6 ms·

Algorithmic feeds are, in all cases, Satan's handiwork. What I want is to see posts from the individuals I have selected, interleaved in chronological order, w

Algorithmic feeds are, in all cases, Satan's handiwork. What I want is to see posts from the individuals I have selected, interleaved in chronological order, with no tampering.

allenu 8y ago
It's frustrating that this is the general trend today. I was using the Reddit app the other day and pruning my list of subreddits to reduce distraction when I'm in the app. Of course the app will still insert suggested subreddits in my feed. And then there are the streaming services that recommend (and auto-play) shows and movies to you. Usually I just want to just use a service to consume specific things and then move onto some other activity, but each one is aware of the attention economy and trying to keep me in for as long as possible.
azhenley 8y ago
I agree. As soon as there is any tampering of what information is being displayed, users have a difficult time understanding why they are seeing it and ultimately find it less enjoyable to use. Research keeps showing that for users to "trust" software then they need to have an understanding of why something is being presented to them. It is one of the biggest barriers with recommendation systems.
cycrutchfield 8y ago
If that maximized user engagement, then that is the UI they would present. The fact that they don't do that should tell you that their tests have shown algorithmic feeds are more engaging for users.
- teraflop 8y ago
  "User engagement" is not a single, well-defined, easily measurable thing. For one thing, it's easy for A/B tests to show something that looks good in the short term, but has longer-term negative effects. If your goal is to iterate quickly and stop your test as soon as you think it shows a positive result, you'll never see that. But more to the point, there's no guarantee that the "user engagement" metrics Twitter cares about are actually a proxy for what users really want. If it takes me more time and more clicks to find the information I want -- enough to be annoying, but not quite enough to drive me away from the site -- that probably gets counted as "engagement".
  - cycrutchfield 8y ago
    I guarantee Twitter’s data scientists are using more than just “amount the user is clicking” to decide whether a UI or ranking change is beneficial.
    - doktrin 8y ago
      it's hilarious that your main defense of twitter's design decisions is an appeal to twitter's own authority. "twitter is doing these things for a reason and surely these reasons are good, otherwise they wouldn't be doing them!" case closed my circular dude
      - cycrutchfield 8y ago
        It's hilarious that you think Twitter has not tested chronologically-ordered UIs.
        doktrin 8y ago
        You could apply this reasoning to literally anything, because every organisation / nation state / what have you has at some point and in some form considered the consequences of their actions. History shows that internal evaluation is an imperfect science. I suspect you know this and only reserve this extremely circular reasoning for cases which you already agree with. It would be easier to admit you've already formed an opinion and don't care to change it under any circumstance, rather than weakly appeal to Twitter's own authority to justify their actions.
        cycrutchfield 8y ago
        It is not just an appeal to Twitter’s authority. It’s an informed opinion based off working in a similar field and conversing with others in this field. So unless you can come up with some concrete data supporting your points, instead of just attacking mine, you are unlikely to change my opinion.
      - 8y ago
- clusmore 8y ago
  If the feed shows me a pseudo-random sample of recent tweets, and each time I refresh I get a slightly different view, of course I'm going to keep refreshing to see if there's anything new or anything that I haven't been shown yet. But most of the time, I just keep seeing the same thing over and over. Imagine if your email client did this.
- p1necone 8y ago
  "User engagement" is a euphemism for "eyes on screen for as long as possible" and is a good metric for selling ads (the best one really). It's not a very good metric for measuring actual usefulness to users at all though. We need a business model for social media where incentives for companies and their users actually line up.
