8 ms·

I keep hearing this about Twitter and Facebook but my experience is completely different. I believe the default experience is as you describe, but after I start

I keep hearing this about Twitter and Facebook but my experience is completely different. I believe the default experience is as you describe, but after I started following dozens of retrogaming groups, old games are all I see in both places. Even the ads became relevant and, believe it or not, interesting. I've clicked on a couple, which took me to small creators in the retrogaming and RPG areas.

eitally 2y ago
The same is true with Reddit. The default feed is absolutely awful, but the bar required to curate something individually interesting and useful is too high for most new users, given the toxicity + banality of the default.
- i_love_retros 2y ago
  I'm sorry but reddit is trash. Every subreddit, no matter how niche, is basically cringy phrases being repeated or photos of some "home set up" or said niche product someone bought who is looking for validation of their decision. It's so bad I blocked reddit from my search engine results.
  - eitally 2y ago
    Clearly we're using different subs. ymmv.
    - i_love_retros 2y ago
      Provide an example of a sub that isn't like that?
      - ColdTakes 2y ago
        Both /r/Science and /r/AskScience are very heavily moderated and verified industry experts discuss papers on it.
        qqqult 2y ago
        There's a lot of interesting discussions on r/science but like the rest of reddit it's such an echo chamber that you end up with bizarre one-sided arguments that discourage all opposing views.
        jemmyw 2y ago
        Is there much space for opposing views on a forum answering science questions? Presumably the purpose is to answer from established science.
        swatcoder 2y ago
        > Is there much space for opposing views on a forum answering science questions? Perhaps more than anywhere. Science is a process of challenge and response, not a static body of knowledge. > Presumably the purpose is to answer from established science. "Established science", which is still subject to debate itself, isn't what link aggregators cover. They bias towarss stuff more like science news and novel study outcomes, which are nothing to do with established science except as a seed for critical discussion.
        kragen 2y ago
        If something is "established" and has no "space for opposing views" it's the opposite of science. "Dogma", perhaps. In science, by contrast, every belief is at best contingent, subject to rejection when better evidence becomes available. That's what makes it science in the first place!
        ColdTakes 2y ago
        I don't see any benefit in entertaining flat-Earthers in discussion.
        kragen 2y ago
        If you prohibit arguing about the shape of the Earth, you're banning people from explaining that EGM08 is generally more accurate than EGM96—and where it isn't. That is a significant harm. Trolls advocating obvious nonsense like flat-Earthism isn't a significant harm, because nobody over the age of 6 will be misled. Even if you were right that debate on the shape of the earth had no benefit, forbidding it still wouldn't be science. Science is not coextensive with beneficial things.
      - filchermcurr 2y ago
        /r/CreaturesGames/ - Discussion about the Creatures artificial life simulation games. I haven't seen anything particularly cringey on it.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  On reddit the defaults are shit and the rest of the site bans you by default until you've karmawhored yourself past an arbitrary threshold on those defaults. Trash website. I used to use it years back. Some subreddits were really great but they all inevitability devolved so I lost any interest in maintaining active accounts there. r/skookum had really interesting content for a while but devolved into idiots reposting the same skookum brand wrenches over and over again.
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  I finally quit my barren Twitter when the Musk takeover resulted in my feed being flooded with porn (including illegal content) and arabic carpet cleaning ads. I seriously doubt anyone's default Reddit front page has ever looked like that.
  - commandlinefan 2y ago
    I keep seeing people say they've experienced this, but I've been on twitter for years (pre Musk and stayed post Musk) and I've never once seen porn on there. How does this happen by accident?
