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X is changing its algorithm to highlight smaller accounts
- mschuster91 3y ago"Smaller accounts" my arse. All that will do is give even more of a platform for the utterly fringe far right and most importantly the porn/scam bots. It's funny, Elon Musk took over with the promise to get rid of said bots - but guess what, that didn't happen. Literally every thing I tweet these days, no matter if it's original posts or replies, gets insta-liked by at least one or two bots, with always the same homepage domains. I wonder what is going on at Twitter's anti-abuse department. A human would be able to instantly grasp the context of these domains and block them all...
- aniforprez 3y agoNot to mention the obscene amounts of crypto scam bots and the bots under a lot of movie news accounts tweets advertising procedural t-shirts made from phrases popular from the movie in question. You always had bots but contrary to any of what he's said, Musk has absolutely made the problem infinitely worse
- stiGGG 3y agoScrolling through the replies to tweets of big accounts, Musk himself is the best example, feels like we are already in a SciFi dystopia. Nearly everything is scam or other weird GPT created nonsense.
- vasdae 3y ago[flagged]
- seanhunter 3y agoIt would be worth reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Sneering, sarcastic dismissals of this type don't advance debate even if you disagree with the person.
- vasdae 3y ago[flagged]
- Dalewyn 3y agoConsidering the parent comment based itself on identity politics and vapid Musk hating, there wasn't much debate to be had in the first place. Even invited the subsequent sneering comments, arguably.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Considering the parent comment based itself on identity politics and vapid Musk hating It is objectively measurable that Musk himself has been responsible for a lot of high-profile alt-right accounts (most notably Kanye West [1]) getting unbanned or that he acted as some sort of "personal helpdesk" for the far right [2], and that the spam bot problem has exploded during his reign, in political [3], fake porn [4], crypto scams [5] and dropshipping scams [6]. Instead of just claiming that I were inviting sneer replies, you could have done the research in well under a minute. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/30/elon-musk-reinstates-kanye-west-twitter-account-after-ban https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/30/elon-musk-rein... [2] https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/who-elon-musk-likes-to-talk-to-on-twitter-including-catturd/ https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/who-elon-musk-likes-to-talk-to... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter-bots-republican-primary-debate-tweets-increase https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter... [4] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/twitters-bot-spam-keeps-getting-worse-its-about-porn-this-time/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/twitters-bot-... [5] https://gizmodo.com/twitter-bot-problem-metamask-support-crypto-elon-musk-1850808172 https://gizmodo.com/twitter-bot-problem-metamask-support-cry... [6] https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3ak9/twitters-verified-scam-store-accounts-thrive-as-humans-flee-the-site https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3ak9/twitters-verified-sca...
- numpad0 3y agoIMHO "hating" angle kinda looks sus. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, a cheap agitation.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoThe universe does not bother with simple ideas of human fairness friend.
- emmet 3y agoyeah how dare those progressives... checks notes try to make the world a better place
- nicoburns 3y ago> I wonder what is going on at Twitter's anti-abuse department. Twitter laid off a large proportion of their workforce, so there might not be much of an anti-abuse department left.
- jadbox 3y agoI beg any journalist reading this to test creating new Twitter accounts. With each account, do not post or follow or like any content. With these "naked" fresh accounts, I have seen most (and virtually all) new account Twitter notifications pushing far right messaging like great replacement theories. These promoted tweets often do not even have more than a few dozen likes (so they shouldn't be notable).
- worthless-trash 3y agoIf "Like bots" are the biggest problem, twitter is doing okay. Previously there were report bots, follow bots, etc. A lot of those are gone.
- maxerickson 3y agoI get followed by a new fake account (~0 posts, thousands of follows, a dozen followers) every day. I haven't figured out what they are doing, but one guess is that someone is trying to hide their fake followers by making them fake followers of thousands of accounts.
- mschuster91 3y agoIf it just were the like bots... Twitter has a serious problem with spam and scams, I have provided more sources at [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263468
- worthless-trash 3y agoDamn, all I'm getting is likebots.. I must not be in the cool kids club.
- schmudde 3y ago> As always, this will be made open source and undergo continuous improvement. Wait - the recommender algorithms will be made open source? I find that hard to believe.
- cactusplant7374 3y agoHasn’t that already happened?
- viraptor 3y agoKinda. Something got dumped with very few updates since the first month. The last few commits specifically mention open source which would indicate there's a private version somewhere with more changes.
- yreg 3y agohttps://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
- jerojero 3y agoIf you think about it, the secret sauce tends to be in the data they're able to capture and input into the recommendation algorithms rather than the recommendation algorithm itself. I mean, even Tiktok has papers detailing their recommendation algorithm [1]. So does Youtube and plenty of others. It's all in the data now a days. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.07663.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.07663.pdf
- rco8786 3y agoIt's been OSS for a while - https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
- Yoric 3y agoTo be more precise, there is a snapshot of a subset of the algorithm available as AGPL at that address.
- cactusplant7374 3y agoIt’s actually a cost saving measure as they won’t have to pay top accounts as much.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoWhy would spreading out the payments save costs?
