Tech Talk: From Feeds to Labelers with Ændra Rininsland
A Tech Talk with Ændra Rininsland, from her work on the News Feed, the XBlock Screenshot Labeler, and more
Ændra Rininsland is joining us to talk about her work on Bluesky and AT Protocol, including running Bluesky's largest News feed and implementing the XBlock Screenshot Labeler.
I joined Bluesky both because I was curious about its new approach to doing decentralised microblogging at scale and also because it felt like it was a place where news media could live, that wasn't owned by a single corporate entity like Twitter.
I also created the News feed, which is a custom curation of news content automatically generated when verified news orgs publish headlines. Currently, it's the most popular source for news content on the platform.
Find out more on her website, including lots of great blog posts and project listings with more details:
Follow her on Bluesky @aendra.com
XBlock
The Xblock Screenshot Labeler does auto-detection and labeling of Twitter/X and other platform screenshots.
According to Internect.info, I created the @xblock.aendra.dev account on 4 March, 2024 (in reality, it was closer to April when the labeller came online, albeit as an entirely manual process). Since then, it has processed over 3 million images and labelled about over 132,000 screenshot posts, with a few over 500 mislabelled reports handled by myself via the moderation interface.
I welcome attempts to build things on top of XBlock's label firehose, models, and firehose consumer (all of which are open source) – please feel free to (though I'd love it if you could mention me so I know that you are!).
Video
Chatlog
00:15:36 Gov: Just black for me
00:15:37 will: blank for me
00:15:39 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Looks blank for me?
00:15:47 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Good!
00:15:48 Gov: Good now!
00:18:53 Boris Mann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotDog
00:19:13 Boris Mann: (I love that this software has the default URI on wikipedia)
00:19:22 Gov: Reacted to "(I love that this ..." with 😂
00:19:27 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "(I love that this so..." with 😂
00:19:29 Tom: Reacted to "(I love that this so..." with 😂
00:19:32 Michael Staub: Reacted to "(I love that this so..." with 😂
00:20:58 will: Reacted to "(I love that this so..." with 😂
00:21:55 Boris Mann: pMachine was my first blog system
00:23:01 Michael Staub: Joomla!
00:28:38 Boris Mann: Adding additional lines to the DID doc around alternate verifications is definitely a thing that could be layered on ATProto
00:31:31 Michael Staub: Reacted to "Adding additional li..." with 👍
00:38:45 jon: And all these features are good not just for journalists!
00:42:22 Rudy Fraser: These are great questions.
00:42:28 Boris Mann: Yep!
00:43:08 jon: Reacted to "These are great ques..." with 💯
00:44:17 Michael Staub: Reacted to "These are great ques..." with 💯
00:44:21 jon: It’s tricky though because not removing something from the feed is also editorial control. I don’t think there are any right or wrong answers in general, as Rudy says great questions
00:44:52 Boris Mann: The desire for governance
00:46:14 Boris Mann: I follow a lot of US friends (I’m in Canada) and whenever a new main character appears in the US, I add them to a mute list
00:46:44 will: news burnout is real
00:47:39 will: would be interested in any stats on quantity of negative headlines over time, although I suppose negative is fairly subjective
00:50:48 Boris Mann: Totally obvious to build a machine learning model 😛
00:50:53 Tom: Reacted to "Totally obvious to b..." with 😂
00:54:09 Boris Mann: Mastodonian ideals
00:54:31 Boris Mann: Atmospherical vibes
00:54:52 psingletary.me: mmmm stats
00:55:22 jon: Mastodon’s CWs are an interesting idea whose implementation hasn’t really progressed since early 2017 where it was designed primarily for spoilers. Frustrating!
00:56:26 Rudy Fraser: Can’t believe there are so many FB screenshots
00:57:06 Gov: kinda cool that we could use a system like this to build something like ground.news as a feed on bsky
00:58:02 Boris Mann: Reacted to "kinda cool that we c..." with 👏
00:58:51 psingletary.me: LUL
00:58:53 Boris Mann: Bonus points for Potemkin village
00:59:11 will: waiting for the new captcha to be "click all the squares that are a facebook screenshot"
00:59:17 Michael Staub: I think the user base of threads is mostly instagram users, which are generally very different than Twitter users
00:59:45 Gov: Reacted to "I think the user b..." with 👍
01:00:07 Chris Small: Replying to "I think the user bas..."
