4 ms·

I feel like this is a really different experience to my own current experience of Twitter. My timeline notably isn't full of right-wing propaganda, whereas I k

I feel like this is a really different experience to my own current experience of Twitter. My timeline notably isn't full of right-wing propaganda, whereas I know plenty of others who complain that this is the case, and who have even left because of it. I don't understand what is causing people to have these really different experiences with the product, especially given the relatively minimal controls over timeline content that are available (basically follow/unfollow/block). It's odd.

rascul 2y ago
Twitter is filled with sports stuff for me, nothing nazi and almost nothing political. I use it exclusively for sports stuff, though.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> I don't understand what is causing people to have these really different experiences -- given the relatively minimal controls over timeline content I offer that the purpose of exTwitter's algorithms is to choose different content for different people - and insufficient controls keep user consent from interfering with that. As to why exTw algos choose what is chosen: The purpose of black boxes seems to be making sure users never, ever learn why.
dminik 2y ago
I went to check for myself. The posts for me seem to be split 50/50 between tech content from people I'm following and raging debates about whether Churchill is responsible for WW2 (due to some podcast with Tucker Carlson). As you might guess the second one is full of literal Nazi propaganda and Hitler apologists. The rest is filled out with people dunking on Elon. My guess is that if I didn't have him blocked, his stuff would show up there too.
arkh 2y ago
> I don't understand what is causing people to have these really different experiences with the product Imagine you're in a right wing bubble. You follow right wing people. Some of them start complaining about what some fringe left wing people post on X and link to those tweets. You follow those links. Now you just interacted with fringe left wing people. Little by little the mighty algorithm will start giving you what you seem to like: fringe left wing content. Now you're complaining about how X is full of those tweets. Reverse left and right and you got the OP.

rascul 2y ago

Twitter is filled with sports stuff for me, nothing nazi and almost nothing political. I use it exclusively for sports stuff, though.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

> I don't understand what is causing people to have these really different experiences -- given the relatively minimal controls over timeline content I offer that the purpose of exTwitter's algorithms is to choose different content for different people - and insufficient controls keep user consent from interfering with that. As to why exTw algos choose what is chosen: The purpose of black boxes seems to be making sure users never, ever learn why.

dminik 2y ago

I went to check for myself. The posts for me seem to be split 50/50 between tech content from people I'm following and raging debates about whether Churchill is responsible for WW2 (due to some podcast with Tucker Carlson). As you might guess the second one is full of literal Nazi propaganda and Hitler apologists. The rest is filled out with people dunking on Elon. My guess is that if I didn't have him blocked, his stuff would show up there too.

arkh 2y ago

> I don't understand what is causing people to have these really different experiences with the product Imagine you're in a right wing bubble. You follow right wing people. Some of them start complaining about what some fringe left wing people post on X and link to those tweets. You follow those links. Now you just interacted with fringe left wing people. Little by little the mighty algorithm will start giving you what you seem to like: fringe left wing content. Now you're complaining about how X is full of those tweets. Reverse left and right and you got the OP.