  - kolbe 8y ago
    Nonprofit? A service that does what you likely desire would cost in the eight digits a year to provide for the whole world.
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      Wikipedia gets along just fine. "nonprofit" is not code for "zero revenue"
      - billmalarky 8y ago
        Wikipedia's costs are extremely small relative the service usage. They don't have a lot of active development (relatively), and they don't need a ton of expensive infrastructure (relatively). Twitter's annual operating costs are in the $2+ billions. Wikipedia's are in the ~$60 millions. Not to say a non-profit twitter couldn't exist - this just feels like an unfair comparison. Just because two services are popular tech services doesn't mean they are apples to apples to operate.
        p1necone 8y ago
        We have an example of a service similar to twitter that's effectively free to run due to it's distributed nature in Mastodon/ActivityPub. Being financially sustainable without having to resort to dark patterns could just be an engineering question.
        _jal 8y ago
        I've always asserted that Twitter should have been a protocol, not a startup.
- doktrin 8y ago
  “User engagement” on social media platforms in 2019 is a proxy for “triggering users emotional responses and luring them into internet arguments” Min maxed “user engagement” is almost certainly a net negative for society at large
  - dane-pgp 8y ago
    > “triggering users emotional responses and luring them into internet arguments” Oh yeah?! Well... YOU'RE an internet argument!
- JohnFen 8y ago
  "More engaging" does not automatically equal "better for users" or "what most users want".
  - cycrutchfield 8y ago
    It correlates with what users want better than what a handful of HN professional contrarians think they want.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      I'm not so sure about that.
      - cycrutchfield 8y ago
        What a contrarian thing to say.
simonsarris 8y ago
I follow a few hundred people with very varied interests, and I don't log in every few minutes. For non-addicted people, the algo is pretty nice. I want to see a sampling of interesting stuff I "missed" over the last day or two. If I want to go look at a particular person's chronological feed, I can do that. You can change it if you don't like it, click the sparkle button to do so, but don't think nobody likes it.
- charliepark 8y ago
  Have you ever tried Twitter lists? I find that having separate streams for "irl friends", "professional network", "people I might want to hire", etc. makes it easy to dip in, get a sense of what's up with that particular set of people/accounts, and then go about my day.
- udwum 8y ago
  What you said is ok, and it's fine if that's the default. What people complain about is that you can't opt-out of the algorithmic timeline.
- gmcabrita 8y ago
  The "sparkle setting" resets if you haven't been on Twitter Web for a while, even if you always keep up with Twitter on mobile. I use Twitter Web so infrequently that whenever I open it, it has always changed back to the "Top Tweets" view.
  - raimue 8y ago
    Even on the new Twitter Web UI it automatically changes back from "Latest Tweets" to "Home", although I visit the site several times per day. If only Twitter had separate URLs for the two styles, then I could just update my bookmark...
    - jpindar 8y ago
      https://tweetdeck.twitter.com https://tweetdeck.twitter.com always stays chronological.
jimmy1 8y ago
And the option to choose the algorithmic filtering based on my needs, in the rare cases that the number of individuals or volume of their tweets may be too large to take in chronologically.
hotpockets 8y ago
Make a twitter list. This is exactly what lists do.
rexpop 8y ago
> posts from the individuals I have selected, interleaved in chronological order You have just described an algorithm, I believe.
bradleyankrom 8y ago
I started using lists for this. I have a list of people I follow (I could just unfollow, I guess) and I get only their posts, in order, with no ads.
Jommi 8y ago
Great. Now you've created a perfect bubble for yourself.

