10 ms·

The algorithmic anti-culture of scale

56 points by jsnell 3y ago

taeric 3y ago
I haven't tried threads, yet, but this seems an extreme amount of hate to level towards it. Curious why there are so many emotions flying on all of these places. I'm also always wary of such distinct causal threads of how we got the companies that we have now. Feels like things could have easily gone in many other directions, as well. I do agree that it seems that Twitter isn't actually going anywhere any time soon.
- chongli 3y ago
  Curious why there are so many emotions flying on all of these places Because it marks the beginning of a full-scale war on Twitter. Because it represents a new threat to the fediverse in the form of embrace-extend-extinguish. Because both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are polarizing figures.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    And I'd add there's also a legitimate sense of loss when it comes to Twitter. It meant a lot to me when I was a user of it, but I left early on in the Elon era when it was clear where things were heading. (Here I would link you to my explanation of why I left, but Twitter is now so broken I apparently can't.) Twitter functioned for years in spite of the poor management, thriving because of the community. But Musk has in short order managed to ruin something a lot of people loved. People are still working through that anger and grief.
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  Twitter is still going to be around, Tumblr is still around. I just hope Musk keeps it open to everyone. There was a DNC bias in its content moderation before him. I prefer to hear everyone’s opinion and propaganda. It makes thoughts less inbreed.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    There's a very good chance Twitter won't be around. Even Musk has said so. Or it might be around in some negligible way, where it's a backwater that people mainly used to use, as with MySpace. Tumblr survived through a long era of benign neglect due to luck, not some inexorable law.
    - slowhadoken 3y ago
      That's all speculation. Something as big as Twitter doesn't get thrown away, it gets repurposed. I prefer the way Musk is running it but it has it's elitist detractors. Under Jack Dorsey it was a rumor mill for independent spin doctors, character assassins, and propagandists. A fishing hole for DNC PR.
      - wpietri 3y ago
        Yes, all discussion about the future is speculation, including your claims. Something as big as Twitter is less likely to get thrown away, sure. But it is shrinking, and could well shrink further. There's also a big question of who might buy it. The first time Tumblr got sold, it was for $1 billion. The second time, for $3 million. And the receiving organization has been putting a lot of money into it trying to create a viable business. It's perfectly possible that nobody with the money to buy and run Twitter would actually want it. Twitter was available for sale for many years, but was never purchased except by somebody doing it for decidedly non-economic reasons. Consider how Disney decided not to buy it, for example: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney-streaming-code https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney... For many organizations, Twitter is brand poison. It'd be a continuous source of bad PR. And with some of its key assets destroyed or lost, plus so much negative press, it's going to be at best a fixer-upper. And what would they get out of it? It was never a good business even before the Threads launch when it had no serious competition for its niche. I have a hard time imagining who would pay for it even at fire sale prices.
        slowhadoken 3y ago
ea550ff70a 3y ago
>My verdict: Threads sucks shit. It has no purpose. It is for no one. It launched as a content graveyard and will assuredly only become more of one over time. The writer's is clearly mad at life here. Threads is fine. The content is fine. The design is fine. The algorithm is also fine. Not everyone is into whatever nonsense is happening in the twitterworld.
- anonymoushn 3y ago
  Most of the article makes no sense, but Threads won't really be usable as "a Twitter" until there's a feed of people you follow.
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    or the ability to discover content rather than people
    - jxramos 3y ago
      that's an interesting distinction, can you elaborate, I'd like to hear more about this.
      - shortrounddev2 3y ago
        Currently, the search function only searches for users and not posts. There are no hashtags, so if I was interested in (for example) Anime art, then I would have no way of finding posts about anime art. I can only find other users who may or may not post anime art, and that search is based a fuzzy search of their name and not their bio
        jxramos 3y ago
        ah yah I heard about that feature anemic MVP rollout. Presumably they'll expand the search mechanism. Seems like a gaping omission for a debut MVP though, wonder what the rush was exactly.
zerodensity 3y ago
So not having used twitter how does that algorithm differ from this one? I mean he did not follow anything... Does Twitter have some magic sauce that unguided gives you exactly what you want or something?
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
  I learned from stratechery's analisis on twitter and threads that twitter did used to have (or has had at some point?) a very particular kind of 'magic sauce' the point as I understood it: that twitter by relying on who you followed to make your feed AND sorting it just by time; did manage to create something of a niche in the social media space.
mattgreenrocks 3y ago
> Our tastes change. We move on. And then suddenly we can’t imagine ever going back. Bingo. I can’t relate to any of this stuff. It actually is quite alienating when you experience it repeatedly. Plus, the suggested content in Threads is so bad. Half of it is random whining about “when she likes u then nvr replies” or brands trying way too hard by writing in that same, too-self-aware sarcastic lowercase tone. You always feel like you’re missing a small piece of context when reading it because decoding it correctly is a considered a shibboleth. In short, it’s clearly the domain of the excessively online, just like Twitter.
BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
> My verdict: Threads sucks shit. It has no purpose. It is for no one wrong. it has a purpose, and it serves someone, just not its users. they're looking for a way to shove more advertisement and other sorts of manipulation right at you; after all, that is their product.
thriftwy 3y ago
I remember a decade ago, mail.ru has released a new and fresh social network just like Threads. At first there was chaos but it was fun - you could write something unusual and get strangers see it and respond, and see yourself somewhere in global reach rankings. In a week, though, you would only see accounts posting the same kind of content over and over again (be it jokes or kittens) and in two weeks it died because nobody cared to visit it anymore.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  A semi-successful thing was Yandex Zen, designed to be an anti-social network where you do not have to subscribe to anything since it will show random stuff to you and see how you would react. What was great is that it was long tailish, such as you could find yourself reading about train spotting, airplanes and that dude working kitchen in a restaurant. No celebrities unless you really clicked that stuff yourself. Has Yandex not badly mismanaged it at least three times, it could still be relevant by now.
dvt 3y ago
Threads is so egregiously corporatist, I don't think anyone that's seriously anti-Twitter would ever consider it a viable alternative. The memes are forced, the "content" is manufactured, and, worst of all, I keep in touch with the same people I keep in touch on Instagram so, at least for me, it already feels redundant. Meta should have started from scratch, building organic communities, and fostering mature, grown-up dialogue; but then their "signups" would've looked much worse.
- revscat 3y ago
  The risk there is the inevitable introduction of matters related to human sexuality, which makes the corporatists extremely uncomfortable.
gardenhedge 3y ago
author is half right. threads sucks. but so does twitter.
elforce002 3y ago
Well, the thing is threads is catering to brands and famous people, so other than the absolutely brand "sheep", the rest prob. won't find the content appealing enough to engage or even be there. Heck, the narrative went from "twitter killer" to "friendly content" and "we're not trying to compete with twitter, and we don't like political takes, etc...". Some users are saying they like threads because there aren't any x, y people posting egregious takes, etc. If that's the case, threads will be nothing more than an eco chamber just like truth social, etc. I follow ML researchers, Software Engineers, etc... and even if they have personal takes I prob. won't agree with, that's ok. My bold statement is that either threads cannibalize ig, or they integrate it to ig in a couple of years.

