Tootfinder

Meta launches an AI feature that lets Threads users temporarily personalize their feed by specifying topics in a public post that begins with "Dear Algo" (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/meta-threads-dear-algo-ai-algori…

Meta launches AI algorithm personalization feature for Threads
The feature, called "Dear Algo," lets Threads users personalize what content they see by publicly posting an AI prompt.

I read, When AI is Fluent in Data but Illiterate in Context:
'We are building evidence infrastructure at speed, and we are not asking, systematically enough, what the tools assume when they read human realities they were never designed to understand.'
https://reamby.substac…

When AI is Fluent in Data but Illiterate in Context
Beyond the Algorithm

Meta launches an AI feature that lets Threads users temporarily personalize their feed by specifying topics in a public post that begins with "Dear Algo" (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/meta-threads-dear-algo-ai-algori…

Analysts and researchers say Google's TurboQuant compression algorithm to make LLMs more efficient is more likely to expand memory chip demand than reduce it (Daniel Tudor/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/12eaae3a-e1b8-47a0-9006-70fe319b130a

algorithm, n.:
Trendy dance for hip programmers.

⚰️ Fentanyl or phony? Machine learning algorithm learns to pick out opioid signatures
#sensors

Fentanyl or phony? Machine learning algorithm learns to pick out opioid signatures
New forms of fentanyl are created every day. For law enforcement, that poses a challenge: How do you identify a chemical you've never seen before? Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) aim to answer that question with a machine learning model that can distinguish opioids from other chemicals with an accuracy over 95% in a laboratory setting.

An interview with Hinge CEO Jackie Jantos, promoted from CMO in December 2025, as the dating app hits 1.8M paying users, gaining ground while others struggle (Kieran Smith/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/32af07ca-213c-422b-a7a4-a1ae04e023d0

Hinge CEO: Our algorithm doesn’t judge on attractiveness
Jackie Jantos defies dating app decline with focus on serious relationships: ‘It’s not TikTok, you need to put in effort’

I’m mildly curious why YouTube’s algorithm is showing me so many ads for women’s deodorants. Is my iPad telling me I stink now? Maybe TMI but never in all my 76 years have I ever bothered to use any kind of deodorant.

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature
Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared with those remaining on a chronological feed, whereas switching the feed setting in the opposite direction, from algorithmic to chronological, had no effect.

"Satellite images indicate that the Doñana Marshland will disappear within 60 years"
#Environment
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-satellite-images-doana-…

Satellite images indicate that the Doñana Marshland will disappear within 60 years
The Doñana National Park, considered one of Europe's most valuable wetlands, is expected to lose its marshland in 61 years, according to calculations from a major water-resource monitoring study carried out by the University of Seville. The study has developed an innovative algorithm, based on machine learning, capable of detecting the presence of surface water with high precision using images from the Sentinel-2 satellite.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm #politics #SocialMedia

The political effects of X's feed algorithm - PubMed
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects¹. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. W …

That kind of coverage achieves something even individual posts on social media cannot: it was not just the people with lots of followers, not just the people favored by the recommender algorithm or the tides of popularity, but instead a broad cross section of whoever was out there.
I don’t know who’s offering coverage like that in Iran like that right now. It may not exist. But even the BBC article at the top — filtered, edited, formatted, and tidied to sound like a BBC article, but still individual voices of people who are living through it — even that is welcome.
/end

So how do I know which TikTok I’m on when I’m opening the app in Germany— oracle TikTok or bytedance TikTok? Because it feels to me like their algorithm has changed somehow, it’s trying to show me a lot more „controversial“ posts.

ALGORITHM OR ALLY? AI, GLOBAL ENGLISH, AND THE FUTURE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/02/28/algorithm-or-ally-ai-global-english-and-the-future-of-language-learning

Social media algorithms prioritize right-wing content and influence the political views and behavior of real users. This is the finding of the recent study “The political effects of X’s feed algorithm”: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature
Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared with those remaining on a chronological feed, whereas switching the feed setting in the opposite direction, from algorithmic to chronological, had no effect.

