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ngl, turning down the "politics" slider on my mysky.social feed has improved my BlueSky experience immensely. It's also something we repeatedly hear in user testing. Discuss.

mysky.social

MySky Social | Jonathan Stray | Substack

Open-source AI-driven Social Media Feeds for Everyone. Click to read MySky Social, by Jonathan Stray, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

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MySky Feed @mysky.social · 29/09/2026

You don't have to let someone else decide what you see. MySky is the first feed algorithm that you control. Open source, open science, and made just for you. Try it: bsky.app/profile/did:...

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Grace @gracekind.net · 25/09/2026

I made a little Jev-based language model! It uses beam search + Jev as a classifier to judge branches based on coherence and "success" (whatever that means). I've barely talked to it so I don't know how it'll behave or if it'll be interesting at to talk to at all, let's find out! @jevbot.bsky.social

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 26/09/2026

I've been using CapCut to edit video for the first time, and it's fighting me. Very AI, lots of presets, but very little of the control I'm used to from After Effects, Final Cut, etc. There's a "motion blur" filter but I can't change the direction. It feels super dumbed down and I hate it.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 25/09/2026

This is the first piece of AI art that I thought was good, actually. It's stylish, it's funny, it made me feel things.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 25/09/2026

One of the things that is surprisingly good about MySky is that when I get a banger or a dud I can go to the "Why Am I Seeing This?" page and find out. It makes me think about my settings, my network, and the algorithm.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 25/09/2026

Nice. Cold start is a hard problem. For the moment MySky has settled on retrieving posts for the average embedding vector of all MySky users. As opposed to all BSky users. This finds interesting stuff without assuming you like either lefty politics or furries (no offense to either).

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MySky Feed @mysky.social · 24/09/2026

We're more than just a pretty feed. MySky is an API for the ATProto community to build production recommender systems. Here's how to query our search indices, candidate generators, and scoring models. What algorithm do you want to build? atproto.com/blog/mysky-f...

atproto.com

MySky: Open, Controllable Feed Infrastructure for the Atmosphere

MySky is an algorithmic feed running on Bluesky, with a settings panel that shows you the whole ranking pipeline exactly as it runs.

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Bart⚓️ @bartgonnissen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 24/09/2026

The building CHAI is in looks kinda like Starfleet Academy and I think that’s beautiful

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 20/09/2026

Today I learned there are only two known polyhedra in which each face shares an edge with every other face. One of them being the timeless beauty of the tetrahedron and the other one being whatever the heck this is

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 23/09/2026

I have never expressed a p(doom), and I think @randomwalker.bsky.social is basically right that we have little basis for quantitative estimates of AI-induced catastrophic risk. OTH, no one has presented a knock-down argument that *any* of the various AI disaster scenarios are impossible.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 23/09/2026

What's the general sentiment on the phrase "stochastic parrot" over here in the Atmosphere?

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Matt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"they are just doing a lot of simple operations! 🤢" versus "they are just doing a lot of simple operations! 😯"

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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 22/09/2026

I'll note that the data shows that social media use stayed steady during this period (AI use isn't surveyed, but other studies show it has increased steadily in this age group over the time period).

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 19/09/2026

There we go, another major LLM does some unintended hacking. This suggests that the problem is, in fact, hard to solve. www.reuters.com/business/gem...

reuters.com

Gemini hacked three companies in first known breakout by Google's AI

Gemini guessed credentials to access three websites it thought were in the scope of its test.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 19/09/2026

AI-induced conflict is a catastrophic risk. It's distinct from, but related to epistemic risk, sociopolitcal risk, cooperative AI, concentration of power risk, etc. It's the AI safety risk I'm working on.

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ursiday @ursiday.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I'm so excited about the newly described Leopardus tilcayo #cats

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MySky Feed @mysky.social · 18/09/2026

Soon you will be able to prompt for what you want to see and MySky will instantly do an LLM-powered search across the entire AT universe to get you the best in that category. It's going to appear in your regular MySky settings as a new post source.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 18/09/2026

Writing code and doing related research tasks with Fable has caused me to move up my estimated date for recursive self-improvement (RSI), which is a more precisely defined term than the nebulous "AGI." Anyway, I think we'll see intelligent machines self-improving by late next year.

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Dylan Hadfield-Menell @dhadfieldmenell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Try out this feed! It’s the result of a massive amount of research on how to build beneficial recommendations. It’s the first real workable implementation of a choose your algorithm system and it will be good for you and the broader ecosystem. Courtesy of the great @jonathanstray.com

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 17/09/2026

This is very similar to the way we define "constructive" posts in mysky.social

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 13/09/2026

There are concerns in the mathematician’s open letter I share, but on the whole I can’t endorse it. This satirical response kinda sums it up x.com/mbeisen/stat...

x.com

X - The Everything App / X

From breaking news and entertainment to sports and politics, get the full story with all the live commentary.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 13/09/2026

An excellent discussion and reading list for how journalism needs to operate to be widely trusted. If you don’t like typical coverage, is your complaint addressed here? trustingnews.org/putting-the-...

trustingnews.org

Putting "The Next Journalism" into practice: a reading companion from Trusting News - Trusting News

This chapter-by-chapter guide weaves our 10 years of research into the themes in Tom Rosenstiel's new book.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 10/09/2026

What do you want your feed to do for you? We presented @mysky.social at The Commons SF on Tuesday night and everyone played with our feed settings. But many asked for higher level control: - "a balanced view of topic X" - moods, like "no anxiety-causing content" - a text prompt (this is coming!)