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      They're going to have a pretty developed and stable picture of you and what you respond to by now, especially of their view of you aligns with high- value placements already. So they probably don't bother to audition that kind of content for you very often because they already have strategies that milk your attention, engagement, and wallet better. When you hear other people share their experience as new or different users, keep in mind how customized all these platforms are and how idiosycratically optimized they'll already be for you as a long-time, engaged user. Most people can't go back in time to get where you are, and don't have any sure (or worthwhile) road to get there.
    - SmirkingRevenge 2y ago
      In my case, my (now deleted) account (which was primarily read-only) would get several porn bot followers per day. If I didn't log in for a week, I'd have dozens of new "p#i#c#s#i#n#b#i#o" type accounts following me. Towards the end, there would often be porn in replies of many posts on all kinds of topics, like politics, news, etc.
      - commandlinefan 2y ago
        > several porn bot followers per day Ah, ok, yeah, you're right, that did (and still does) happen to me. I had forgotten about that, I just ignore followers now.
- ge96 2y ago
  YouTube is nuts when not logged in as well. Those crazy clickbait thumbnails eg. Mr. Beast or whatever.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    My logged-in YouTube shows me almost entirely 3blue1brown, Applied Science, and the like. Logged out it is 100% chum and garbage.
    - ge96 2y ago
      I wish the home was better showing the stuff you followed vs. having to go into subscriptions tab. edit: there are a limited number of tiles to show but yeah
runjake 2y ago
Agreed. The X ads were terrible and annoying until I flipped on that "Let X ad track you" and at least I get tolerable ads on mobile. (uBlock Origin blocks them on desktop) The For You feed varies week by week but is generally okay. I make heavy use of lists, mute words, etc to clean things up. X is a train wreck, but an interesting and useful one, depending on who/what you follow.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I bought a premium account on X and the ads went away. I bought a premium Prime account on Amazon, and yet some of their shows still have embedded commercials. grrrr.
  - runjake 2y ago
    I have Premium and I still get half the ads as free. Plus, I get constant ads to upgrade to Premium+ for ads-free. Premium+ is probably what you have.
    - tomrod 2y ago
      I use bluesky and so far have no ads and lots of great journalism and academic lists to follow. Greatly enjoying it, feels like Twitter 2012 or so.
      - runjake 2y ago
        I have Bluesky, but I don't really like it as much. The UX is much better than X, though. On Bluesky, I pretty much follow the people I followed before they fled Twitter. However, they complain a lot about politics, Elon Musk and the US President Elect on their timelines. I could unfollow, and do in some cases, but that would pretty much leave me with nothing to read on Bluesky. That, and the weird tech people I get the most value from still post primary on X, so I deal with it.
        tomrod 2y ago
qqqult 2y ago
same, people keep complaining that their twitter feeds are full of violence, porn & political bullshit but I get 0 of that I haven't gone out of my way to restrict my timeline either, I follow ~1000 accounts I just don't follow or interact with accounts that post any of that crap.
celticninja 2y ago
Don't worry it will come, it takes a while but then you start getting sent outrage bait, stuff you will disagree with just to get you involved.
threeseed 2y ago
I run a number of business X accounts which are post-only. The very second the US election got underway all of our accounts started to heavily promote right-wing political content. Even though we specifically said when we signed up that we aren't interested in anything like that.
- chasd00 2y ago
  This happened to me on imgur, i explicitly filtered out politics but once the election got underway I started seeing it everywhere (except in imgur's case it was left-wing content). I turned off the politics filter and then turned it back on and they vanished for a time but then slowly leaked back in. If i reset the filter every week then i could keep political related content hidden for the most part.

