The algorithm is killing Twitter and it's driving me insane

So, I hung around in Twitter a lot longer than many (it’s not a principle thing, it’s an addiction thing) but I have a theory about the behaviours OP is describing: they’re not caused by algorithm, or at least not entirely.

The algorithm always tried to introduce you to people you might find interesting. This would obviously work by looking at who you follow and coming up with similar matches.

But what happens when the site is losing users day after day? The algo can’t feed you your regular tweets, half of them are no longer posting. Worse, half the people it would have recommended have gone as well. So, it casts its net far wider than it used to. This picks up a whole bunch of tweets that, for whatever reason, you have no interest in reading.

And yes, in the year after the takeover, I found my feed was just, increasingly, boring. Then some technical screw up made it not work on my phone browser and… I just couldn’t be bothered to download the app and work around it.

Twitter’s product was always the people, and they’re not there any more.

Sounds like somebody who might be happy finding the smallest and queerest Mastodon server they can find. Or who might like a place like Bluesky or Threads which have algorithmic biases against negativity.

That post is about as articulate as I’ve seen that explains why some people don’t want visibility, or who go “death con 3” (after Kanye West) when they see a reply they don’t like. There’s a real contradiction between the author’s desires and having a big pool to swim in, algorithmic feed or not.

No one in the right mind uses Twitter let alone gives a crap about it.

It sounds like the author experienced loss of community and wants to share their grief with us.

Up until 3 minutes ago, I figured that using the non-algorithm side of Twitter (and Facebook) as a solution that I could live with. I now see that it's changed the nature of the public that will eventually interact with me, and influence me.

I have to figure out how to tell which of my followers is an actual well intentioned human, and purge the rest

I miss Reddit, having nuked my account, and vowing never to go back.

The only tenable future is going back to Blogs and RSS, where there's no algorithm, for the most part.

Twitter has been deteriorating since long before whatever version of "the algorithm" it's on now. If you're still on it and complaining about it, that's on you.

I think what he's talking about isn't that unique to twitter and more a trend across the entire web - that big "social media" companies have realized the most profitable way to get ad dollars and engagement is through rage bait. People interact much more frequently when they're enraged. This isn't my particular gripe with the "new" twitter - I find it goes out of its way to shove content down my throat I never wanted, never would want, like in a million years. I actually liked the previous "For you" implementation and like the author said it seemed pretty dang good at it, at least for me.

Now, no matter what, I get inundated with far right, and sometimes viciously racist drivel. Elon himself seems inescapable - blocking him stops the (completely unwarranted) push notifications of "wow i can't believe this" grandma-emailing-me-something-she-found-in-a-FW:FW:FW:FW:-chain style of tweets he will constantly post, and to a large extent keeps him out of my feed - but then there's a blue-check army of sycophants that will not just quote tweet but literally screen shot and repost his tweets that will start showing up in my feed too. I've tried and failed to stop any of this. To be fair, I didn't try super duper hard (because I shouldn't have to), and I'm sure there's some way to tailor it that I don't care to figure out. I decided I simply don't need to be there, and if that stuff floats your boat, that's fine by me - I just don't want to see it.

Really though, the biggest problem to me when engaging on platforms, especially if I accidentally "blow up" like the author describes - people have this pathological need to be angry at something or someone. Like, I've been in these baffling exchanges with people where I basically throw my hands up and say "Look, you don't have to be here engaging with me, you don't have to read anything I write, you can just go on about your day" but it becomes clear they are doing it because they enjoy that outrage and harassment. And that problem is definitely not unique to twitter/x, although some platforms deal with it better than others.

It is mind boggling to me how anyone can cry about "the algorithm" on Twitter, either now or in the past, in regards to their own feed. On the very top of your Twitter feed there are two buttons. One says "for you" (which feeds you the algorithm) and the other says "following". Simply clicking on the "following" tab means that you only see Tweets from people you are following, in chronological order, without any algorithm or any interference from Twitter of any kind. How on earth can anyone willingly choose the Twitter algorithm to curate their feed with the "for you" tab and then cry about it?

I started using an account earlier this year to follow some people's news, and after curating the feed find the "content slurry" endless scroll not terrible for recent news/trends/memes/music/whatever.

I've heard the complaints that twitter was ruined, but never understood how. Author points to a loss of personal community, so now I think that the complaints are a result of Musk's deliberate bursting of filter bubbles, and are from people who preferred to keep their bubble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble