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Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

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Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#51

Post by nasir »

ivanhoe wrote: post #36

I don't get why people keep using the default recommendations? The whole point of twitter was that you manually pick who to follow and see just that. And you still can do that, use the Following tab and it'll work just the same as the day 1. For extra points you can create lists so that you can group people and fine-tune your timeline...

The chronological order is quite subobtimal. You still want to discover new content/ideas/conversation. It's easy to miss out on a lot of what your followers have been tweeting if you don't check it 24/7. On the other hand, when you sit for an hour to check twitter, the following tab will dry-out immediately and you can't discover anything new unless you go to the For You tab which is basically a mix of stuff.

Indeed if you're active, and like stuff, the algo improves and shows you lots of relevant content. But mostly from the prominent accounts and only viral ones. So the point of the post stands.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#52

Post by latexr »

sloowm wrote: post #27
dulvui wrote: post #14

This is the reason I really like Mastodon. No algorithm, just timesorted posts by who you follow.

This limits how many people you can follow. You can't follow people who occasionally post a banger but also post a lot of stuff you don't care about. I don't think algorithms are the issue but the intent of the algorithm is where it falls apart for most social media. It's not to cater to what you want to see but to what will keep you watching. Mastodon missing a feature to somewhat curate your timeline automatically…

> This limits how many people you can follow.

Which is valid to be looked at as a feature rather than a deficiency.

> Mastodon missing a feature to somewhat curate your timeline automatically is what stops it from wide adoption.

Citation needed. There’s always something that someone points out as “the reason that stops Mastodon from wide adoption”, yet its usage continues to rise slow and steady. Maybe what’s wrong is not the slow adoption of Mastodon, but the rapid adoption of other social networks which have billions of dollars behind them with perverse incentives to consume your life so you consume advertised products.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#53

Post by tjpnz »

welder wrote: post #20

Good timing... I'm building an alternative to Twitter and nearing our launch date. It's focused on devs and HN readers, even having an integration with HN.

What's your motivation for building this when alternatives like Mastodon already exist?

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#54

Post by thaumasiotes »

panosfilianos wrote: post #48
rasz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with YT. Use https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions exclusively

I have put some thought into this and my stack includes an assortment of Chrome extensions to observe the behavior I like. - Hide Youtube Shorts - Hide Youtube Watched - uBlock Filter to remove Upcoming videos from the subscription page - Unhook with most options turned on I do the same for Twitter with the Just Arrived extension tweaked from gh.

> Hide Youtube Shorts

Interestingly, this is a non-hidden feature of YouTube itself; you can just close the shorts section of the page. Except that the setting automatically expires after some period of time, maybe ~1 month.

> Hide Youtube Watched

This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense; would you hide "heard" songs on Spotify?

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#55

Post by throw383y8 »

I like fact checking (Community Notes) on twitter. I am not that much exposed to western culture, and it is good for explaining latest fads and memes from west.

Like why someone refused to provide definition of something somewhere. It provided commentary for clawn universe.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#56

Post by mrkeen »

ivanhoe wrote: post #36

I don't get why people keep using the default recommendations? The whole point of twitter was that you manually pick who to follow and see just that. And you still can do that, use the Following tab and it'll work just the same as the day 1. For extra points you can create lists so that you can group people and fine-tune your timeline...

I don't know who's right here, but the article did address it

> One of the main ways I was using Twitter is to find people doing interesting things and then follow them to see what they're up to. This no longer works since you no longer see tweets from the people you follow unless they go viral.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#58

Post by masklinn »

gmerc wrote: post #50

I feel it’s primarily a platform for Elon to cultivate bagholders for his various enterprises. The whole white supremacist cosplay just a method to filter to the most gullible audience looking for a strong leader. Not sure how Cathy woods as the Queen of bagholders fits in there but there’s probably a connection.

I think that’s an overly optimistic view of it. While I don’t doubt that there’s a component of it, it also very much feeds into musk’s pathological need for attention and flattery: the marks angle could explain signal boosting the worst idiots (though I’m not convinced), it does not explain the cringy, juvenile, and usually off-mark meme attempts (or uncredited reposting, complete with flying off the handle when that’s remarked on).

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#59

Post by melodyogonna »

mrkeen wrote: post #56
ivanhoe wrote: post #36

I don't get why people keep using the default recommendations? The whole point of twitter was that you manually pick who to follow and see just that. And you still can do that, use the Following tab and it'll work just the same as the day 1. For extra points you can create lists so that you can group people and fine-tune your timeline...

I don't know who's right here, but the article did address it > One of the main ways I was using Twitter is to find people doing interesting things and then follow them to see what they're up to. This no longer works since you no longer see tweets from the people you follow unless they go viral.

[dead]

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#60

Post by sloowm »

hristov wrote: post #5

So I have never really used twitter much and I don't think I even signed up for it ever. But I want to double check something -- is it the case now, as this post suggests, that if you follow somebody, you do not see their posts? Isn't that the main purpose for the follow function? Why would you do that? Why would you have a follow function and break it? And what else do you show people? I mean if your user follows so…

There are some problems with just showing people the people they follow in chronological order. It limits the amount of accounts you can follow, it buries accounts that post on times you don't reach by scrolling, your timeline can get spammed full by account you like but also post or retoot/retweet.

Sadly providing an algorithm that provides this is not what makes money so with most solutions you're stuck with an algorithm that just tries to show you what will keep you from clicking away instead.

The stupid thing about this is that Twitter has a great measurement system for evaluating the tweets. They have likes, retweets and quote tweets. It would not be that hard to make some inferences based on those metrics mixed with some randomness that would create a nicely curated timeline for most. You could even allow users to up the randomness or give some more explicit preferences.

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