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i don't think i'm making a controversial statement by saying that "premium user tweets are, on average, the lowest quality content on twitter right now." i'm ki

i don't think i'm making a controversial statement by saying that "premium user tweets are, on average, the lowest quality content on twitter right now." i'm kind of astounded by how bad the top replies to any viral tweet are - it's not even that they're offensive (though they often are) or that i disagree with them - they're just useless. they're inane. they're pointless. they're uninteresting. i left twitter functionally long ago, but occasionally get sent a tweet and i'll try and read the replies to see what other people are saying and rarely do i ever reach a point where i see anything useful. it feels like the last major shift in quality occurred around the time twitter started doing revenue sharing. the algorithm incentivizes provocative or "relatable" content so many people who were given that opportunity shifted to an "engagement bait" strategy, which doesn't lead to high-quality content, it just leads to stuff that provokes a reaction. alongside that there seemed to be a huge flood of "me too" content in replies. i can't imagine the majority of the people responding to everything and anything with the most inane nonsense are benefitting from this program, but that was really the time i felt the first profound shift in quality on the platform. people's relationship to what they were posting changed meaningfully, and the overall quality of content suffered as a result. this shift moves the motivation to exhibit engagement-bait behaviors from implicit (when people see ads near my content, i make money, therefore i should game the algorithm to be seen by as many people as possible) to explicit (engagement is how i make my money.) i cannot imagine this improving the situation with regards to what's being posted. it kind of seems like a recipe for more of the worst parts of twitter to blossom - accounts that just rush to swipe and repost viral hits from other platforms first to gain traction, explicit incitement through saying increasingly controversial things (to both juice the people who agree and coerce argument from people who don't) and so on. realistically, couldn't this potentially directly add up to rewarding people who post misinformation? if someone with a lot of visibility posts a false claim, people rush to correct and provide context, juicing engagement numbers, leading to them making more money lying than they would telling the truth. it's kind of perverse. if i was more conspiracy minded i feel like i would suggest this was explicitly designed to promote the creation and dissemination of misinformation but i really don't think there's anyone thinking that strategically at twitter.

zdragnar 2y ago
Really, all it is doing is surfacing the asinine nature of Twitter itself. Those inane, dumb, wrong, malicious tweets have always been there, you just weren't looking for them. Now there are promoted tweets, and the tweeters being promoted are people you didn't find interesting in the first place. The only thing that has changed is Twitter is directly speaking to their average audience, which you are not, and that is now painfully more obvious.
- bangaroo 2y ago
  well that kind of breaks the entire utility of the platform, doesn't it? the thing that was nice about twitter way back when was the fact that it felt very community-focused and the people who were most actively involved generally had feeds that largely represented their interests. it wasn't hard to stay away from the garbage, and what you saw felt more intuitively targeted towards your interests. i used it to keep up with friends and leaders in fields i found interesting and found it a lot more intuitive and engaging than other platforms at the time. no doubt we're a decade or more past peak twitter, but it seems like the algorithm has entirely flipped and is designed explicitly to surface as much lowest-common-denominator content as possible, drowning out anything targeted that you're actually interested in. i'll never say it was particularly wonderful, but it was better than it is now.
ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
Maybe we've had different experiences, but I can't recall one instance pre-Musk where I was linked a tweet and found the replies to be worthwhile. This is the site that invented the term "reply guy". My twitter-inclined friends would link me things and remind me to never look at the replies. They're certainly worse now, but I don't see any cause to lament a transition from vapid vitriol to more vapid vitriol. Nothing of value was lost.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I really don't get the "Twitter was always terrible" crowd. Tech Twitter brought tons of great interesting citations & references to discussions. Even amid the rest of Twitter, there was such a massive global brain at work: the associations & connections people would make was amazing. It's remarkable to me that such rank cynicism often goes unchecked. I pity those who so deeply missed out, who didn't see or grasp the amazing power of a good network of follows.

zdragnar 2y ago

Really, all it is doing is surfacing the asinine nature of Twitter itself. Those inane, dumb, wrong, malicious tweets have always been there, you just weren't looking for them. Now there are promoted tweets, and the tweeters being promoted are people you didn't find interesting in the first place. The only thing that has changed is Twitter is directly speaking to their average audience, which you are not, and that is now painfully more obvious.

bangaroo 2y ago
well that kind of breaks the entire utility of the platform, doesn't it? the thing that was nice about twitter way back when was the fact that it felt very community-focused and the people who were most actively involved generally had feeds that largely represented their interests. it wasn't hard to stay away from the garbage, and what you saw felt more intuitively targeted towards your interests. i used it to keep up with friends and leaders in fields i found interesting and found it a lot more intuitive and engaging than other platforms at the time. no doubt we're a decade or more past peak twitter, but it seems like the algorithm has entirely flipped and is designed explicitly to surface as much lowest-common-denominator content as possible, drowning out anything targeted that you're actually interested in. i'll never say it was particularly wonderful, but it was better than it is now.

ToValueFunfetti 2y ago

Maybe we've had different experiences, but I can't recall one instance pre-Musk where I was linked a tweet and found the replies to be worthwhile. This is the site that invented the term "reply guy". My twitter-inclined friends would link me things and remind me to never look at the replies. They're certainly worse now, but I don't see any cause to lament a transition from vapid vitriol to more vapid vitriol. Nothing of value was lost.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I really don't get the "Twitter was always terrible" crowd. Tech Twitter brought tons of great interesting citations & references to discussions. Even amid the rest of Twitter, there was such a massive global brain at work: the associations & connections people would make was amazing. It's remarkable to me that such rank cynicism often goes unchecked. I pity those who so deeply missed out, who didn't see or grasp the amazing power of a good network of follows.