5 ms·

My problem with twitter is that it feels like a desert land more and more. I get more and more bot 'followers' and more ads in my timeline. The signal / noise r

by atmosx 11y ago

My problem with twitter is that it feels like a desert land more and more. I get more and more bot 'followers' and more ads in my timeline. The signal / noise ratio has decreased incredibly and continuous decreasing, unfortunately.

honksillet 11y ago
It is incredibly easy to set up a bot in twitter. (Slightly hard since the API v1.1, but still easy.) If an account is attached to a bot, there should be a small icon in all it's tweet to indicate that.
- richmarr 11y ago
  How would you enforce that? Genuine question. Is there a reliable-enough-to-be-useful way to distinguish between types of API client?
aethos 11y ago
Another thing on the "desert island" effect is that, from the perspective of a artistist or creator, it seems oddly difficult to get discovered on Twitter. Maybe it's something about the interface or recommendation system?
- adnzzzzZ 11y ago
  Twitter itself does not encourage creators who want to share content that much. I don't know if this is a problem with media integration (as mentioned in the article) or with the types of people who use Twitter, but as a creator of anything artistic it's not that nice of a platform. I've found tumblr to be much better, both in terms of community (lots of artists, game developers, musicians, etc hang out there) and in how the system itself works. People are much more liberal with notes and reblogs, which means it's easier to gain a following and it's also easier to get some data on how much something you created resonates with people.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- harryh 11y ago
  Why do you care about keeping an authentic follower list? I'm honestly curious because I've never really understood this phenomenon.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    For those who care about their image, authenticity is an important social media currency. See, e.g.: https://www.twitteraudit.com/ https://www.twitteraudit.com/ For some, it's about the same reason one would report spam: a dislike of abuse. I feel both of those a little, but for me it's mostly about having a real connection with my audience. I definitely pay attention to who's following me, who favorites my stuff, et cetera. When I write on some social medium, I write for my audience. Writing for a bunch of spambots, marketroids, and scammers is... offputting.
    - anc84 11y ago
      Hm, why does that site need my authorisation to read MY profile when I can use it also to audit other people's accounts? A scam to get auth?
      - r1ch 11y ago
        Twitter requires auth for every API call, even reading public information. They would burn out their own API quota pretty fast if they didn't have each user grant them a read-only token.
        anc84 11y ago
        Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
  - dombili 11y ago
    My main reason is that I don't want to write to an audience of bots. I'm using twitter semi-anonymously so none of my real life friends follow me there (I don't have a separate account for this), so people who follow me and I follow are the people I'd talked to before on twitter. If I'm followed by more bots than actual people, I feel like the social feeling of twitter would fade away. I have a small number of followers (around 70) and keeping my followers as authentic as possible gives me the feeling that people care about what I write. (They probably don't but blocking bots gives me the illusion that they do, because my follow count rarely changes.) Additionally, I'm obsessively organised and spend a lot of time thinking about the tiniest of details and this may be a product of that tiring (and somewhat problematic) personality trait. This is the same reason why I delete my tweets the day after I tweeted them.
crucialfelix 11y ago
I have a very high signal/noise ratio but that's because I did the work to follow interesting people. But its also true that the noise is encroaching and we as users have to do work to find more signal. So one of the core problems of twitter is that you are required to do that; it's work. That's fixable. Certainly the front page for a new visitor should be rich with content.
- scholia 11y ago
  You can improve the signal/noise ratio by using lists to follow groups of people with common interests. This is even more work, but in some cases, you can follow other people's lists instead. You can get an even better signal/noise ratio by using Nuzzel, which extracts the most popular stories. Again, you can use it to read other people's lists. http://nuzzel.com/ http://nuzzel.com/
richmarr 11y ago
The signal/noise ratio bothers me too... exacerbated by promoted tweets, unconvincingly implemented 'while you were away' boxes, and similar, diluting the signal even further. I'm still stupidly holding out hope that one day Twitter will offer to take money to get rid of that stuff.

by atmosx 11y ago

honksillet 11y ago

It is incredibly easy to set up a bot in twitter. (Slightly hard since the API v1.1, but still easy.) If an account is attached to a bot, there should be a small icon in all it's tweet to indicate that.

richmarr 11y ago
How would you enforce that? Genuine question. Is there a reliable-enough-to-be-useful way to distinguish between types of API client?

aethos 11y ago

Another thing on the "desert island" effect is that, from the perspective of a artistist or creator, it seems oddly difficult to get discovered on Twitter. Maybe it's something about the interface or recommendation system?

adnzzzzZ 11y ago
Twitter itself does not encourage creators who want to share content that much. I don't know if this is a problem with media integration (as mentioned in the article) or with the types of people who use Twitter, but as a creator of anything artistic it's not that nice of a platform. I've found tumblr to be much better, both in terms of community (lots of artists, game developers, musicians, etc hang out there) and in how the system itself works. People are much more liberal with notes and reblogs, which means it's easier to gain a following and it's also easier to get some data on how much something you created resonates with people.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

harryh 11y ago
Why do you care about keeping an authentic follower list? I'm honestly curious because I've never really understood this phenomenon.
- wpietri 11y ago
  For those who care about their image, authenticity is an important social media currency. See, e.g.: https://www.twitteraudit.com/ https://www.twitteraudit.com/ For some, it's about the same reason one would report spam: a dislike of abuse. I feel both of those a little, but for me it's mostly about having a real connection with my audience. I definitely pay attention to who's following me, who favorites my stuff, et cetera. When I write on some social medium, I write for my audience. Writing for a bunch of spambots, marketroids, and scammers is... offputting.
  - anc84 11y ago
    Hm, why does that site need my authorisation to read MY profile when I can use it also to audit other people's accounts? A scam to get auth?
    - r1ch 11y ago
      Twitter requires auth for every API call, even reading public information. They would burn out their own API quota pretty fast if they didn't have each user grant them a read-only token.
      - anc84 11y ago
        Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
- dombili 11y ago
  My main reason is that I don't want to write to an audience of bots. I'm using twitter semi-anonymously so none of my real life friends follow me there (I don't have a separate account for this), so people who follow me and I follow are the people I'd talked to before on twitter. If I'm followed by more bots than actual people, I feel like the social feeling of twitter would fade away. I have a small number of followers (around 70) and keeping my followers as authentic as possible gives me the feeling that people care about what I write. (They probably don't but blocking bots gives me the illusion that they do, because my follow count rarely changes.) Additionally, I'm obsessively organised and spend a lot of time thinking about the tiniest of details and this may be a product of that tiring (and somewhat problematic) personality trait. This is the same reason why I delete my tweets the day after I tweeted them.

crucialfelix 11y ago

I have a very high signal/noise ratio but that's because I did the work to follow interesting people. But its also true that the noise is encroaching and we as users have to do work to find more signal. So one of the core problems of twitter is that you are required to do that; it's work. That's fixable. Certainly the front page for a new visitor should be rich with content.

scholia 11y ago
You can improve the signal/noise ratio by using lists to follow groups of people with common interests. This is even more work, but in some cases, you can follow other people's lists instead. You can get an even better signal/noise ratio by using Nuzzel, which extracts the most popular stories. Again, you can use it to read other people's lists. http://nuzzel.com/ http://nuzzel.com/

richmarr 11y ago

The signal/noise ratio bothers me too... exacerbated by promoted tweets, unconvincingly implemented 'while you were away' boxes, and similar, diluting the signal even further. I'm still stupidly holding out hope that one day Twitter will offer to take money to get rid of that stuff.