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I don't want purely that, because I end up drowning in uninteresting tweets from everyone I follow. I want to see notable tweets, from the people I follow, beca

by nomel 4y ago

I don't want purely that, because I end up drowning in uninteresting tweets from everyone I follow. I want to see notable tweets, from the people I follow, because I don't care if they're eating a sandwich. I also want to see tweets I would find notable/interesting, from people I don't follow, if I knew they existed. An algorithm would help with that suggestion. What I really want is Spotify's "Discover Weekly", and "This song's radio", but in Twitter.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago
That's clearly part of the disagreement. Some people want to think and decide for themselves what to like and follow while others want private corporations/algorithms do some of that thinking for them. Or at least narrow down the choices, which is effectively the same thing.
- nomel 4y ago
  > private corporations/algorithms do some of that thinking for them When Spotify's Discovery Weekly gives me a playlist, it's giving me songs I've never heard before, that it thinks I'll like. The decision if I like them is completely my own. Spotify's recommendations aren't thinking for me. If I had more time to listen to a thousand random songs a day, I might stumble across their recommendations. But, their recommendations aren't thinking for me, they're just categorizing and skipping most of the garbage* related to my dislikes. * Spotify has 80 million songs. If I listened to the first 10 seconds of every song, for 8 hours a day, it would take me over 70 years.
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
Why not both? You have the option to see whatever tweets an algorithm decides you want, I have the option to see all the tweets from the people I'm following? In fact, I'm not even 100% sure that the 'latest tweets' / 'top tweets' setting isn't supposed to do exactly that, it's just unclear (and twitter regularly switches the setting from latest to top anyway). If I had my dream twitter, I'd go further: let me choose whether I want to see retweets, let me choose to show quote tweets, but only if the quoted tweet is from somebody I follow, etc.
scubbo 4y ago
Both of which are totally reasonable desires - but you should be the one that gets to decide which "mode" you're operating in. If you want only (and all) followees tweets - go to that view. If you want just the "greatest hits" of your followees - a second view. And if you want to trust in The Great Algorithm and take some recommendations, that's also reasonable. What I think people are really opposed to isn't necessarily recommendations algorithms, but rather algorithmic recommendations being forced upon them when not requested.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Twitter already allows the chronological timeline, though they seem to reset it back to algorithmic after some time has elapsed (or something I'm not sure what conditions reset it and it feels non-transparent/shady.)
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    Huh, strange. It seems they seem very interested in 'remembering' your "2FA" phone number but not your view preferences. Must be a bug somewhere in their DB.
- avereveard 4y ago
  I think that there should be a small algorithm specific for everyone, instead of the great algorithm. Possibly with the ability of grouping your follows into channels, each channel with a small algorithm built on your previous interactions with the channel.
kevingadd 4y ago
The combination of the new Circles twitter feature with the non-algorithmic timeline is a good attempted remedy for this - people can share their niche tweets only with circles which allows filtering which audiences they're for. It has problems, but multiple people I follow have successfully started using them to make their main timeline less cluttered. Having people's tweets obliterated by a new Algorithm(tm) because it decided they are bad definitely doesn't feel like a good fix for the issue.
mancerayder 4y ago
They should create a configuration of levers of some sort of context: controversial (slide the up or down), newsworthy, celebrity, sports. Not tags per se, those get too varied. Some basic directional sliders that skirts a fine line between avoiding echo chamberism and allowing people to filter things that offend them. This could control top posts, but theoretically also their replies. It's the stupid replies that make Twitter annoying, not so much the top posts for me. It's much harder for people complaining about toxicity if they can filter it out. Then it'll be harder for them to argue someone should be deplatformed. Because then they would be arguing that you and I should be barred from reading that person.

by nomel 4y ago

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

That's clearly part of the disagreement. Some people want to think and decide for themselves what to like and follow while others want private corporations/algorithms do some of that thinking for them. Or at least narrow down the choices, which is effectively the same thing.

nomel 4y ago
> private corporations/algorithms do some of that thinking for them When Spotify's Discovery Weekly gives me a playlist, it's giving me songs I've never heard before, that it thinks I'll like. The decision if I like them is completely my own. Spotify's recommendations aren't thinking for me. If I had more time to listen to a thousand random songs a day, I might stumble across their recommendations. But, their recommendations aren't thinking for me, they're just categorizing and skipping most of the garbage* related to my dislikes. * Spotify has 80 million songs. If I listened to the first 10 seconds of every song, for 8 hours a day, it would take me over 70 years.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago

Why not both? You have the option to see whatever tweets an algorithm decides you want, I have the option to see all the tweets from the people I'm following? In fact, I'm not even 100% sure that the 'latest tweets' / 'top tweets' setting isn't supposed to do exactly that, it's just unclear (and twitter regularly switches the setting from latest to top anyway). If I had my dream twitter, I'd go further: let me choose whether I want to see retweets, let me choose to show quote tweets, but only if the quoted tweet is from somebody I follow, etc.

scubbo 4y ago

Both of which are totally reasonable desires - but you should be the one that gets to decide which "mode" you're operating in. If you want only (and all) followees tweets - go to that view. If you want just the "greatest hits" of your followees - a second view. And if you want to trust in The Great Algorithm and take some recommendations, that's also reasonable. What I think people are really opposed to isn't necessarily recommendations algorithms, but rather algorithmic recommendations being forced upon them when not requested.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Twitter already allows the chronological timeline, though they seem to reset it back to algorithmic after some time has elapsed (or something I'm not sure what conditions reset it and it feels non-transparent/shady.)
- hyperdimension 4y ago
  Huh, strange. It seems they seem very interested in 'remembering' your "2FA" phone number but not your view preferences. Must be a bug somewhere in their DB.
avereveard 4y ago
I think that there should be a small algorithm specific for everyone, instead of the great algorithm. Possibly with the ability of grouping your follows into channels, each channel with a small algorithm built on your previous interactions with the channel.

kevingadd 4y ago

The combination of the new Circles twitter feature with the non-algorithmic timeline is a good attempted remedy for this - people can share their niche tweets only with circles which allows filtering which audiences they're for. It has problems, but multiple people I follow have successfully started using them to make their main timeline less cluttered. Having people's tweets obliterated by a new Algorithm(tm) because it decided they are bad definitely doesn't feel like a good fix for the issue.

mancerayder 4y ago

They should create a configuration of levers of some sort of context: controversial (slide the up or down), newsworthy, celebrity, sports. Not tags per se, those get too varied. Some basic directional sliders that skirts a fine line between avoiding echo chamberism and allowing people to filter things that offend them. This could control top posts, but theoretically also their replies. It's the stupid replies that make Twitter annoying, not so much the top posts for me. It's much harder for people complaining about toxicity if they can filter it out. Then it'll be harder for them to argue someone should be deplatformed. Because then they would be arguing that you and I should be barred from reading that person.