121–130 of 235 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean plugged? Twitter will find a way to shut down Nitter?
It wouldn't be too hard. Nitter is using a few unofficial APIs from Twitter.
Is there any easy way to follow a couple of Twitter accounts in chronological order without having a Twitter account? Nitter is nice to follow individual accounts, but you have to go to each account 1 by 1 rather than create a personal timeline with chronological posts from different accounts.
They'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'…
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
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…
With an algorithmic feed, it's probably easier to get biased into thinking that what is shown to you is representative of trends in the rest of the world. (even if we are conscious of the information bubble, our brain probably makes this construction).
I guess there must be some (presumably big) audience that likes the algorithm, but for Twitter to derive value for me it must have this element of predictability that the mechanically chronological timeline and properly threaded conversations brings.
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.
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…
They'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'…
What they want to use instead is a different, inferior algorithm (for you, or you wouldn't hate it so much), but which is superior for them. That algorithm is not the only profitable algorithm, it is one of many, your preferred system is also algorithmic. This is just an algorithm that uses a black box nobody understands, or even tries to understand, or even tries to read (which they could, they have access to the weights of the neural net), and consequently, which they can claim to have no responsibility or even power over.
They're actually more heuristics, not algorithms. As such, they have all kinds of failures, many intentional. Algorithms (at least in my book) are generally are air-tight, and verifiable. Like you chronological feed, if two items were out of order, you could see it and it would show the algorithm to be wrong. It would have to lie about the date (which you do see sometimes) to fool you.
These heuristics are really just the man behind the curtain, imposing his will in an algorithmically-amplified way. It is driven by a dual goal of profit and political ambitions, with the latter being weighted more highly.