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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

#61

Post by melodyogonna »

nasir wrote: post #51
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…

[dead]

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#62

Post by mrtksn »

My feed looks like this:

1) "Facebook style" post are proliferating, that is memes from last year and images/videos from 5 years ago

2) Too many "cookie cutter" posts, that is variation of formats like "100 million people are using AI but %99 are using it wrong"

3) Propaganda accounts pushing narratives, that is something like "before everything was great, now everything is bad. what changed?", then with flood of replies indicating that what changed is loss of Christian values and too many immigrants.

4) Obvious lunatics, that is chemtrail enthusiasts who pose as Phd in this Fellow in that.

5) Tesla FSD just saved lives, the real danger are the human drivers

6) Get rich fast schemes and courses that are supposed to give you passive income to retire early.

7) MAGA types and anti-MAGA types fighting

8) TikTok videos

9) Stuff from people I follow

10) scam ads

The general content on Twitter has become really low quality rage content. Some good things that you can't find elsewhere still exists though and that is tweets from real people tweeting about current events as those events are unfolding.

Sometimes I think maybe Twitter should have been a non-profit that captures only the part about real people broadcasting about current events as they are unfolding.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#63

Post by Crusoe123 »

nasir wrote: post #51
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…

> On the other hand, when you sit for an hour to check twitter, the following tab will dry-out immediately

That sounds great to me!

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#65

Post by pjc50 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #39
ysofunny wrote: post #28

> Attention on Twitter no longer has any ripple effects beyond the platform out of the internet, back into many many sub-nets all isolated and in many cases fighting each other > Attention on Twitter no longer has any ripple effects beyond the platform because you're now expected to pay for that, pay google, pay face book, the more of them you pay the higher your reach. money has reasserted itself as social control o…

This has a neat side effect though - people who pay for attention usually have nothing interesting to say, so it becomes a good filter of what to ignore.

Making the blue tick into a marker of "paid to be promoted, I have nothing to say" was another instantly backfiring decision.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#66

Post by gmerc »

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.

edit: Lol at the bag holder brigading

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#67

Post by gmerc »

masklinn wrote: post #58
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 tha…

A high pass filter eventually making any non mark leave ?

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#68

Post by suddenclarity »

I'm curious if Twitter publishing view count just exposed his account and that caused a personal crisis. He posts about four times a day and I'm yet to find one valuable tweet from the last month. It could all be ai generated reposts from /r/im14andthisisdeep such as:

> Most people are secretly convinced that they are a little bit smarter and a little bit crazier than the average person.

> reminder: the fastest way to get unstuck is to change your environment

> Don't write a book or live a life that can that can be easily summarized.

> Coaching is 99% about listening which is why virtually everyone sucks at it.

Maybe the algorithm isn't the issue in this case.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#69

Post by pembrook »

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...

Social platforms are entirely driven by 1 primary, habit-forming action — the slot machine scroll.

They call it doom scrolling for a reason. The other parts of the UI might as well not exist.

Even on Reddit and HN, there’s an absolutely devastating drop off between homepage visitors and subreddit visitors (or /ask /show visitors). You would be amazed how many Reddit users have never left the home tab.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#70

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

mrtksn wrote: post #62

My feed looks like this: 1) "Facebook style" post are proliferating, that is memes from last year and images/videos from 5 years ago 2) Too many "cookie cutter" posts, that is variation of formats like "100 million people are using AI but %99 are using it wrong" 3) Propaganda accounts pushing narratives, that is something like "before everything was great, now everything is bad. what changed?", then with flood of rep…

Yup, 9- is the reason (and only one) why I still use Twitter. The rest of the content is absolute garbage, as illustrated in the "for you" tab which seems to be a mix of all your other points.

There is btw a browser extension called "control pannel for twitter" available for FF and Chrome which let you hide the "for you" tab (among other options). Very useful on desktop. No such option for mobile though.

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