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Email is one to one or one to many. Twitter is one to all. The burden of responsibility is different because of the scope of reach.

footlose_3815 4y ago
[dead]
dmix 4y ago
You can still choose who you follow on Twitter. It seems to be moving back towards that idea, which is good. It's pretty easy to avoid political bullshit if you are careful with following. For years Twitter used to make it impossibly hard to switch to just "latest tweets" instead of their awful recommendation feed which include likes/rts of people you don't even follow. No wonder Twitter became such a heated trainwreck when content feeds were no longer opt-in.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Not sure if you've used Twitter. But the default behaviour is for you to see the Home feed which is populated with people you don't follow. So it is mostly just random topics and tweets from the most controversial people associated with that topic. So you do see political bullshit. A lot of it in fact because Musk is clearly trying to juice the engagement numbers and having lots of controversial political tweets is a great way to do that.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Really? Maybe my Twitter UI is different than yours because my default home page is now "Latest Tweets" by default. I never see likes/RTs by people I don't follow anymore. After years of the homepage being AI-feed only (lists were the only chronological alternative) they finally added a small button in the top right corner to change to chronological aka Latest Tweets by default. Now the default options are "Latest Tweets" and "Retweets". I don't see an option to switch back to the AI feed w/ non-following content? https://i.imgur.com/MaRjbcX.png https://i.imgur.com/MaRjbcX.png
    - threeseed 4y ago
      On Web and iOS it is a star button in the top right that switches between Home and Latest.
      - dmix 4y ago
        I posted a screenshot of the web UI in my comment and it doesn't show that anymore. The default is now "Latest Tweets". So I'm either seeing the new beta or you haven't been using Twitter recently.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  > You can still choose who you follow on Twitter The default algorithm shows you what people you follow are most interested in. This does a lot to shape the conversation. You can switch to seeing tweets from people you follow in chronological order, but it typically doesn't show all of them. If you don't interact frequently enough with someone they'll fall out of your feed. It's quite a lot of work to get rid of all the friend suggestions and retweets etc. etc. from other people by using keyword muting; and even when you mute individuals, they still show up with their asinine opinions in your search results. The only way you can be sure of not seeing someone is to block them, and even then you'll still get notifications that there's more content, but it might be blocked. Blocking is also not that effective of a self-curation tool because the userbase isn't static. Habitual trolls buy farmed accounts for 50 cents a pop and for the price of a hot lunch they can have 25 new accounts to troll people with.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Agreed, I noticed that too. It’s still not fully chronological. But it’s still a way better experience then it used to be. Maybe they’ll add a chronological option again at some point. The Apple style middle ground of making it easy by default (instead of customizable) seems to hold sway among twitters UX/product team. Hopefully that will change as well. Anything is better than the old default system. I could see the old way being good for entirely new users but it was awful for long time users who carefully curated their following list. Sadly it seems controversial topics still get the most traction even within the limited set you follow.
  - dorkwood 4y ago
    I've also muted keywords and had tweets containing those words show up in my timeline under a "follow this topic" banner.

footlose_3815 4y ago

[dead]

dmix 4y ago

You can still choose who you follow on Twitter. It seems to be moving back towards that idea, which is good. It's pretty easy to avoid political bullshit if you are careful with following. For years Twitter used to make it impossibly hard to switch to just "latest tweets" instead of their awful recommendation feed which include likes/rts of people you don't even follow. No wonder Twitter became such a heated trainwreck when content feeds were no longer opt-in.

threeseed 4y ago
Not sure if you've used Twitter. But the default behaviour is for you to see the Home feed which is populated with people you don't follow. So it is mostly just random topics and tweets from the most controversial people associated with that topic. So you do see political bullshit. A lot of it in fact because Musk is clearly trying to juice the engagement numbers and having lots of controversial political tweets is a great way to do that.
- dmix 4y ago
  Really? Maybe my Twitter UI is different than yours because my default home page is now "Latest Tweets" by default. I never see likes/RTs by people I don't follow anymore. After years of the homepage being AI-feed only (lists were the only chronological alternative) they finally added a small button in the top right corner to change to chronological aka Latest Tweets by default. Now the default options are "Latest Tweets" and "Retweets". I don't see an option to switch back to the AI feed w/ non-following content? https://i.imgur.com/MaRjbcX.png https://i.imgur.com/MaRjbcX.png
  - threeseed 4y ago
    On Web and iOS it is a star button in the top right that switches between Home and Latest.
    - dmix 4y ago
      I posted a screenshot of the web UI in my comment and it doesn't show that anymore. The default is now "Latest Tweets". So I'm either seeing the new beta or you haven't been using Twitter recently.
anigbrowl 4y ago
> You can still choose who you follow on Twitter The default algorithm shows you what people you follow are most interested in. This does a lot to shape the conversation. You can switch to seeing tweets from people you follow in chronological order, but it typically doesn't show all of them. If you don't interact frequently enough with someone they'll fall out of your feed. It's quite a lot of work to get rid of all the friend suggestions and retweets etc. etc. from other people by using keyword muting; and even when you mute individuals, they still show up with their asinine opinions in your search results. The only way you can be sure of not seeing someone is to block them, and even then you'll still get notifications that there's more content, but it might be blocked. Blocking is also not that effective of a self-curation tool because the userbase isn't static. Habitual trolls buy farmed accounts for 50 cents a pop and for the price of a hot lunch they can have 25 new accounts to troll people with.
- dmix 4y ago
  Agreed, I noticed that too. It’s still not fully chronological. But it’s still a way better experience then it used to be. Maybe they’ll add a chronological option again at some point. The Apple style middle ground of making it easy by default (instead of customizable) seems to hold sway among twitters UX/product team. Hopefully that will change as well. Anything is better than the old default system. I could see the old way being good for entirely new users but it was awful for long time users who carefully curated their following list. Sadly it seems controversial topics still get the most traction even within the limited set you follow.
- dorkwood 4y ago
  I've also muted keywords and had tweets containing those words show up in my timeline under a "follow this topic" banner.