site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2362 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 8, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In other words, they try pretty hard.

I don't think they do. They certainly could but frankly their recommendation algorithms have always been utter garbage and they've gone out of their way to make it impossible for users to even manually help them. For example I can't say "Never recommend this artist for this playlist" nor can I say "Never recommend this album or song for anything (but do recommend other songs from this artist)". Their recommendations to playlists keep repeating the same small number of songs over and over and can't even distinguish multiple identical versions (so a playlist that has song X from the original album will get recommendations for song X from a compilation album).

This runs in parallel with them having a massive team to work on the Spotify client with the result that it has only degraded with time since people need to justfify their existence while the real development needs could be filled by just a couple of small teams.

I find the "discover weekly" recommendations not bad, and "release radar " sometimes has something I want to hear. Totally agree that radio is dogshit though.

Until recently the shuffle algorithm was also totally fucked and would get stuck in loops - literally play e.g. 20 songs, then go back and play those same 20 again. I don't know what the fuck kind of shuffle algorithm could result in that, but it rinsed several tracks so bad I can't listen to them anymore.

Now they are trying to push Spotify as a video platform so sometimes I open the app and see some ridiculous TDS thumbnail. I'd probably jump ship if there was another platform with good music recommendation algorithms. I don't know what the eight thousand Spotify employees are doing all day, but I'm not sure it's making my life better.

I don't know what the fuck kind of shuffle algorithm could result in that, but it rinsed several tracks so bad I can't listen to them anymore.

There is a new function that will go back through your whole listening history and find songs that you listened to a lot at one point, and then stopped playing. I think it just heavily weights skips as "I don't actually like this song" rather than "Not in the mood just now, but there's a reason it's on the playlist."

I just want a braindead "roll the dice" shuffle. Yeah, it might result in some tracks playing twice in a surprisingly short window, but you can do a lot worse (repeating sequences of 20 tracks) and you can't easily do a lot better in my view.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats