Challenges with BYOA and social networks

Discussion of bring-your-own-algorithm (BYOA) for social networks raises several challenges, according to the article. It notes that world-class consumer apps in 2024 use machine learning based feeds, which consumers prefer by time spent, and that building a good ML feed requires significant resources. A feed marketplace would likely need a backend where developers upload models that clients run, raising privacy concerns. A developer building a Farcaster client, Kartik, reported that feed performance was much harder than expected and that running the backend cost about $2k per month for a few hundred active users.