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Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board. You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow; it doesn’t matter if there

Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board. You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow; it doesn’t matter if there are 100 billion spam accounts posting ads to nobody. There are millions of Twitter accounts in Japanese, but if you don’t follow any of them, and nobody you follow retweets them, you’d never know they exist. You can also block or mute specific accounts, mute keywords, etc for even finer control.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow That's not at all true by default; you also see tweets from people that have paid for involuntary reach for the tweet (promoted tweets), tweets that people you follow have interacted with, tweets that respond to or mention people you follow, and probably others that I'm forgetting.
- ericdykstra 7y ago
  So Twitter broke their platform, and they show ads. This is vastly different from a message board that shows all messages to all users.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fouc 7y ago
> You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow If that was true, that would help a lot.
kelnos 7y ago
That is a vast oversimplification of how Twitter works. People absolutely see tweets from people they don't follow, all the time. Sometimes it's a promoted tweet, sometimes a retweet, sometimes just by browsing through trending topics. It's pretty much impossible to use the platform in such a way that you'll only see tweets from people you follow, and nothing else. Agreed that Twitter isn't a message board, but that's a much closer analogy than calling it a phone call.
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  Imagine if those promoted tweets were delivered to you as automated phone calls from spoofed numbers.
Eleopteryx 7y ago
>Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board. Well, Twitter is Twitter. But Twitter is probably closer to a message board than it is to a phone call.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow That's not at all true by default; you also see tweets from people that have paid for involuntary reach for the tweet (promoted tweets), tweets that people you follow have interacted with, tweets that respond to or mention people you follow, and probably others that I'm forgetting.

ericdykstra 7y ago
So Twitter broke their platform, and they show ads. This is vastly different from a message board that shows all messages to all users.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fouc 7y ago

> You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow If that was true, that would help a lot.

kelnos 7y ago

That is a vast oversimplification of how Twitter works. People absolutely see tweets from people they don't follow, all the time. Sometimes it's a promoted tweet, sometimes a retweet, sometimes just by browsing through trending topics. It's pretty much impossible to use the platform in such a way that you'll only see tweets from people you follow, and nothing else. Agreed that Twitter isn't a message board, but that's a much closer analogy than calling it a phone call.

GoblinSlayer 7y ago
Imagine if those promoted tweets were delivered to you as automated phone calls from spoofed numbers.

Eleopteryx 7y ago

>Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board. Well, Twitter is Twitter. But Twitter is probably closer to a message board than it is to a phone call.