An analysis of 1,000 YouTube Shorts videos recommended to kids: the algorithm pushes bizarre, often nonsensical, AI-generated videos, and many lack disclosures (Arijeta Lajka/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/us/ai-v…

How A.I.-Generated Videos Are Distorting Your Child’s YouTube Feed
Experts caution that low-quality, A.I.-generated videos on YouTube geared toward children often feature conflicting information, lack plot structure and can be cognitively overwhelming — all of which could affect young children’s development.

The EU says that TikTok's "addictive design" is illegal under the DSA, citing the app's infinite scroll and recommendation algorithm, in preliminary findings (Adam Satariano/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/business/tiktok-a…

New Study: Evidence shows how X’s algorithmic feed is radicalizing its users toward the Right. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature
Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared with those remaining on a chronological feed, whereas switching the feed setting in the opposite direction, from algorithmic to chronological, had no effect.

Why does calling out a hallucination feel like calling someone’s kid "ugly"?
We’ve stopped treating AI like software and started treating it like a protégé. Here’s why criticizing an algorithm has suddenly become so personal.
https://www.ocrampal.com/why-criticizing-a

Why Criticizing AI Feels Like Criticizing Someone’s Child
I’m not questioning the usefulness of LLMs and AI in general. What I am questioning is its ability to achieve intelligence. Large Language Models (LLMs) are remarkable tools—tools to augment one’s intelligence—just as a search engine, or Wikipedia have done before them. I use them daily.

I’m sorry that your precious little token based markov algorithm that you think of as human isn’t useful, but it’s not useful.

I won’t lose any sleep over it, but for some reason YouTube’s algorithm is showing me way too many (any is too many) ads for women’s deodorants lately.

An experiment finds X's feed algorithm favored conservative content, and switching to the "For you" feed shifted users' views toward more conservative positions (Ece Yildirim/Gizmodo)
https://gizmodo.com/researchers-find-t

X's Algorithm Pushes Users to Lean More Conservative, Researchers Find
The algorithm also doesn't like posts by traditional news media, the researchers found.

ALGORITHM OR ALLY? AI, GLOBAL ENGLISH, AND THE FUTURE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/02/28/algorithm-or-ally-ai-global-english-and-the-future-of-language-learning

Welfarist Formulations for Diverse Similarity Search
Siddharth Barman, Nirjhar Das, Shivam Gupta, Kirankumar Shiragur
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08742 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.08742 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.08742
arXiv:2602.08742v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Nearest Neighbor Search (NNS) is a fundamental problem in data structures with wide-ranging applications, such as web search, recommendation systems, and, more recently, retrieval-augmented generations (RAG). In such recent applications, in addition to the relevance (similarity) of the returned neighbors, diversity among the neighbors is a central requirement. In this paper, we develop principled welfare-based formulations in NNS for realizing diversity across attributes. Our formulations are based on welfare functions -- from mathematical economics -- that satisfy central diversity (fairness) and relevance (economic efficiency) axioms. With a particular focus on Nash social welfare, we note that our welfare-based formulations provide objective functions that adaptively balance relevance and diversity in a query-dependent manner. Notably, such a balance was not present in the prior constraint-based approach, which forced a fixed level of diversity and optimized for relevance. In addition, our formulation provides a parametric way to control the trade-off between relevance and diversity, providing practitioners with flexibility to tailor search results to task-specific requirements. We develop efficient nearest neighbor algorithms with provable guarantees for the welfare-based objectives. Notably, our algorithm can be applied on top of any standard ANN method (i.e., use standard ANN method as a subroutine) to efficiently find neighbors that approximately maximize our welfare-based objectives. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach is practical and substantially improves diversity while maintaining high relevance of the retrieved neighbors.
toXiv_bot_toot

Addicted to the algorithm – New research exposes how #BigTech lobbies to keep us hooked on #SocialMedia
Olivier Hoedeman, @… research and campaign coordinator:
> The addictive design of social media has become a major societal problem with serious impacts on public #health and endangering the future of #democracy.
05.02.2026 #DiDay #ChildProtecion #SocialMediaBan #DigitalFairnessAct #DFA #Meta #Google #Bildung #FediLZ #Demokratie

An experiment finds X's feed algorithm favored conservative content, and switching to the "For you" feed shifted users' views toward more conservative positions (Ece Yildirim/Gizmodo)
https://gizmodo.com/researchers-find-t

X's Algorithm Pushes Users to Lean More Conservative, Researchers Find
The algorithm also doesn't like posts by traditional news media, the researchers found.