56 points by jsnell 3y ago

I haven't tried threads, yet, but this seems an extreme amount of hate to level towards it. Curious why there are so many emotions flying on all of these places. I'm also always wary of such distinct causal threads of how we got the companies that we have now. Feels like things could have easily gone in many other directions, as well. I do agree that it seems that Twitter isn't actually going anywhere any time soon.

chongli 3y ago
Curious why there are so many emotions flying on all of these places Because it marks the beginning of a full-scale war on Twitter. Because it represents a new threat to the fediverse in the form of embrace-extend-extinguish. Because both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are polarizing figures.
- wpietri 3y ago
  And I'd add there's also a legitimate sense of loss when it comes to Twitter. It meant a lot to me when I was a user of it, but I left early on in the Elon era when it was clear where things were heading. (Here I would link you to my explanation of why I left, but Twitter is now so broken I apparently can't.) Twitter functioned for years in spite of the poor management, thriving because of the community. But Musk has in short order managed to ruin something a lot of people loved. People are still working through that anger and grief.
slowhadoken 3y ago
Twitter is still going to be around, Tumblr is still around. I just hope Musk keeps it open to everyone. There was a DNC bias in its content moderation before him. I prefer to hear everyone’s opinion and propaganda. It makes thoughts less inbreed.
- wpietri 3y ago
  There's a very good chance Twitter won't be around. Even Musk has said so. Or it might be around in some negligible way, where it's a backwater that people mainly used to use, as with MySpace. Tumblr survived through a long era of benign neglect due to luck, not some inexorable law.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    That's all speculation. Something as big as Twitter doesn't get thrown away, it gets repurposed. I prefer the way Musk is running it but it has it's elitist detractors. Under Jack Dorsey it was a rumor mill for independent spin doctors, character assassins, and propagandists. A fishing hole for DNC PR.
    - wpietri 3y ago
      Yes, all discussion about the future is speculation, including your claims. Something as big as Twitter is less likely to get thrown away, sure. But it is shrinking, and could well shrink further. There's also a big question of who might buy it. The first time Tumblr got sold, it was for $1 billion. The second time, for $3 million. And the receiving organization has been putting a lot of money into it trying to create a viable business. It's perfectly possible that nobody with the money to buy and run Twitter would actually want it. Twitter was available for sale for many years, but was never purchased except by somebody doing it for decidedly non-economic reasons. Consider how Disney decided not to buy it, for example: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney-streaming-code https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney... For many organizations, Twitter is brand poison. It'd be a continuous source of bad PR. And with some of its key assets destroyed or lost, plus so much negative press, it's going to be at best a fixer-upper. And what would they get out of it? It was never a good business even before the Threads launch when it had no serious competition for its niche. I have a hard time imagining who would pay for it even at fire sale prices.
      - slowhadoken 3y ago