- cactusplant7374 3y agoTwo reasons: 1) Not all accounts get enough views to receive payments. 2) Not all accounts are subscribed to Twitter Blue. They can't receive payments.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoSurely they'd allot and distribute a fixed percentage of their revenue among however many accounts are eligible, along some weighting scheme...? Any other type of model would be unpredictable at best and more than likely an extreme business risk.
- gumballindie 3y agoPeople get paid for posting on Twitter? That explains a lot.
- n_ary 3y agoReal questions because I am dumb. - What is a "creator"? - Who are considered "creators"? Most "creators" I see on insta/tiktok are just people with pretty faces or some random people trying to sell cheap stuff at a slightly higher price and constantly pushing videos(or reels for the cultural folks) promoting products, and of course the reel after their's is also an sponsored advert, so everything is now advert. Only useful creators I see are some talented artists in Instagram, but sadly they are now flooded out by all new-age AI art generator /creators/ producing anime/manga/van-gogh arts of the same thing in slightly different context.
- yreg 3y agoCreator is anyone who makes money by producing content. It's irrelevant whether you consider that content "worthy".
- n_ary 3y ago> Creator is anyone who makes money by producing content. It's irrelevant whether you consider that content "worthy". Thanks for clarifying, this makes sense to me. Previously, I considered creators as someone making original content(could be informative, documentary, educational, news, art, music etc.), but I see that the term is now considered a much broader scope. May be am just stuck in stone-age.
- datpiff 3y agoThe proliferation of corporate/business language is a hint - no one actually wants to "create content". They want to create art, music, writing etc. Advertising however usually needs something to ship it with, to draw attention, and so we have broad, hollow terms like "content" and "creator".
- yreg 3y ago>no one actually wants to "create content" Plenty of entertainers want to create "content" instead of what you label "art".
- jerojero 3y agoI really hope this brings doesn't turn out to be another "elon musk will be flooding your timeline even if you don't follow him or have ever interacted with his tweets" scenario. I wouldn't really want to start seeing people whom I have no interest in following in my timeline. But also, I do value good recommendation algorithms, and they can definitely be helpful in improving the site. So it remains to be seen if this will be a good change or not.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago>I wouldn't really want to start seeing people whom I have no interest in following in my timeline. Use the following pane. It’s linear non algorithmic
- n_ary 3y ago> I wouldn't really want to start seeing people whom I have no interest in following in my timeline. My city authority(police, mayor, emergency services etc.) posts latest affairs and developments live on Twitter, so I use Twitter solely for these news(I don't follow any friends in Twitter because I am not interested in their political views or silly retweets). What helps me most is that, when I see an account trending too much on my timeline, I simply mute that account and somehow it also seems to reduce the similar other accounts showing up in my timeline eventually. I mean no harm to anyone of course, but I want to see the news of my city(because keeping track of 10 different news portal is tough compared to live tweets from the source) but when these important things get flooded by random people posting why Taylor Swift should adapt keto diet or whatever, I have to mute the accounts.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoThis is good. Was insane that it used to literally penalize your account if you interacted with sub 1000 accounts before. Seeing how TikTok treats its creators really shows old Twitter management squandered something bigger by chasing only the desires of journalists and celebs on their platform. Never seeing the bigger picture of what was possible.
- brightball 3y agoSo wait…all this time it was actually useful to get a bunch of fake followers because the numbers alone amplified you? I always assumed that fake followers were pointless since they wouldn’t ever actually see anything.
- dauertewigkeit 3y agoTwitter was the first platform to get celebs posting on the daily so they had something new and exciting on their hands. TikTok then said, what if we turn normal people into celebrities? TikTok would not exist without Twitter and I think Twitter could not have been TikTok. The two cater to different audiences. The elitism of Twitter is what kept the celebs posting there.
- tmaly 3y agoI missing being able to go viral on TikTok. I understand why it happened https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ Looking forward to see where X takes it. Recently it has been an echo chamber of big news events. Just before Elon took over, I was able to see more teachers posting STEM projects. I hope it gets back to that.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y agoI was never a really active twitter user. However - at least the people that I follow - mostly went to bluesky (and some switched to mastodon) and are a lot less active on twitter. My twitter feed is mostly full of people that I don't know and never followed. I am aware there is a "following"-tab. But that is mostly some political institutions and companies that I follow that still seem to post their press releases on twitter.
- hospitalJail 3y agoEh, too late I think. I am probably a creator account, never could get critical mass on Twitter. I can on pretty much every other website, just not twitter. I know I should take responsibility for this, but given every other social media site worked great for me... I just never gained traction on twitter.
- yreg 3y agoHow is it too late? Sounds like an opportunity for you.
- hospitalJail 3y agoMaybe. Maybe I'm jaded, but I just don't believe them. I think 'smaller creators' are probably just trying smaller scale tweets. I think they are going to disincentivize going offsite to my website or youtube. I guess I'll try it, wouldn't hurt. But I'm def not holding my breath.
- tasubotadas 3y agoLet me know once they remove discovery features from the timeline, so I can actually see stuff from the people I am following.
- throw0101b 3y agoWhenever I see "X" I think of X11, so I misread the headline as "X[11] is changing its algorithm to highlight smaller accents", and thought it was about font rendering.
- locopati 3y agoEven the smallest facist gets a voice now... yay?