TikTok says the new US entity has not updated its algorithm since the joint venture was announced, after users accused it of suppressing posts related to ICE (David McCabe/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/us/tiktok-ice-minneapolis-techni…

TikTok Blames Technical Problems After Users Claimed It Blocked ICE Posts
Some users had accused the app of blocking them from posting videos about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The app said it was a power outage issue.

ALGORITHM OR ALLY? AI, GLOBAL ENGLISH, AND THE FUTURE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/02/28/algorithm-or-ally-ai-global-english-and-the-future-of-language-learning

An analysis of 1,000 YouTube Shorts videos recommended to kids: the algorithm pushes bizarre, often nonsensical, AI-generated videos, and many lack disclosures (Arijeta Lajka/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/us/ai-videos-children-youtube.html…

How A.I.-Generated Videos Are Distorting Your Child’s YouTube Feed
Experts caution that low-quality, A.I.-generated videos on YouTube geared toward children often feature conflicting information, lack plot structure and can be cognitively overwhelming — all of which could affect young children’s development.

X says it has open sourced its "core recommendation system" on GitHub and that the system "ranks everything using a Grok-based transformer model" (Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/20/x-op

X open sources its algorithm while facing a transparency fine and Grok controversies | TechCrunch
In a post to GitHub on Tuesday, the social media giant purported to share its secret sauce.

AMC Networks' Sundance Now rebrands from offering scripted TV to airing indie film and festival titles, for $7.99/month, as this year's Sundance Festival begins (Mia Galuppo/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodrepor…

Sundance Now to Rebrand as “Algorithm-Free” Streaming Service for Indie Film
AMC Networks runs the shingle that previously had scripted TV offerings.

China's Cyberspace Administration requires firms to file their AI tools in a public algorithm registry, creating a detailed map of the country's AI ecosystem (Yi-Ling Liu/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/china-ai-boom-algorithm-registry/

Thousands of Companies Are Driving China’s AI Boom. A Government Registry Tracks Them All
How the Cyberspace Administration of China inadvertently made a guide to the country’s homegrown AI revolution.

TikTok says the new US entity has not updated its algorithm since the joint venture was announced, after users accused it of suppressing posts related to ICE (David McCabe/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/us/tiktok-ice-minneapolis-techni…

TikTok Blames Technical Problems After Users Claimed It Blocked ICE Posts
Some users had accused the app of blocking them from posting videos about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The app said it was a power outage issue.

ALGORITHM OR ALLY? AI, GLOBAL ENGLISH, AND THE FUTURE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING
https://ift.tt/ecnp2T8
updated: Sunday, March 1, 2026 - 7:01amfull name / name of organization: MLA LSL Global English…
via Input 4 RELCFP …

TikTok US says it is working to restore services after a power outage at a data center and any algorithm changes users noticed were likely due to the outage (Dan Whateley/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-outage-data-cent…

TikTok says a power outage messed up users' feeds over the weekend
TikTok said a power outage at a US data center on Sunday impacted its services, including its For You feeds.

Crosslisted article(s) found for cs.DS. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.DS/new
[1/1]:
- A Fault-Tolerant Version of Safra's Termination Detection Algorithm
Wan Fokkink, Georgios Karlos, Andy Tatman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00272 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDC_bot/116005743114928343
- Non-Clashing Teaching in Graphs: Algorithms, Complexity, and Bounds
Sujoy Bhore, Liana Khazaliya, Fionn Mc Inerney
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00657 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCC_bot/116005533092908045
- Sublinear Time Quantum Algorithm for Attention Approximation
Zhao Song, Jianfei Xue, Jiahao Zhang, Lichen Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00874 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_quantph_bot/116006587128552159
- Hallucination is a Consequence of Space-Optimality: A Rate-Distortion Theorem for Membership Testing
Anxin Guo, Jingwei Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00906 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/116006973804501595
- Counting Unit Circular Arc Intersections
Haitao Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01074 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCG_bot/116005535191670040
- Profit Maximization in Closed Social Networks
Poonam Sharma, Suman Banerjee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01232 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSI_bot/116005691056225955
- Totally $\Delta$-Modular Tree Decompositions of Graphic Matrices for Integer Programming
Caleb McFarland
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01499 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathCO_bot/116006381339684193
- Finite and Corruption-Robust Regret Bounds in Online Inverse Linear Optimization under M-Convex A...
Taihei Oki, Shinsaku Sakaue
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01682 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/116007186801693076
- Stable Matching with Predictions: Robustness and Efficiency under Pruned Preferences
Samuel McCauley, Benjamin Moseley, Helia Niaparast, Shikha Singh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02254 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csGT_bot/116005915605630934
- Deciding Reachability and the Covering Problem with Diagnostics for Sound Acyclic Free-Choice Wor...
Thomas M. Prinz, Christopher T. Schwanen, Wil M. P. van der Aalst
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02447 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csFL_bot/116005733006023408
toXiv_bot_toot

