Methodology Chapter 08 of 08
How Moods filter the feed.
Some days call for a different feed. Moods are the switch for that: named filters at the top of the feed that each narrow what appears by one stated rule. Only good news. Only the biggest stories. Only the coverage one side of the spectrum is carrying. A mood never changes how the feed is ranked: it decides what is in the pool, your Feed Formula orders whatever remains, and All News brings everything back.
Two stories, two blindspots.
Cycle between two one-sided Stories: one covered by 5 left, 1 center, and 13 right rated newsrooms, the other by 16 left, 2 center, and 1 right.
Showing Blindspot Story 1 of 2: Rubio Deports Walz-Pardoned Child Sex Offender
What switching a mood does
The feed starts in All News, which filters nothing. Switching a mood on applies its rule to both the Articles and Stories views; switching it off, or back to All News, is the whole undo. Three properties hold for every mood, built in or your own.
Membership, never ranking
A mood decides which articles and Stories are in the feed, and nothing else. It adds no points and removes none, so whatever survives is ranked by your Feed Formula exactly as it is in All News, and every score badge still shows the same math.
One written rule each
Every mood explains itself in one sentence, printed under its name in the menu, and each sentence stands for a precise rule this chapter states in full. There is no mood whose rule is not written down.
Nothing new is measured
A mood reads only labels and counts that already exist and are documented in these chapters: the type, topic, and tone labels from the Article labels chapter, the coverage breadth from the Feed ranking chapter, and the lean counts built on the Publisher ratings and Sourcing chapters. Switching moods computes nothing new about you or the news.
The moods in the menu
Three built moods ship in the menu, each with its explainer printed under its name. The sentence is the promise; here is the precise rule behind each one.
- Feel-good Only positive, uplifting stories, with politics and world news hidden
- Politics and world news are hidden, and what remains qualifies only by tone: an article must be tagged positive, and a Story qualifies only when at least half of its tone-tagged coverage is positive. A Story where negative coverage reaches half never qualifies, and even inside a qualifying Story, only its positive articles are shown. Neutral coverage is not used to fill space.
- Catch Up Only the most widely covered stories right now
- Only Stories whose coverage breadth sits in roughly the top tenth of every Story being tracked right now, measured the same reprint-collapsed way as the Coverage Breadth signal in the Feed ranking chapter. In the Articles view, each qualifying Story shows its three highest-ranked articles. An article that is not part of any Story never qualifies, because a big story has multiple newsrooms on it by definition.
- Blindspot Only stories covered mostly by one side of the political spectrum
- Politics and world Stories whose rated coverage comes mostly from one side. Because the roster carries more left-rated outlets than right-rated ones, “mostly” is measured against how today's whole pool splits rather than against an even split: a side qualifies when its share of a Story's left-plus-right newsrooms beats that side's ordinary share by at least 25 points, the Story has at least three left-or-right newsrooms and four rated newsrooms in total, and the leading side also outnumbers center. Both directions appear in one feed, reprints count once so a syndicated chain cannot make a story look one-sided, and the Articles view works like Catch Up's.
Moods you make
My Moods composes a mood of your own from five blocks. Set as many as you like; they combine strictly, so an article appears only when it passes every block you set. A mood you create is stored on your phone, and its definition travels with your feed request only while it is switched on.
- Topics Only these, or hide these
- Broad subjects such as sports or business, and specific topics such as a country, a team, or a person. Keep only matching coverage, or hide it.
- Publishers Only these outlets, or without them
- A list of outlets you choose, kept or hidden as a set.
- Article types Only these kinds of writing
- News reports, opinion, analysis, editorials, features, and reviews, using the type label the Article labels chapter describes.
- Tone Hide negative, or uplifting only
- Two strengths of one control: drop coverage tagged negative, or keep only coverage tagged positive. The stricter setting is the same rule Feel-good uses.
- Big stories Only the most widely covered
- The same coverage gate Catch Up uses, so any mood you build can start from the biggest stories.
The definitions themselves
No model decides what a mood keeps, and nothing is judged at the moment you switch one on. A mood is a small fixed definition: the labels to require, the labels to hide, the gates to apply. The three menu moods are printed below as exactly the definitions they resolve to, in the same form a mood you build takes.
The menu moods, written out
One definition per menu mood, in the format a feed request carries: a hidden topic set, a tone requirement, a coverage gate, a direction test. A mood you build in My Moods is this same kind of object with your own choices in the slots.
Feel-good
{
"schema_version": 1,
"topics": { "mode": "hide", "values": ["politics", "world"] },
"tone": "uplifting"
}
Catch Up
{
"schema_version": 1,
"big_stories": true
}
Blindspot
{
"schema_version": 1,
"blindspots": { "directions": ["left", "right"] }
}The boundary
What a mood never does
- A mood never learns. Switching moods writes nothing down and teaches the ranking nothing. A mood is on only because you switched it on, it stays on only until you switch it off, and All News restores the whole feed.
- A mood never follows you into a Story. Opening any Story or Big Picture shows its full coverage from every side; the filter narrows the feed, never the record.
- A thin day is shown thin. When little qualifies the feed is short, and when nothing does it says so, in words like “No uplifting stories right now”, rather than quietly relaxing the rule to fill the space.
- Blindspot describes coverage, not you. It reports which side is carrying a story, in both directions at once, and makes no guess about your politics.
- Your settings still apply. A mood filters on top of what you have already chosen, never instead of it: a Blocked publisher or topic stays gone in every mood.