Algorithmic feeds are, in all cases, Satan's handiwork. What I want is to see posts from the individuals I have selected, interleaved in chronological order, with no tampering.

allenu 8y ago

It's frustrating that this is the general trend today. I was using the Reddit app the other day and pruning my list of subreddits to reduce distraction when I'm in the app. Of course the app will still insert suggested subreddits in my feed. And then there are the streaming services that recommend (and auto-play) shows and movies to you. Usually I just want to just use a service to consume specific things and then move onto some other activity, but each one is aware of the attention economy and trying to keep me in for as long as possible.

azhenley 8y ago

I agree. As soon as there is any tampering of what information is being displayed, users have a difficult time understanding why they are seeing it and ultimately find it less enjoyable to use. Research keeps showing that for users to "trust" software then they need to have an understanding of why something is being presented to them. It is one of the biggest barriers with recommendation systems.

cycrutchfield 8y ago

If that maximized user engagement, then that is the UI they would present. The fact that they don't do that should tell you that their tests have shown algorithmic feeds are more engaging for users.

teraflop 8y ago
"User engagement" is not a single, well-defined, easily measurable thing. For one thing, it's easy for A/B tests to show something that looks good in the short term, but has longer-term negative effects. If your goal is to iterate quickly and stop your test as soon as you think it shows a positive result, you'll never see that. But more to the point, there's no guarantee that the "user engagement" metrics Twitter cares about are actually a proxy for what users really want. If it takes me more time and more clicks to find the information I want -- enough to be annoying, but not quite enough to drive me away from the site -- that probably gets counted as "engagement".
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  I guarantee Twitter’s data scientists are using more than just “amount the user is clicking” to decide whether a UI or ranking change is beneficial.
  - doktrin 8y ago
    it's hilarious that your main defense of twitter's design decisions is an appeal to twitter's own authority. "twitter is doing these things for a reason and surely these reasons are good, otherwise they wouldn't be doing them!" case closed my circular dude
    - cycrutchfield 8y ago
      It's hilarious that you think Twitter has not tested chronologically-ordered UIs.
      - doktrin 8y ago
        You could apply this reasoning to literally anything, because every organisation / nation state / what have you has at some point and in some form considered the consequences of their actions. History shows that internal evaluation is an imperfect science. I suspect you know this and only reserve this extremely circular reasoning for cases which you already agree with. It would be easier to admit you've already formed an opinion and don't care to change it under any circumstance, rather than weakly appeal to Twitter's own authority to justify their actions.
        cycrutchfield 8y ago
        It is not just an appeal to Twitter’s authority. It’s an informed opinion based off working in a similar field and conversing with others in this field. So unless you can come up with some concrete data supporting your points, instead of just attacking mine, you are unlikely to change my opinion.
    - 8y ago
clusmore 8y ago
If the feed shows me a pseudo-random sample of recent tweets, and each time I refresh I get a slightly different view, of course I'm going to keep refreshing to see if there's anything new or anything that I haven't been shown yet. But most of the time, I just keep seeing the same thing over and over. Imagine if your email client did this.
p1necone 8y ago
"User engagement" is a euphemism for "eyes on screen for as long as possible" and is a good metric for selling ads (the best one really). It's not a very good metric for measuring actual usefulness to users at all though. We need a business model for social media where incentives for companies and their users actually line up.
- kolbe 8y ago
  Nonprofit? A service that does what you likely desire would cost in the eight digits a year to provide for the whole world.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Wikipedia gets along just fine. "nonprofit" is not code for "zero revenue"
    - billmalarky 8y ago
      Wikipedia's costs are extremely small relative the service usage. They don't have a lot of active development (relatively), and they don't need a ton of expensive infrastructure (relatively). Twitter's annual operating costs are in the $2+ billions. Wikipedia's are in the ~$60 millions. Not to say a non-profit twitter couldn't exist - this just feels like an unfair comparison. Just because two services are popular tech services doesn't mean they are apples to apples to operate.
      - p1necone 8y ago
        We have an example of a service similar to twitter that's effectively free to run due to it's distributed nature in Mastodon/ActivityPub. Being financially sustainable without having to resort to dark patterns could just be an engineering question.
        _jal 8y ago
        I've always asserted that Twitter should have been a protocol, not a startup.
doktrin 8y ago
“User engagement” on social media platforms in 2019 is a proxy for “triggering users emotional responses and luring them into internet arguments” Min maxed “user engagement” is almost certainly a net negative for society at large
- dane-pgp 8y ago
  > “triggering users emotional responses and luring them into internet arguments” Oh yeah?! Well... YOU'RE an internet argument!
JohnFen 8y ago
"More engaging" does not automatically equal "better for users" or "what most users want".
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  It correlates with what users want better than what a handful of HN professional contrarians think they want.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    I'm not so sure about that.
    - cycrutchfield 8y ago
      What a contrarian thing to say.

simonsarris 8y ago

I follow a few hundred people with very varied interests, and I don't log in every few minutes. For non-addicted people, the algo is pretty nice. I want to see a sampling of interesting stuff I "missed" over the last day or two. If I want to go look at a particular person's chronological feed, I can do that. You can change it if you don't like it, click the sparkle button to do so, but don't think nobody likes it.

charliepark 8y ago
Have you ever tried Twitter lists? I find that having separate streams for "irl friends", "professional network", "people I might want to hire", etc. makes it easy to dip in, get a sense of what's up with that particular set of people/accounts, and then go about my day.
udwum 8y ago
What you said is ok, and it's fine if that's the default. What people complain about is that you can't opt-out of the algorithmic timeline.
gmcabrita 8y ago
The "sparkle setting" resets if you haven't been on Twitter Web for a while, even if you always keep up with Twitter on mobile. I use Twitter Web so infrequently that whenever I open it, it has always changed back to the "Top Tweets" view.
- raimue 8y ago
  Even on the new Twitter Web UI it automatically changes back from "Latest Tweets" to "Home", although I visit the site several times per day. If only Twitter had separate URLs for the two styles, then I could just update my bookmark...
  - jpindar 8y ago
    https://tweetdeck.twitter.com https://tweetdeck.twitter.com always stays chronological.

jimmy1 8y ago

And the option to choose the algorithmic filtering based on my needs, in the rare cases that the number of individuals or volume of their tweets may be too large to take in chronologically.

hotpockets 8y ago

Make a twitter list. This is exactly what lists do.

rexpop 8y ago

> posts from the individuals I have selected, interleaved in chronological order You have just described an algorithm, I believe.

bradleyankrom 8y ago

I started using lists for this. I have a list of people I follow (I could just unfollow, I guess) and I get only their posts, in order, with no ads.

Jommi 8y ago

Great. Now you've created a perfect bubble for yourself.