Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#91

Post by ZeroGravitas » Mon, May 27, 2024, 11:57 AM UTC

boxed wrote: post #33

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is also looking to get readership, so the correct, but basically impossible, advice is: Make sure that the vast majority of your potential readership are actively avoiding the default experience being heavily promoted by the platform.

One could also say that his complaint is that he used to be a bigger fish relative to the pond, but now that there are more users on the platform he is getting more competition.

So you are going back on your previous advice to him and now suggesting he'd find better things to read by letting the algorithm choose?

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#92

Post by theshrike79 » Mon, May 27, 2024, 11:57 AM UTC

RNAlfons wrote: post #72

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…

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.

My theory: Both arguments are fed by state-level actors using "verified" accounts, because internal discord in western countries is to their advantage.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#93

Post by 77d » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:09 PM UTC

For some reason Attention is still not thought of as finite Human resource that needs to be allocated with care.

Its like there is no mechanism that measures waste of Attention at a high level. Not at the individual level.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#94

Post by davidguetta » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:14 PM UTC

Twitter is still the only.place you can have user uploaded videos for events such as the border crisis, the ongoing wars.

Its easy to criticize the attention traps without seeing the benefits

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#95

Post by TiredOfLife » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:20 PM UTC

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…

It's not like there is a huge Following tab that shows only posts by people you follow.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#96

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:36 PM UTC

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…

> You can't follow people who occasionally post a banger but also post a lot of stuff you don't care about.

Well, you can. It depends how much you care about the part of their content that you like.

Mostly you'd follow someone else who does the job of filtering for you, and you'd hear about the great stuff slightly slower than people who followed that guy directly. You might not see that banger until the following day.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#97

Post by timbit42 » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:42 PM UTC

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…

Follow hashtags. I don't follow anyone on Mastodon. That way I only see posts that are relevant to my interests.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#98

Post by timbit42 » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:43 PM UTC

perkolator wrote: post #86

dulvui wrote: post #14

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

I wanted to love Mastodon. While slightly better, both seem to me like an utter waste of time to me. There is just an unsolvable, signal to noise problem when it comes to a personal optimal feed for me. The content I will like best will not be popular. If that is true then it is hopeless for me because of the scaling properties of the assumptions of the system and incentives for users of the system. I am better off j…

The trick to Mastodon is to follow hashtags instead of people. I have a couple of people I follow but I mostly follow hashtags relevant to my interests. The signal-to-noise ratio is very high. This also means it is critical to include hashtags when you post or comment to attract attention.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#99

Post by prmoustache » Mon, May 27, 2024, 12:56 PM UTC

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…

If it is "a banger", there is reasonnable change it goes to you through shared posts.

Also there is a page with Trending Posts, Trending Hashtags, Trending News and Trending Accounts.

Re: Twitter is now attention roulette and ultimately meaningless

#100

Post by prmoustache » Mon, May 27, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

davidguetta wrote: post #94

Twitter is still the only.place you can have user uploaded videos for events such as the border crisis, the ongoing wars. Its easy to criticize the attention traps without seeing the benefits

I would say it has now been supplanted by TikTok.

French gov just banned TikTok a few days ago in Kanaky (called New Caledonia under french imperial colonialism) to try to limit communication between insurgents in its colony.