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Twitter showed us its algorithm – what does it tell us?
- noonething 3y agoit tells us, musk bought twitter for reasons other than money...
- jawns 3y agoI would assume that if "probability that other users will positively engage with a tweet" is the primary determiner of reach, then the more you can help Twitter accurately predict that probability, the better, because otherwise the default probability is likely no higher than middle-of-the-pack. If that assumption holds, then I would guess this type of algorithm favors consistency of content. In other words, someone who picks a certain topic and consistently tweets only about that topic is going to be easier to form predictions around versus someone whose tweets show much more variety, in topics, styles, etc. What that might mean, from a "gaming the system" point of view, is that if you're a person who intends to primarily tweet about two or three disparate things, you might be better off creating a separate account for each, rather than a single account where engagement is harder to predict.
- delecti 3y agoIncidentally, those same conditions seems to apply to other sites. Lots of Youtubers have multiple channels (a main channel, a livestream channel, a shorts channel).
- netcraft 3y agoI've thought many times over the years that I would love to be able to subscribe to a particular playlist or "show" from a channel. There is several channels that I want to see their main stuff, but not their side content. Or a particular game from a lets-play-er, but not their other games.
- delecti 3y agoSurprisingly Youtube did have that functionality, though it was removed quite a while ago. I specifically remembering being able to subscribe to "Is It A Good Idea To Microwave This?" (in the late '2000s time range), without also subscribing to the other videos on the channel.
- wolrah 3y agoIt doesn't work exactly the same as a subscription, but you can add a playlist from a channel to your library, if the channel offers one that fits what you want. For example the channel Accursed Farms puts out a Half-Life based show called Freeman's Mind which I love, but I'm not huge on the rest of their content, so I follow their playlist and can easily get just the content I want.
- suddenclarity 3y agoPitch meetings and Ars Technicas interviews about old games come to mind. Fortunately, pitch meetings got his own channel last year.
- izacus 3y agoSame here, but cynic in me says that they want to increase your engagement by spamming you with more content that you MIGHT also want to watch.
- nullandvoid 3y agoThere's nothing cynical about that take, it's a fact this is how YouTube (and modern social media) operate. Longer eyeball time == more ad revenue.
- thrashh 3y agoI don’t think it’s only helpful to the algorithm. It’s also helpful for me as a subscriber. If I want to watch episodes of Breaking Bad, I don’t want you to randomly throw in episodes or M*A*S*H (even though both are good).
- lumb63 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iamflimflam1 3y agoI wrote about this - https://www.atomic14.com/2023/03/06/the-curse-of-youtube.html https://www.atomic14.com/2023/03/06/the-curse-of-youtube.htm... To be honest it's pretty horrible. Why can't I just post about what interests me right now?
- cultureswitch 3y agoYou can, but it's the equivalent of completely changing the topic of a conversation. Do that enough, and people will be less keen on listening to you.
- manuelmoreale 3y agoWhen you say: > Why can't I just post about what interests me right now? You mean you can’t post without probably messing with some bizarre algorithm that is running YouTube discovery? Because I’m quite sure you can post about whatever you want. The problem I see is that you’re mixing two aspects of the creation process. There’s your desire and curiosity driving you towards creating videos on one end there’s whatever YouTube wants on the other which usually is keeping people glued on their phones to consume as much content as they can. It’s up to you to decide what is more valuable here. If you want to play the YouTube game you have to accept their idiotic rules which includes posting daily, making stupid shorts, making reactionary content and all that. OR you can decide that it’s more important for you to make videos you find interesting and stop caring about vanity metrics. Side note: those three images in your post are completely unnecessary and add nothing to the overall quality of the post. I’d personally remove them and stick with just the content. But that’s just my 2c
- iamflimflam1 3y agoThis is very true - I try and keep YouTube fun for me - if it gets to the point where it’s the same as work then there’s not much point. My wife is a amateur painter but would like to make more of it. I always tell he that she should paint what she wants and make pictures she enjoys. Her art club is currently running an exhibition and none of her paintings have sold so far.
- just_boost_it 3y agoThat doesn't really make sense because most big accounts tweet about a range of topics. There's pretty well established ways for estimating the probability based on how the range of topics you might tweet about would match with the range of topics a user likes. That means you have to try and figure out what your base likes to see, and be like that. Tweeting about only a single topic means that you're only targeting people who are likely to like tweets from accounts that tweet about that one topic.
- teruakohatu 3y ago> That doesn't really make sense because most big twitter accounts tweet about a range of topics. People engage with celebrities on everything. If an A list celeb announces they enjoy a slice of lemon in hot water, twenty news articles will be published around the world.
- andirk 3y agoI enjoy a lemon in hot water with a lot of hot sauce and I breathe it in through my nose to clear sinus issues.
- whimsicalism 3y agoIt's probably less this and more "if you only talk about one topic, then when we show your posts to similar users, they are more likely to like it"
- gregbander 3y agoAs the article calls out, the code is right there. Post your results of tests, not knee jerk conjecture. Wrong opinions are a dime a dozen.