eitally 2y ago

The same is true with Reddit. The default feed is absolutely awful, but the bar required to curate something individually interesting and useful is too high for most new users, given the toxicity + banality of the default.

i_love_retros 2y ago
I'm sorry but reddit is trash. Every subreddit, no matter how niche, is basically cringy phrases being repeated or photos of some "home set up" or said niche product someone bought who is looking for validation of their decision. It's so bad I blocked reddit from my search engine results.
- eitally 2y ago
  Clearly we're using different subs. ymmv.
  - i_love_retros 2y ago
    Provide an example of a sub that isn't like that?
    - ColdTakes 2y ago
      Both /r/Science and /r/AskScience are very heavily moderated and verified industry experts discuss papers on it.
      - qqqult 2y ago
        There's a lot of interesting discussions on r/science but like the rest of reddit it's such an echo chamber that you end up with bizarre one-sided arguments that discourage all opposing views.
        jemmyw 2y ago
        Is there much space for opposing views on a forum answering science questions? Presumably the purpose is to answer from established science.
        swatcoder 2y ago
        > Is there much space for opposing views on a forum answering science questions? Perhaps more than anywhere. Science is a process of challenge and response, not a static body of knowledge. > Presumably the purpose is to answer from established science. "Established science", which is still subject to debate itself, isn't what link aggregators cover. They bias towarss stuff more like science news and novel study outcomes, which are nothing to do with established science except as a seed for critical discussion.
        kragen 2y ago
        If something is "established" and has no "space for opposing views" it's the opposite of science. "Dogma", perhaps. In science, by contrast, every belief is at best contingent, subject to rejection when better evidence becomes available. That's what makes it science in the first place!
        ColdTakes 2y ago
        I don't see any benefit in entertaining flat-Earthers in discussion.
        kragen 2y ago
        If you prohibit arguing about the shape of the Earth, you're banning people from explaining that EGM08 is generally more accurate than EGM96—and where it isn't. That is a significant harm. Trolls advocating obvious nonsense like flat-Earthism isn't a significant harm, because nobody over the age of 6 will be misled. Even if you were right that debate on the shape of the earth had no benefit, forbidding it still wouldn't be science. Science is not coextensive with beneficial things.
    - filchermcurr 2y ago
      /r/CreaturesGames/ - Discussion about the Creatures artificial life simulation games. I haven't seen anything particularly cringey on it.
lupusreal 2y ago
On reddit the defaults are shit and the rest of the site bans you by default until you've karmawhored yourself past an arbitrary threshold on those defaults. Trash website. I used to use it years back. Some subreddits were really great but they all inevitability devolved so I lost any interest in maintaining active accounts there. r/skookum had really interesting content for a while but devolved into idiots reposting the same skookum brand wrenches over and over again.
evantbyrne 2y ago
I finally quit my barren Twitter when the Musk takeover resulted in my feed being flooded with porn (including illegal content) and arabic carpet cleaning ads. I seriously doubt anyone's default Reddit front page has ever looked like that.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  I keep seeing people say they've experienced this, but I've been on twitter for years (pre Musk and stayed post Musk) and I've never once seen porn on there. How does this happen by accident?
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    They're going to have a pretty developed and stable picture of you and what you respond to by now, especially of their view of you aligns with high- value placements already. So they probably don't bother to audition that kind of content for you very often because they already have strategies that milk your attention, engagement, and wallet better. When you hear other people share their experience as new or different users, keep in mind how customized all these platforms are and how idiosycratically optimized they'll already be for you as a long-time, engaged user. Most people can't go back in time to get where you are, and don't have any sure (or worthwhile) road to get there.
  - SmirkingRevenge 2y ago
    In my case, my (now deleted) account (which was primarily read-only) would get several porn bot followers per day. If I didn't log in for a week, I'd have dozens of new "p#i#c#s#i#n#b#i#o" type accounts following me. Towards the end, there would often be porn in replies of many posts on all kinds of topics, like politics, news, etc.
    - commandlinefan 2y ago
      > several porn bot followers per day Ah, ok, yeah, you're right, that did (and still does) happen to me. I had forgotten about that, I just ignore followers now.
ge96 2y ago
YouTube is nuts when not logged in as well. Those crazy clickbait thumbnails eg. Mr. Beast or whatever.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  My logged-in YouTube shows me almost entirely 3blue1brown, Applied Science, and the like. Logged out it is 100% chum and garbage.
  - ge96 2y ago
    I wish the home was better showing the stuff you followed vs. having to go into subscriptions tab. edit: there are a limited number of tiles to show but yeah

runjake 2y ago

Agreed. The X ads were terrible and annoying until I flipped on that "Let X ad track you" and at least I get tolerable ads on mobile. (uBlock Origin blocks them on desktop) The For You feed varies week by week but is generally okay. I make heavy use of lists, mute words, etc to clean things up. X is a train wreck, but an interesting and useful one, depending on who/what you follow.

WalterBright 2y ago
I bought a premium account on X and the ads went away. I bought a premium Prime account on Amazon, and yet some of their shows still have embedded commercials. grrrr.
- runjake 2y ago
  I have Premium and I still get half the ads as free. Plus, I get constant ads to upgrade to Premium+ for ads-free. Premium+ is probably what you have.
  - tomrod 2y ago
    I use bluesky and so far have no ads and lots of great journalism and academic lists to follow. Greatly enjoying it, feels like Twitter 2012 or so.
    - runjake 2y ago
      I have Bluesky, but I don't really like it as much. The UX is much better than X, though. On Bluesky, I pretty much follow the people I followed before they fled Twitter. However, they complain a lot about politics, Elon Musk and the US President Elect on their timelines. I could unfollow, and do in some cases, but that would pretty much leave me with nothing to read on Bluesky. That, and the weird tech people I get the most value from still post primary on X, so I deal with it.
      - tomrod 2y ago

qqqult 2y ago

same, people keep complaining that their twitter feeds are full of violence, porn & political bullshit but I get 0 of that I haven't gone out of my way to restrict my timeline either, I follow ~1000 accounts I just don't follow or interact with accounts that post any of that crap.

celticninja 2y ago

Don't worry it will come, it takes a while but then you start getting sent outrage bait, stuff you will disagree with just to get you involved.

threeseed 2y ago

I run a number of business X accounts which are post-only. The very second the US election got underway all of our accounts started to heavily promote right-wing political content. Even though we specifically said when we signed up that we aren't interested in anything like that.

chasd00 2y ago
This happened to me on imgur, i explicitly filtered out politics but once the election got underway I started seeing it everywhere (except in imgur's case it was left-wing content). I turned off the politics filter and then turned it back on and they vanished for a time but then slowly leaked back in. If i reset the filter every week then i could keep political related content hidden for the most part.