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Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

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Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#101

Post by Markoff »

blacklight wrote: post #93

Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to fo…

why not just mute accounts you don't wanna see unless you ar elooking for them specifically and also disable retweets from people you are not interested in RT

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#102

Post by Thlom »

happytiger wrote: post #46
IRP wrote: post #3

I deeply hate the algorithmic (Home) version. It seems to totally hide the tweets of people who don't have a certain ranking. What's the point of following someone's account if Tweeter doesn't even show me what they are posting?

This is exactly why I’ve more or less stopped using it. Twitter seems to have become not useful.

I only read Twitter through Tweetbot on my phone and have been doing so for like forever. I get a reversed chronological timeline, no ads and no recommendations. I hear people talk about how useless Twitter has become, but for me Twitter has been more or less the same since 2006.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#103

Post by rightbyte »

oblio wrote: post #97
clhodapp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side-note: a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is when they start conflating liking and sharing by implementing the "You follow x, and he liked" feature that you described. Since this clearly violates the user's intention (if you wanted to share something, you would have shared it), this serves as a subtle but distinct signal that manipulating users has become more important than…

> a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is ... when they are created. Social networks are inherently evil, that's their business model: manipulate users into addiction and serve ads. How do non-evil social networks look like? They're forums, plain old forums. But you don't become an ultra trillionaire with PhpBB.

When I joined FB there were no ads and a chronological feed and everything was awesome. Reddit was awesome.

Nowadays they are an evil manipulation mess, but I don't think it is an inherit property of social networks.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#104

Post by Nextgrid »

tehbeard wrote: post #28
kmeisthax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is, not my experience with algorithmic at all... Algorithmic digs up days old posts I saw, commented and liked and slaps them at the front.. the new stuff, the stuff I'd want to see and interact with, just disappears. But then maybe that's my fault for curating my timeline to show creators and not influencers/talking heads...

That's the point - algorithmic artificially lengthens the time you need to actually see new posts by making you scroll through lots of old bullshit - and you guessed it - ads in between and never giving you a clear indicator of when you've all caught up. By contrast, chronological will by default give you the latest stuff (which in case of news is what you want, and might even remove the need for you to see earlier stuff) and makes it super clear to tell when you've reached the end of the new stuff.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#105

Post by capableweb »

Markoff wrote: post #101
blacklight wrote: post #93

Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to fo…

why not just mute accounts you don't wanna see unless you ar elooking for them specifically and also disable retweets from people you are not interested in RT

Neither of those things would implement (for me is) the main feature of lists, chronological order.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#106

Post by slazaro »

Markoff wrote: post #101
blacklight wrote: post #93

Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to fo…

why not just mute accounts you don't wanna see unless you ar elooking for them specifically and also disable retweets from people you are not interested in RT

Twitter "helpfully" shows suggestions, ads, tweets people you follow liked, tweets from people followed by people you follow, replies by people you follow that don't appear in their timeline, etc. etc., and the tweets are sorted however the app decides that day.

None of those things happen in lists.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#107

Post by syl_sau »

bmlzootown wrote: post #22

GoodTwitter2[0] is the only reason that I still use the web version anymore. I can handle the mobile interface on a mobile device, but making the desktop experience mobile-themed was the straw that almost broke the camel's back. GoodTwitter2 mostly fixes that, thankfully. The userscript also fixes the reverse-chronological issue. There's literally a setting that enables one to force "Latest Tweets First" mode, so it'…

May I suggest the FF extension Minimal Theme[0] by Thomas Wang, which simplifies the UI by removing those enormous blobs of texts everywhere and also by hiding the "trends" panel.

Very good addition: it can also hide engagement counts (replies, RTs and likes), so you can scroll sanely without feeling obliged to like a stupid tweet just because it has 100 likes already.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/minimaltwitte...

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#108

Post by baq »

oblio wrote: post #97
clhodapp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side-note: a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is when they start conflating liking and sharing by implementing the "You follow x, and he liked" feature that you described. Since this clearly violates the user's intention (if you wanted to share something, you would have shared it), this serves as a subtle but distinct signal that manipulating users has become more important than…

> a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is ... when they are created. Social networks are inherently evil, that's their business model: manipulate users into addiction and serve ads. How do non-evil social networks look like? They're forums, plain old forums. But you don't become an ultra trillionaire with PhpBB.

i'd argue social networks only become evil if the want to grow revenue and earnings and more importantly keep growing them at some fixed rate y/y for too long (otherwise they get recategorized as value instead of growth and all the juicy multiples disappear from their stock grants...)

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#110

Post by teekert »

I think FB stopping with the chronological feed was the point I dropped off (years ago). Every time I'd log in it was different and unpredictable and I couldn't find anything back anymore even though I knew I read something about a month ago. Idk, maybe the algo's order is better for most people, but it doesn't work for me. As for Twitter, I never got on that boat.
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