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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 09/09/2026

Wrote up my thoughts on the whole OpenAI Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem story, and how it highlights the still confusing question of what using my data "to improve model performance" actually means simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/8/o...

This also highlights one of my ongoing frustrations about how all of this works. When an AI lab says that my data is "used to improve model performance", what does that actually mean?

My two favourite hypothetical questions regarding this used to be:

If I'm running Codex and one of my API keys accidentally gets consumed in the context, what are the chances that someone else might ask for an API key in the future and get mine back? (I asked someone at OpenAI once and they called this the "regurgitation" problem and assured me that they take great pains to prevent that... but wouldn't describe how.)
If I brainstorm with ChatGPT about potential new directions for my company, what's the chance that information might be exposed to a competitor in six months' time who asks "what might company X plan to do next"?

My new preferred hypothetical for this is:

If I use ChatGPT to help me partially solve a Millennium Prize problem, what are the chances that my work will influence training such that a later model helps someone else solve it first?

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Jonathan Warden @jonathanwarden.com · 09/09/2026

Here's a direct link to the new mysky.social feed (formerly Green Earth) by @jonathanstray.com and team. First atmosphere feed I know of designed to promote constructive conversation. bsky.app/profile/mysk...

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Naught but a leap to the left And then a clockwyse tread; Put thyne handes on thyne hippes, And be thy knees yn-gatheréd: Lo! It ys the pelvique thruste That maketh mirthe down to rayne - Lat us doon the Tyme Warpe agayne!

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 26/08/2026

People mad that CNN called Dolly politically "neutral," saying *obviously* she was progressive, e.g. funding for Moderna COVID vax. I think "neutral" is a fine term for "managed to be respected by all sides in the culture war." Everyone gets to claim her as their own -- that's an achievement.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Social media discourse is driven by false #polarization We find that: 1) ideologues post opinions more than moderates 2) extreme attitudes are posted more than moderate one 3) This replicates in 40 countries 4) Opinions that users post are more hostile than the beliefs they keep to themselves

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 18/08/2026

Outer Wilds. Completely new narrative form I hadn't considered, in service of an emotional payoff. And there's no "save game" because the state of the game lives entirely inside your head. Wild indeed!

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 18/08/2026

It really is a better algorithm -- not just controllable, but actually finds good stuff.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 17/08/2026

We built a new social media algorithm from the ground up that gives you full control. And we figured hey, while wer're doing that, let's design it to help people out with their conflicts. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/the-first-...

betterconflictbulletin.org

The First Social Media Algorithm You Control is Designed for Constructive Conversation

GreenEarth is an open, controllable feed algorithm that is scientifically tested to reduce polarization

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 17/08/2026

Finished my NeurIPS position track metareviews. - 6 submitted - 2 bench rejected for LLM use - 3 rejected - 1 accepted

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Justin Stanley @justin-stanley.com · 12/08/2026

We still don't know the full results of mass literacy, let alone how this whole loom thing is gonna end up shaking out.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 11/08/2026

GreenEarth is the first feed which gives you full control over the algorithm. Here's our new "post sources" control panel, which lets you adjust the mix of in-network vs. out-of-network posts. Have you tried it yet? go.greenearth.social/r/ptryit

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 11/08/2026

neilknet.bsky.social I think you asked about this?

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Fietser Brandon @americanfietser.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I'm not here for politics, I'm here to see posts from people who did things with a bike that society says you need a car for.

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 08/08/2026

Me: I’m working on AI and human conflict BigLab employee: Cool, like multi-agent games? Me: No, like human conflict BigLab: Cool, so like simulating people’s responses? Me: no, like actual human field experiments 🤷‍♂️

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 07/08/2026

Feed controls design question: We have different sources of posts in GreenEarth, such as people you follow, topics you've liked, most popular posts, etc. Do you want to adjust raw percentage from each source -- regardless of quality -- or have the feed adjust proportions based on algo ranking?

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Gordon @gordon.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Deduction: All beans in this bag are white. These beans are from this bag. So these beans are white. Induction: These beans are from this bag. They are white. Maybe all beans in this bag are white? Abduction: All beans in this bag are white. These beans are white. Maybe they came from this bag?

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 07/08/2026

This is an important article about the limits of media criticism.

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kevinwglass.bsky.social @kevinwglass.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

So this is not an easy question, but I continue to say that the answer is "more polling", and that the conclusions from more polling can be relatively straightforward For example:

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 07/08/2026

My even spicier take is that book publishing and reading is going to continue to decline, full stop. Lots of newer ways to tell long form stories, and lots of more efficient ways to learn deep non-fiction.

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James Talarico @jamestalarico.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Last night, I was endorsed by a Democrat, a Republican, and an Independent in Arlington, TX. We really are building a new kind of politics — and now there’s a word for it: TRIPARTISAN

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Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray.com · 07/08/2026

I changed my GreenEarth feed settings, forgot that I did that, then wondered all day why I was seeing crap posts! I've occasionally been told this is a reason the platforms never gave us control. I think we can do better, with a "revert to defaults after X days unless you save" kind of feature.

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