Google Research details TurboQuant, a quantization algorithm to enable massive compression of LLMs and vector search engines without sacrificing accuracy (Google Research)
https://research.google/blog/turboquant-redefining-ai-efficiency-with-extreme…

TurboQuant: Redefining AI efficiency with extreme compression

US memory chip stocks lost ~$100B in market value this week, led by Micron's 15% drop, after Google Research detailed its TurboQuant compression algorithm (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/e4e15692-187e-4466-832e-ec267e792292

The US' TikTok deal is a win for ByteDance: it will keep and license the algorithm instead of selling it, and continue to run TikTok's commercial activities (Jim Secreto/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/59b91fc8-03a1-48df-9821-e2fdff24bd33
<…

> #X is no longer an open and balanced tool for political #communication or #journalism, since algorithm changes in the wake of Elon #Musk’s takeover. … The @… and national governments should not communicate on a platform where women cannot participate in the debate without risking image-based sexual violence.
…
Our national #security and #democratic health depend on citizens being able to access and participate in open, inclusive debate, and without…
3/4

Spotify announces Taste Profile editing in beta, the first time it lets users fine-tune the recommendation algorithm, starting with Premium users in New Zealand (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/13/spotify-…

Spotify will let you edit your Taste Profile to control your recommendations | TechCrunch
When you edit your Taste Profile, you'll impact your personalized playlists like Discover Weekly, recommendations, and Wrapped.

Modelling SARS-CoV-2 epidemics via compartmental and cellular automaton SEIRS model with temporal immunity and vaccination
J. Ilnytskyi, T. Patsahan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22498 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.22498 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.22498
arXiv:2603.22498v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We consider the SEIRS epidemiology model with such features of the COVID-19 outbreak as: abundance of unidentified infected individuals, limited time of immunity and a possibility of vaccination. The control of the pandemic dynamics is possible by restricting the transmission rate, increasing identification and isolation rate of infected individuals, and via vaccination. For the compartmental version of this model, we found stable disease-free and endemic stationary states. The basic reproductive number is analysed with respect to balancing quarantine and vaccination measures. The positions and heights of the first peak of outbreak are obtained numerically and fitted to simple in usage algebraic forms. Lattice-based realization of this model is studied by means of the asynchronous cellular automaton algorithm. This permitted to study the effect of social distancing by varying the neighbourhood size of the model. The attempt is made to match the quarantine and vaccination effects.
toXiv_bot_toot

Good Morning #Canada
On this International Day of Happiness I think we should check on Canada’s world ranking on the #Happiness scale. It appears we're are not happy.
I've put some blame on #PeePee in the past for negatively impacting Canadian satisfaction surveys because he incessantly tells us we're broken. Yes, he is exploiting rel issues but maybe working on real solutions would be a better approach. The latest World Happiness Report 2026 has Canada falling 25th place, continuing a downward trend - 18th in 2025 and 13th in 2024. The report suggests that countries who use social media for 5 hours a day, particularly young people, are less happy than those who are doomscrolling less. IMO our youth are not happy because their salaries can't keep pace with the cost of living, but an algorithm would constantly reinforce that if you're active on the platforms owned by U.S. tech bros.
Happy I'm on #Mastodon

#CanadaIsAwesome #ItsTheAlgorithm
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/world-happiness-2026-canada-25-9.7134296