- JenrHywy 3y agoUh, the article also points out that the algorithm itself can't tell you anything definitive about how a given tweet will be ranked without the training data.
- winternett 3y agoIn all the infinite wisdom of developers and tech gurus, we get dictatorial systems that rigidly force dumb and obtuse rules and stupid "success scripts" on creative people that only end up rewarding trust fund babies, scammers, and/or hackers... Leaving the most talented and original creators to wither in obscurity. Social media sites like Twitter (Now Titter) have brought out the worst in us, and now that they're collapsing under their own arrogant leaders, no one is really considering the lessons learned... They can't exist without creators, but creators can exist and function on any platform. Screw Twitter's dictatorial algorithm, mastering it does not help anyone to be creative and successful unless they're trust fund babies, scammers, and/or hackers.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoLet's be honest here: vast majority of "talented and original creators" on social media are the ones seeking out, sharing, and geeking about "success scripts". And, of course, social media isn't unique here. This is a story as old as time: any activity that has a competitive element to it gets dominated by those "playing to win". It's true in every aspect of life. I feel the only way to avoid it is to suppress the entire competitive angle - which means removing the rewards altogether, or making them purely random, as any correlation between activity and reward will attract people willing to game the activity.
- qikInNdOutReply 3y agoYou can also throw the ball, aka gameification of parts of the activity, so the success nerds can be busy romping and playing, while the other grown ups get on with the actual fun part.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoUnfortunately, "success nerds" end up owning their social status, and they also generate buzz. Frantic activity is a catnip from entrepreneurs, so sooner or later, those "success nerds" end up being the ones making real money off their "success", and as money tends to corrupt things, your activity becomes controlled by the "success nerds", for their own benefit, and the benefit of their sponsors. See also the Iron Law of Bureaucracy[0], which is closely related[1]. EDIT: The "success nerds" are usually the grown-ups, encouraged by non-participating grown-ups who see the entire activity as just a money printer. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy [1] - I don't think it's an accident. Those are the same group dynamics at play.
- mountainofdeath 3y agoGiven what has been open sourced so far, it makes sense that content that is likely to be controversial, or content that generates neutral to negative engagement would have a smaller probability of being displayed. I suspected this and told my far-right/left wing acquaintances, that no, Twitter (and Facebook too) isn't suppressing you, your content is just a net-negative from the platform's perspective. The platform is in the business of keeping the bulk of its users and advertisers happy.
- akira2501 3y agoWhen people talk about suppression do they mean that their own tweets are suppressed, or the tweets of people they follow are? Or tweets from news organizations are, depending on their content?
- whimsicalism 3y agoThe evidence is abundant for active suppression of certain political views beyond just predicted engagement. No clue about Twitter's algo, but Facebook certainly does this.
- dekhn 3y agoCan you, uh, share that abundant evidence?
- whimsicalism 3y agoClear-cut example #1, which you might consider "flipping switches" more than part of the algo is the suppression of posting about Hunter Biden/laptop on Twitter. Instagram also downweights posts about Biden passing 1994 crime bill. [0] [0]: https://twitter.com/perma___ben/status/1339293381625864195 https://twitter.com/perma___ben/status/1339293381625864195
- dekhn 3y agoDo you have something substantive? IE, evidence that there is a systemic, large-scale policy being applied? Anyway, it looks like they outsource their fact checking and applied a fact check. The fact check is extensively documented here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/03/fact-check-1994-crime-bill-didnt-bring-mass-incarceration-black-people/3250210001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/03/fac... I'm a bit tired of the "aggrieved people claiming censorship" over small potatoes that often turns out to be "the company applied their policy uniformly"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simplotek 3y agoI was disappointed by this article and how it omitted the fact that Twitter hardcoded how references to Russia's invasion of Ukraine should be downranked. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35410841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35410841
- GenerocUsername 3y agoI don't know when this dataset was published from, but there was def a time when Ukraine news was beyond saturation.
- phailhaus 3y agoBecause if he's going to claim to be the internet's town square, he can't pick and choose topics that he's personally 'tired of'.
- madeofpalk 3y agoIt's the sort of thing I would expect on a highly opinionated Hacker News (iirc like how posts about Apple have a penalty applied to them to counteract massive usual interest in them), but less so on something more general audience like Twitter. I'm not really looking to twitter to say "Actually, we've all heard a bit too much about Tennis". I don't want Twitter's timeline to have an editorial voice.
- whimsicalism 3y agoAll social media algo timelines have an editorial voice. Otherwise, you would exclusively be seeing engagement bait.
- simplotek 3y ago> All social media algo timelines have an editorial voice. Sorry, that's a bullshit excuse. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was hardcoded to be downranked like DMCA violations and high toxicity content. This has zero do to with "editorial voice" or other bullshit excuse. This was a blatant attempt to smuther any reference on what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
- btilly 3y agoAnyone who is interested should also read https://twitter.com/aakashg0/status/1641976869460275201 https://twitter.com/aakashg0/status/1641976869460275201 for a rather different take. It particularly interested me that Twitter under Musk is trying NOT to discuss Ukraine, and PENALIZES people who attempt to interact with those outside of their general political circle. I can give arguments for why they should do both, but I think both are ultimately bad ideas.