ea550ff70a 3y ago

>My verdict: Threads sucks shit. It has no purpose. It is for no one. It launched as a content graveyard and will assuredly only become more of one over time. The writer's is clearly mad at life here. Threads is fine. The content is fine. The design is fine. The algorithm is also fine. Not everyone is into whatever nonsense is happening in the twitterworld.

anonymoushn 3y ago
Most of the article makes no sense, but Threads won't really be usable as "a Twitter" until there's a feed of people you follow.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  or the ability to discover content rather than people
  - jxramos 3y ago
    that's an interesting distinction, can you elaborate, I'd like to hear more about this.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      Currently, the search function only searches for users and not posts. There are no hashtags, so if I was interested in (for example) Anime art, then I would have no way of finding posts about anime art. I can only find other users who may or may not post anime art, and that search is based a fuzzy search of their name and not their bio
      - jxramos 3y ago
        ah yah I heard about that feature anemic MVP rollout. Presumably they'll expand the search mechanism. Seems like a gaping omission for a debut MVP though, wonder what the rush was exactly.

zerodensity 3y ago

So not having used twitter how does that algorithm differ from this one? I mean he did not follow anything... Does Twitter have some magic sauce that unguided gives you exactly what you want or something?

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
I learned from stratechery's analisis on twitter and threads that twitter did used to have (or has had at some point?) a very particular kind of 'magic sauce' the point as I understood it: that twitter by relying on who you followed to make your feed AND sorting it just by time; did manage to create something of a niche in the social media space.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago

> Our tastes change. We move on. And then suddenly we can’t imagine ever going back. Bingo. I can’t relate to any of this stuff. It actually is quite alienating when you experience it repeatedly. Plus, the suggested content in Threads is so bad. Half of it is random whining about “when she likes u then nvr replies” or brands trying way too hard by writing in that same, too-self-aware sarcastic lowercase tone. You always feel like you’re missing a small piece of context when reading it because decoding it correctly is a considered a shibboleth. In short, it’s clearly the domain of the excessively online, just like Twitter.

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago

> My verdict: Threads sucks shit. It has no purpose. It is for no one wrong. it has a purpose, and it serves someone, just not its users. they're looking for a way to shove more advertisement and other sorts of manipulation right at you; after all, that is their product.

thriftwy 3y ago

I remember a decade ago, mail.ru has released a new and fresh social network just like Threads. At first there was chaos but it was fun - you could write something unusual and get strangers see it and respond, and see yourself somewhere in global reach rankings. In a week, though, you would only see accounts posting the same kind of content over and over again (be it jokes or kittens) and in two weeks it died because nobody cared to visit it anymore.

thriftwy 3y ago
A semi-successful thing was Yandex Zen, designed to be an anti-social network where you do not have to subscribe to anything since it will show random stuff to you and see how you would react. What was great is that it was long tailish, such as you could find yourself reading about train spotting, airplanes and that dude working kitchen in a restaurant. No celebrities unless you really clicked that stuff yourself. Has Yandex not badly mismanaged it at least three times, it could still be relevant by now.

dvt 3y ago

Threads is so egregiously corporatist, I don't think anyone that's seriously anti-Twitter would ever consider it a viable alternative. The memes are forced, the "content" is manufactured, and, worst of all, I keep in touch with the same people I keep in touch on Instagram so, at least for me, it already feels redundant. Meta should have started from scratch, building organic communities, and fostering mature, grown-up dialogue; but then their "signups" would've looked much worse.

revscat 3y ago
The risk there is the inevitable introduction of matters related to human sexuality, which makes the corporatists extremely uncomfortable.

gardenhedge 3y ago

author is half right. threads sucks. but so does twitter.

elforce002 3y ago

Well, the thing is threads is catering to brands and famous people, so other than the absolutely brand "sheep", the rest prob. won't find the content appealing enough to engage or even be there. Heck, the narrative went from "twitter killer" to "friendly content" and "we're not trying to compete with twitter, and we don't like political takes, etc...". Some users are saying they like threads because there aren't any x, y people posting egregious takes, etc. If that's the case, threads will be nothing more than an eco chamber just like truth social, etc. I follow ML researchers, Software Engineers, etc... and even if they have personal takes I prob. won't agree with, that's ok. My bold statement is that either threads cannibalize ig, or they integrate it to ig in a couple of years.