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Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

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71–80 of 132 posts

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#71
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…

>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).

I think that's just him. I think he's just an immature manchild clinging to a sense of relevance and youth, and Twitter gave him the opportunity to show his ass in a way we just didn't see before. Almost everything he does on the platform gives off a strong "hello fellow kids" vibe.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#72
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…

Funny how I get the same thing in German including the German Fascists and Propagandists.

I wonder if it's because they're still all there while others left or if there is some kind of algorithmic intention behind it.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#73
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't get why people keep using the default recommendations? Just go against everything the site wants you to do and that's it!"

It is just one tap, right on the top, not that hard and that the algorithm starts showing you stuff by default before new people follow enough is not that evil is it ?

I didn't say it's evil, but the site is trying to bias you into "engagement". Yes, it's one tap, one tap every time I load the site, plus the four seconds it takes for the new view to load.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#74
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…

Really bad one that’s probably a subset of one of yours but really grates on me specifically are ones in the style of: “What the the top X products/things/whatever that are overrated/underrated/lies/scams?” Which of course are just super generic questions that get people to engage with the post and produce exactly zero new information.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#75
post #27
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…

Apparently what stops it from wide adoption is people commenting on Mastodon while not knowing it.

If you want to curate your timeline you use lists; one I use is "those accounts who rarely post and I want to see it all"

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#76
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…

I wish there was a Twitter currated and moderated like /r/historians is on reddit. The answers you are getting are not always correct and sometimes you dont' get one at all (either because no expert can answer or the question is unsanswerable in the first place) but they are always reasoned, calm and thought out.

(And yes I realize the irony posting this on a social media webpage).

Ultimately most people and their takes are really really boring and "freedom of speech absolutism" (as Twitter nowadays sees itself) leads to interesting, well researched and novel thoughts being drowned out by the mass garbage stuff.

I really don't understand why some people (like the current Twitter CEO) seem to crave that kind of attention.

I'd rather miss a few pearls than being bombared with manure all day.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

The content I consume it's better one off (podcasts, informational videos etc.). If I need to keep anything on them, I store them elsewhere.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#80
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…

Lol. Sounds like YouTube.
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