- simplotek 3y ago> It particularly interested me that Twitter under Musk is trying NOT to discuss Ukraine, and PENALIZES people who attempt to interact with those outside of their general political circle. While Musk's Twitter explicitly censors references to Russia's genocide of Ukraine, Musk himself feigns ignorance and false indignation accusing the "western press" of insisting "on pushing such a lopsided view of the conflict". https://twitter.com/VsimPohuy/status/1645699649003569152?t=vItf8RIKBAGILEVtIQe2sw&s=19 https://twitter.com/VsimPohuy/status/1645699649003569152?t=v...
- lumb63 3y agoThe two ideas aren’t necessarily in conflict with one another. In fact, they make sense to go hand-in-hand. Take for instance affirmative action or reparations. They’re instances of trying to correct for something that’s the opposite of how the group desires it, by doing the opposite of what supporters claim is being done to the marginalized group.
- paulpauper 3y agoTweets with hashtags and links do worse. It would seem anti-woke tweets do very well. I see such tweets a lot when logged out. Replying to an account with an unverified account is automatically collapsed. Only twitter blue accounts get to post replies in comments and not have those comments be collapsed. They can also post replies to their own tweets without the replies being collapsed.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago>It would seem anti-woke tweets do very well. I see such tweets a lot when logged out. I have no idea if this is true. However... I have a coworker that was just banned from Reddit, her daughter is a high school swimmer, and there is a trans issue going on. I saw the comment she was banned for, while I don't necessarily agree with all of her points, it was absolutely not ban-worthy. She is waiting on an appeal that won't come. I've now seen with my own eyes that moderators and at least some admins at Reddit are shutting down anything that takes "the wrong position" on trans topics as "hate", when it's definitely not. Let's say over-woke to promote a consensus. So, my question to you is this... How could we tell if anti-woke tweets do well on Twitter, or if they are overly censored and penalized on other sites? How can you be sure it's not your reference and the systems you are comparing to are fair or not?
- kenjackson 3y agoThere’s a lot of anti-trans stuff on Reddit. Here’s one with 800+ comments. https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1241rxj/a_trans_person_shoots_up_a_bunch_of_christian/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1241rxj/a_tra... I’d have to see your coworker’s post to really know if it was hate speech.
- imadierich 3y ago[dead]
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoAll I can do is tell what she wrote wasn’t hateful by any stretch. But, did you post the right link? I read a post that said a trans person shot up a school which happened and says “Reddit pushes trans propoganda”, is that hate? The top comment says they didn’t use pronouns. Was the hate in the rest of the comments?
- appleaday1 3y agoI think it shows us that I got the most thumbs-down for suggesting we rewrite everything in Python lol.
- Jiocus 3y agoThe article has a side-note saying: > “two models trained on the same data but with different algorithms will behave much more similarly than two models trained on different data with the same algorithm. That’s because the training data contains the patterns in user behavior that algorithms mine and use when recommending new content.” Do we know how ‘true’ this statement is? Or how much % an algorithm must deviate to cause a % change in results? What about difference in data? If someone can point to somewhere to read up on this, I'd like to know!
- hnaouesteuho 3y agoI’d love to hear what former Twitter Timeline engineers can say about this.
- 13years 3y agoWhy are there no social media platforms that give the users more power over what they want the system to show them? For example, this suggestion I posted on the Twitter algo https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/issues/1363 https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/issues/1363
- nicce 3y agoBecause they generate less money. People don’t get hooked to content they did not know about.
- ZunarJ5 3y agoMastodon??
- SCdF 3y agoBecause, and I know it's a tired saying, but you aren't the user you're the product. Advertisers, the actual users, get pretty precise tooling on who to show their ads to.
- smeagull 3y agoI really dislike that replying or commenting on things is seen as a positive indicator. This comment would be seen as positive engagement, I think the "algorithm" shown is fairly useless. Especially since the weights are tied entirely to how well calibrated the individual predictive models are.
- smcl 3y agoMan, all this effort when all most of us want is to see tweets from the people we follow in chronological order. Absolutely wild.
- ChrisRR 3y agoAka the reason I stopped using facebook. I don't want you select who you think are my best friends, I don't want you to randomly sprinkle in group posts, I don't want to be reminded of random events from years in the past, I don't want notifications that a random friend I've not spoken to in years has posted a picture, I don't want you to exclude some friends from the list based on gut feeling. I just want a chronological list of all of my friends updates.
- v0idzer0 3y agoYou can already do this right now
- KenArrari 3y agoThis is what people say but revealed preferences say otherwise.
- pharmakom 3y agoWouldn’t this be unusable? Just a huge flood of tweets that you have no hope of keeping on top of?
- Angostura 3y agoWorks just fine on Mastodon for me - I've got the people who I follow and I see all their posts in chronolgical order. There's also the federated which flows past swiftly and is quite fun to dip a net into when something interesting drifts past.
- ChrisRR 3y agoWow, you must be young. This is how the internet used to be, and people liked it.
- cultureswitch 3y ago