No, Twitter has an algorithm. As much as people hate them, algorithms are what make social media actually interesting. 99.99% of creators I follow on TikTok (for example) I would have never ever found if all I had was a chronological feed of messages.
Possibly an extreme take, but have you seen everything you need to see? As in, is there no need for you to discover and learn about new things, concepts, ideas, people?
Sure, you can hope that something interesting pops up on your chronological page, but that’s a 1 in a million chance. You might say “just search for that new thing”, but that’s antithetical to discovery. How can I search for something I didn’t know existed? How many movies, games, books would I have missed out on without at least some algorithmic help?
For reference, I was around for the time of the forums too. It’s not the downfall of society to not have algorithmic recommendations, but it absolutely decreases discoverability of new interesting things, and conversely, the dissemination of important ideas. Sure, I knew about communism etc. before I started using TikTok. But only there did the algorithm give me great creators that explained stuff in an understandable way. Only there did I find out about coops, from an actual coop owner(?).
I discover things without algorithms all the time! It’s slightly terrifying in my worldview that you tie the two together.
There’s a ton of entropy in my existing social graph that outclasses any algorithm I’ve ever seen.
I was a big consumer of early algorithmic YouTube and Reddit + gave Twitter and Insta a shot when they went algorithmic as well… my take stands, it’s always a downgrade in quality for me. I honestly believe it’s killed the content quality of any network that’s attempted it.
No, Twitter has an algorithm. As much as people hate them, algorithms are what make social media actually interesting. 99.99% of creators I follow on TikTok (for example) I would have never ever found if all I had was a chronological feed of messages.
@r1veRRR I was on social media both before and after algorithmic curation, and I find it no more interesting now (less if anything). YMMV.
Possibly an extreme take, but have you seen everything you need to see? As in, is there no need for you to discover and learn about new things, concepts, ideas, people? Sure, you can hope that something interesting pops up on your chronological page, but that’s a 1 in a million chance. You might say “just search for that new thing”, but that’s antithetical to discovery. How can I search for something I didn’t know existed? How many movies, games, books would I have missed out on without at least some algorithmic help?
For reference, I was around for the time of the forums too. It’s not the downfall of society to not have algorithmic recommendations, but it absolutely decreases discoverability of new interesting things, and conversely, the dissemination of important ideas. Sure, I knew about communism etc. before I started using TikTok. But only there did the algorithm give me great creators that explained stuff in an understandable way. Only there did I find out about coops, from an actual coop owner(?).
I discover things without algorithms all the time! It’s slightly terrifying in my worldview that you tie the two together.
There’s a ton of entropy in my existing social graph that outclasses any algorithm I’ve ever seen.
I was a big consumer of early algorithmic YouTube and Reddit + gave Twitter and Insta a shot when they went algorithmic as well… my take stands, it’s always a downgrade in quality for me. I honestly believe it’s killed the content quality of any network that’s attempted it.