has shipped, why not simply say that, and ask that the issue be closed? That would have been a more constructive course of action than making unfounded accusations of unprofessional behaviour.

[stevenlafl]

If your main concern is that this issue remains open after the feature has shipped, why not simply say that, and ask that the issue be closed?

Excellent suggestion, and way more of a proper and effective response. You are right to point out a number of things here and I missed that workflow minutea. But keep in mind someone with a Contributor tag literally told me that my mother is open source. So...

Thank you for the high quality response. I was looking for an issue I could get started with and submit code for, but this one looked like it needed more discussion. Apparently not.

So, my request is that this issue be closed.