Yea agreed, I’m on there from time to time and it’s very much instagram people there
01:02:44 Tom: Woah
01:07:01 Michael Staub: What base model are you fine tuning?
01:07:38 Boris Mann: Reacted to "What base model are ..." with ❔
01:09:04 Michael Staub: MiniCPM-V might be better than google
01:09:26 Gov: Reacted to "MiniCPM-V might be..." with 👀
01:10:53 psingletary.me: haha that's great
01:12:29 jon: I have to take off, great session — very interesting and informative!
01:14:13 Michael Staub: Apple just shipped something similar FYI: https://9to5mac.com/2024/07/31/theres-an-emoji-for-that-meet-genmoji/
01:14:16 Boris Mann: Countdown to Kardashian Bluemoji pack
01:14:32 Michael Staub: Reacted to "Countdown to Kardash..." with 👍
01:14:40 Gov: Reacted to "Countdown to Karda..." with 😂
01:14:43 talo: Reacted to "Countdown to Kardash..." with 😂
01:14:44 Boris Mann: The Jay Elfcore Moss Bluemoji Pack funds Bsky
01:14:53 Michael Staub: Reacted to "Countdown to Kardash..." with 😂
01:14:58 Boris Mann: I don’t even want to imagine the money from a Paulinho Pack
01:15:25 Boris Mann: Lottie is very cool https://lottiefiles.com/
01:16:02 Michael Staub: Reacted to "Lottie is very cool ..." with 👍
01:16:13 talo: Reacted to "Lottie is very cool ..." with ❤️
01:16:32 Boris Mann: Collective standards work
01:17:13 Ændra Rininsland: Reacted to "Great to finally mee..." with ❤️
01:18:28 Nick Gerakines (he/him): How much of your experimentation and infrastructure is running in your residence and do you feel like that has made development easier and more accessible?
01:22:37 psingletary.me: "Tinkering" is great way for anyone to learn. It means accessibility by all.
01:22:59 Gov: Reacted to ""Tinkering" is gre..." with 🙌
01:23:01 Michael Staub: Reacted to ""Tinkering" is great..." with 🙌
01:23:11 Nick Gerakines (he/him): How do you feel the huge growth in non-english speaking audiences is going to impact tools like this? Do you worry about having language / locale / region specific feeds and services preventing broad adoption?
01:23:15 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to ""Tinkering" is gre..." with 🙌
01:25:20 Boris Mann: “Redirects”
01:25:21 Rudy Fraser: Been asking for this after getting some harassment for Blacksky
01:25:26 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "Countdown to Karda..." with 😂
01:25:35 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "“Redirects”" with 💯
01:26:04 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "Been asking for th..." with 😦
01:26:10 Paul Frazee: Replying to "Been asking for this..."
yeah we can manually intervene with a hackfix
01:26:30 psingletary.me: labeling the image blogs themselves rather than the post
01:26:47 Paul Frazee: Replying to "Been asking for this..."
soon as you’re sure lmk we’ll get into gear on it
01:26:57 psingletary.me: *blobs
01:26:59 Michael Staub: Reacted to "yeah we can manually..." with 👍
01:27:03 Rudy Fraser: Reacted to "soon as you’re sure ..." with 👍🏾
01:27:31 Paul Frazee: yeah ^ not in love with that situation, we just didnt build labeling with that in mind
01:27:48 psingletary.me: Reacted to "yeah ^ not in love..." with 👍
01:31:09 psingletary.me: yeah post/ image reports that reference the labels of the labelers AND then localization, that could streamline the 3rd party labeling alot. but i also imagine that would be UI + "system" change 1. i report to xblock, 2. I report using xblocks labels in localized label version
01:31:40 Paul Frazee: we’re going to be working on some app improvements with the various languages too btw
01:31:55 Gov: Reacted to "we’re going to be..." with 🙌
01:31:55 psingletary.me: Reacted to "we’re going to be..." with ❤️
01:31:59 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "we’re going to be..." with 🎉
01:32:09 will: thanks for the talk 👏
ATProtocol Dev is a blog, newsletter, and event series following the development of protocol apps building on top of ATProtocol, which powers the Bluesky micro-blogging network and an emerging set of open social apps.