I feel like a smuggler. I closed my Twitter account due to such shenanigans, and now read my favorite tweeters via Nitter RSS feeds. None of the various Twitter bovine excrement comes along for the ride, just the words of the people I intend to follow, in the order posted. No ads, no trending topics, no shocking takes from a friend of a friend of a friend. And for me the read-only nature of this arrangement is a bonu…
Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
21–30 of 235 posts
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#22The userscript also fixes the reverse-chronological issue. There's literally a setting that enables one to force "Latest Tweets First" mode, so it'll switch back to the "latest" feed whenever Twitter has decided that you should be viewing their "home" feed instead.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#23[0] https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#24I feel like a smuggler. I closed my Twitter account due to such shenanigans, and now read my favorite tweeters via Nitter RSS feeds. None of the various Twitter bovine excrement comes along for the ride, just the words of the people I intend to follow, in the order posted. No ads, no trending topics, no shocking takes from a friend of a friend of a friend. And for me the read-only nature of this arrangement is a bonu…
What do you mean plugged? Twitter will find a way to shut down Nitter?
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#25They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…
> They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline Or the simpler explanation is that the chronological timeline isn't actually the preferred setting, outside of a small but vocal minority. If the chronological timeline is somehow hurting their profitability, why would they offer it at all? I think the more obvious explanation is that very few people were actually using it according to their…
If I recall correctly, this was the default. Then they introduced the semi curated algorithmic as a feature. Then replaced chronological and got a ton of backlash. They've been playing a game of capitulation and direction ever since.
> There's nothing stopping Twitter from inserting the same ads at the same frequency just because the Tweets are ordered differently.
The chronological timeline is your connected accounts + ads. The algorithmic timeline is the same but also some "suggestions." Ostensibly this makes it harder to immediately separate ad from, say, an account your friend follows.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#26They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…
With chronological timelines you either "run out" of content (because you've already refreshed like 15 times this hour and read everything the people you follow have said), or you get buried in content you don't want (because you're following people for hairdressing tips and they're all tweeting 20-page threads about why Putin is actually in the right somehow). Eventually you burn out and churn out. With algorithmic…
Simple experiment:
Go to Facebook and use ?sk=h_chr scroll until you "run out" of material, and then check to see if you actually saw all of the recent stuff from a particular friend.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#27They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…
Operant conditioning and intermittent reinforcement are why.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#28They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…
With chronological timelines you either "run out" of content (because you've already refreshed like 15 times this hour and read everything the people you follow have said), or you get buried in content you don't want (because you're following people for hairdressing tips and they're all tweeting 20-page threads about why Putin is actually in the right somehow). Eventually you burn out and churn out. With algorithmic…
But then maybe that's my fault for curating my timeline to show creators and not influencers/talking heads...
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#29They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…
> They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline Or the simpler explanation is that the chronological timeline isn't actually the preferred setting, outside of a small but vocal minority. If the chronological timeline is somehow hurting their profitability, why would they offer it at all? I think the more obvious explanation is that very few people were actually using it according to their…
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel like I'm the only person in the world who likes the "algorithmic" feed. You're not alone. I've switched back and forth but the algorithm wins every time for me. For me, the biggest downside of the chronological feed is that it is dominated by people who Tweet the most, which is an obvious outcome of pure chronological ordering. The algorithmic feed seems to do a good job of showing me Tweets from people I've…
> This is a strange article because Twitter is still giving the chronological fans what they want. They definitely aren't doing that. The problem isn't that we disagree with the default, but that Twitter will not allow users to consistently switch back to the real timeline. The setting does not stick. They are constantly resetting it back; used to be that it could reset back multiple times per day. Now it happens may…