4 ms·

I've said this in another thread here, but Twitter is borderline unusable because of this. I have 5,000+ blocked accounts by now (not exaggerating), and the fir

I've said this in another thread here, but Twitter is borderline unusable because of this. I have 5,000+ blocked accounts by now (not exaggerating), and the first few screenfuls of replies are still bots upon bots upon bots. All well-behaved $8-paying netizens, of course.

dewey 2y ago
Why bother if you have to spend that much time curating a good feed?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- smileybarry 2y ago
  Unfortunately it's still the main "shortform" social network here for local stuff. Not enough in my country moved to Mastodon or Bluesky. (Referenced HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41586643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41586643) And no, it's definitely not worth it if you're joining/new enough. Anyone who asks me about Twitter I immediately tell them to not bother and that I'm just "stuck" there. My Following feed and most of the algorithmic feed is fine, it's just the replies & interaction that took a huge hit.
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    I'm curious what kind of engagement people who aren't prolific posters are seeing on Twitter these days. Before I left I noticed that engagement went off a cliff to near zero immediately following the aggressive algorithm changes with blue check spam being promoted, but remained normal on my other social channels. It didn't seem like there were any normal people talking with each other on Twitter.
    - smileybarry 2y ago
      It's down there, below the bluecheck promotion. Or in (non-English) circles where the LLM bots haven't proliferated yet, which are also (mostly) why I stuck around.
      - EasyMark 2y ago
        I tried using an extension that filters out blue checks and it’s still about 90% garbage from troll accounts who can’t afford $8. The only way is to just follow those who you enjoy, although you’ll likely have to find them outside of twitter, because their useful posts are drowning in a sea of trash
    - jjkaczor 2y ago
      Zero. I post the same things to Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky, and other places and get plenty of engagement. However - because I don't pay for a "blue checkmark", that's my best guess as to why I get zero engagement. That's fine - I have always treated Twitter as a "post-only", "fire & forget" medium.
imiric 2y ago
I haven't used Twitter in ages, but what happened to Musk's paywall idea? That might actually deter bots and real users, so it seems like a win-win for everyone to stop using it. Otherwise, I doubt spammers/scammers are really paying $8/mo for a verified account. How are they getting them then?
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  Great, so instead of selling me overpriced intimate shaving accessories the bots will be trying to convince me that Europe will freeze without Russian natural gas.
  - vizzier 2y ago
    I read this comment as a bit tongue in cheek, but to be clear, the aim of the bots isn't generally to advocate for as specific viewpoint but to flood the information landscape with bad information making it challenging for normal people to discern what is real and useful.
cdrini 2y ago
That's fascinating to me, I've never blocked a single account on Twitter and see very few bots. The most annoying thing about twitter for me are the folks monetising the platform, that keep posting rage-bait to game the algorithm! But note I also generally only use the "for you" tab.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  You sure about that? https://youtu.be/WEc5WjufSps?t=193 https://youtu.be/WEc5WjufSps?t=193 Dr. Egon Cholakian sends its regards. That is to say, the bots are getting good. LLMs made this technologically easy a few years ago, it would take a couple years to develop and deploy a sophisticated bot network like this (not for you or I, but for an org with real money behind it that timeline is correct) and now we are seeing them start to appear. The video I linked is proof that bots already deployed in the wild can take 40 minutes of dedicated effort from a capable suspicious person to identify with high conviction. Maybe it would have taken you 10, I'm not hear to argue that, but I am here to argue that it is starting to take real effort to identify the best bots and this is the worst they will ever be. I don't care how smart, capable, or suspicious you are, within 3 years it will not be economical for you to curate your list of non-bot contacts on the basis of content (as opposed to identity).
  - cdrini 2y ago
    Well on my "for you" page, I also follow a pretty niche audience of tech people, which helps :P They're a little easier to verify since they generally also have blogs, or websites, or github accounts, or youtube videos, etc that help verify they're not bots. I also think people create bots for some purpose -- instability, political divisiveness, financial gain, etc. And I'm kind of inherently not using twitter for any of that. I don't think I could find an account on my twitter thread that mentions the word "liberal", "trump", "conservative", or any of that if I tried! I agree that's a muuuuch more likely place to find bots. What sort of bots do you notice the most in your twitter?
    - schmidtleonard 2y ago
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
There is no twitter, only X. edit: What I meant by this is not the name thing but more fundamentally that what twitter was, is no longer so. It's now a different thing now, its has similarities to twitter, but its not twitter.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  Seriously. The same people that deadname X would be up in arms about deadnaming other things.
  - kibwen 2y ago
    > The same people that deadname X would be up in arms about deadnaming other things. Curious. It's almost as though companies aren't people, and treating them like you would treat people makes no sense.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
EasyMark 2y ago
If you only use the “following” tab twitter is fine, if you try to use the “for you” tab then you are expecting too much of someone who posts known nazis and says “hmmm…” or “interesting…”

dewey 2y ago

Why bother if you have to spend that much time curating a good feed?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
smileybarry 2y ago
Unfortunately it's still the main "shortform" social network here for local stuff. Not enough in my country moved to Mastodon or Bluesky. (Referenced HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41586643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41586643) And no, it's definitely not worth it if you're joining/new enough. Anyone who asks me about Twitter I immediately tell them to not bother and that I'm just "stuck" there. My Following feed and most of the algorithmic feed is fine, it's just the replies & interaction that took a huge hit.
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  I'm curious what kind of engagement people who aren't prolific posters are seeing on Twitter these days. Before I left I noticed that engagement went off a cliff to near zero immediately following the aggressive algorithm changes with blue check spam being promoted, but remained normal on my other social channels. It didn't seem like there were any normal people talking with each other on Twitter.
  - smileybarry 2y ago
    It's down there, below the bluecheck promotion. Or in (non-English) circles where the LLM bots haven't proliferated yet, which are also (mostly) why I stuck around.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      I tried using an extension that filters out blue checks and it’s still about 90% garbage from troll accounts who can’t afford $8. The only way is to just follow those who you enjoy, although you’ll likely have to find them outside of twitter, because their useful posts are drowning in a sea of trash
  - jjkaczor 2y ago
    Zero. I post the same things to Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky, and other places and get plenty of engagement. However - because I don't pay for a "blue checkmark", that's my best guess as to why I get zero engagement. That's fine - I have always treated Twitter as a "post-only", "fire & forget" medium.

imiric 2y ago

I haven't used Twitter in ages, but what happened to Musk's paywall idea? That might actually deter bots and real users, so it seems like a win-win for everyone to stop using it. Otherwise, I doubt spammers/scammers are really paying $8/mo for a verified account. How are they getting them then?

schmidtleonard 2y ago
Great, so instead of selling me overpriced intimate shaving accessories the bots will be trying to convince me that Europe will freeze without Russian natural gas.
- vizzier 2y ago
  I read this comment as a bit tongue in cheek, but to be clear, the aim of the bots isn't generally to advocate for as specific viewpoint but to flood the information landscape with bad information making it challenging for normal people to discern what is real and useful.

cdrini 2y ago

That's fascinating to me, I've never blocked a single account on Twitter and see very few bots. The most annoying thing about twitter for me are the folks monetising the platform, that keep posting rage-bait to game the algorithm! But note I also generally only use the "for you" tab.

schmidtleonard 2y ago
You sure about that? https://youtu.be/WEc5WjufSps?t=193 https://youtu.be/WEc5WjufSps?t=193 Dr. Egon Cholakian sends its regards. That is to say, the bots are getting good. LLMs made this technologically easy a few years ago, it would take a couple years to develop and deploy a sophisticated bot network like this (not for you or I, but for an org with real money behind it that timeline is correct) and now we are seeing them start to appear. The video I linked is proof that bots already deployed in the wild can take 40 minutes of dedicated effort from a capable suspicious person to identify with high conviction. Maybe it would have taken you 10, I'm not hear to argue that, but I am here to argue that it is starting to take real effort to identify the best bots and this is the worst they will ever be. I don't care how smart, capable, or suspicious you are, within 3 years it will not be economical for you to curate your list of non-bot contacts on the basis of content (as opposed to identity).
- cdrini 2y ago
  Well on my "for you" page, I also follow a pretty niche audience of tech people, which helps :P They're a little easier to verify since they generally also have blogs, or websites, or github accounts, or youtube videos, etc that help verify they're not bots. I also think people create bots for some purpose -- instability, political divisiveness, financial gain, etc. And I'm kind of inherently not using twitter for any of that. I don't think I could find an account on my twitter thread that mentions the word "liberal", "trump", "conservative", or any of that if I tried! I agree that's a muuuuch more likely place to find bots. What sort of bots do you notice the most in your twitter?
  - schmidtleonard 2y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

There is no twitter, only X. edit: What I meant by this is not the name thing but more fundamentally that what twitter was, is no longer so. It's now a different thing now, its has similarities to twitter, but its not twitter.

stronglikedan 2y ago
Seriously. The same people that deadname X would be up in arms about deadnaming other things.
- kibwen 2y ago
  > The same people that deadname X would be up in arms about deadnaming other things. Curious. It's almost as though companies aren't people, and treating them like you would treat people makes no sense.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

EasyMark 2y ago

If you only use the “following” tab twitter is fine, if you try to use the “for you” tab then you are expecting too much of someone who posts known nazis and says “hmmm…” or “interesting…”