Gummi, have you tried at all cultivating lists and pinning them for mobile use?
Regardless of who's in control, I'm not fond of being at the mercy of anyone's algorithm. Feeds are reverse chronological, and include all posts from the accounts you add.
It is easy to self-select people that are representative with the world outside your door. I have lists that cover a number of my interest, and don't see topics like "Brigitte Macron", unless I go slumming in the default feed. The lack of lefties is the biggest problem here in seeding a "balanced" politics feed, but there are still enough to do so.
Also, with X Pro on your desktop, you can setup screens with several side-by-side lists (I have a whole screen for soccer, another for books, etc). Some days, by choice, I never see anything political at all...
Ideally, more people would learn how powerful these are.
I wish there was a way to remove the "For You" tab, because that is the default feed and it's where all the ragebait appears.
All I use now is basically around 5 curated lists. Most have about 200 accounts max (the largest has 1K).
I'm doing a lot of muting too and turning off reposts for many of my follows. My one complaint is that when you look at a list feed, all the reposts still appear.
My main observation of post-Elon X is that many people who I originally thought were discerning and nuanced have started retweeting rage accounts and "news" feeds that present highly editorialised blurbs without citing a source. The people who have remained un-emotive and un-alarmist are disadvantaged by the algorithms and we have seen our engagement drop massively.
Campaigners and dissenters who were good on covid and other issues are getting swept up in viral stories that don't resonate outside of X. They repost videos lacking in context while railing against things like "two-tier policing" or "tyranny", and it's not that the underlying sentiment is necessarily misguided -- it's that the content being shared to promote the sentiment is often distorted or exaggerated.
Most of these viral stories are a flash in the pan anyway. They trend for a few days and then it's on to the next outrage. It's exhausting but also meaningless. What does it achieve out in the real world?
One feature I'd really like to see added is the ability to mute words within a list-feed only. I think that would take care of 90% of the problems you mention.
Most viral stories are only relevant for the entertainment value and don't leave deep footprints. If something gets whipped up to the point that all my non-political peeps are posting about it, then I usually don't mind being aware of it.
But I generally surf X through a lens of an alien anthropologist, and so I find a lot of those big viral moments interesting from that perspective.
This describes what I have been feeling, but haven't been able to articulate. (Thanks, Gummi!) I find I'm less and less interested in my X feed, even though I mostly only look at the Following feed. A few years ago, it was my main reliable source for what WAS really happening. But now, many of the accounts I follow seem more interested in methods of driving engagement to increase their revenue share. It's disappointing, but also good in that it leads to less scrolling and more participation in real life, as you so often recommend. At the end of the day, what we have most control over is our immediate environment: family, community. Those are the best things to focus on. I will stay on X as things can change, and there are fun moments too, but I don't stay glued to it as much as I used to. To be perfectly honest, I miss the original Twitter days where posts were limited to 128 characters! That was a unique thing and I thought it worked well.
I have appreciated following you, especially during covid. I too was censored and deplatformed under the old regime and was very frustrated there was no recourse. Thankfully the Twitter files showed what government censorship looked like in the freest country in the world...and it went far beyond Twitter and much deeper than just one corrupt administration. However, this is not my experience on X, but unlike you I am not an influencer so I have no interest in accumulating followers. I decide who I want to follow, which is now down to 129, which is still far too many, as I am only interested in about 2 or 3 dozen folks that post useful and interesting information. I imagine there is all kinds of crap on X as you noted, as there is in life and found daily in the legacy media which I still read/watch, only to understand the current dominate narrative, but I haven't seen anything like that on my feeds...racism, sexism, antisemitism. If I did, just like in life, I would remove it. Thank you for your continued contributions.
All of your points above plus there are so many videos. My feed is almost all irrelevant videos when I am just on X to read interesting takes. Whilst it was great Musk bought Twitter to restore free speech, in my opinion, his main goal was to train his AI.
THIS. I don't have time for videos. Plus my phone volume is always on mute. I just want/need to be able to quickly (and quietly) read about what's happening.
Gummi, have you tried at all cultivating lists and pinning them for mobile use?
Regardless of who's in control, I'm not fond of being at the mercy of anyone's algorithm. Feeds are reverse chronological, and include all posts from the accounts you add.
It is easy to self-select people that are representative with the world outside your door. I have lists that cover a number of my interest, and don't see topics like "Brigitte Macron", unless I go slumming in the default feed. The lack of lefties is the biggest problem here in seeding a "balanced" politics feed, but there are still enough to do so.
Also, with X Pro on your desktop, you can setup screens with several side-by-side lists (I have a whole screen for soccer, another for books, etc). Some days, by choice, I never see anything political at all...
Ideally, more people would learn how powerful these are.
I wish there was a way to remove the "For You" tab, because that is the default feed and it's where all the ragebait appears.
All I use now is basically around 5 curated lists. Most have about 200 accounts max (the largest has 1K).
I'm doing a lot of muting too and turning off reposts for many of my follows. My one complaint is that when you look at a list feed, all the reposts still appear.
My main observation of post-Elon X is that many people who I originally thought were discerning and nuanced have started retweeting rage accounts and "news" feeds that present highly editorialised blurbs without citing a source. The people who have remained un-emotive and un-alarmist are disadvantaged by the algorithms and we have seen our engagement drop massively.
Campaigners and dissenters who were good on covid and other issues are getting swept up in viral stories that don't resonate outside of X. They repost videos lacking in context while railing against things like "two-tier policing" or "tyranny", and it's not that the underlying sentiment is necessarily misguided -- it's that the content being shared to promote the sentiment is often distorted or exaggerated.
Most of these viral stories are a flash in the pan anyway. They trend for a few days and then it's on to the next outrage. It's exhausting but also meaningless. What does it achieve out in the real world?
One feature I'd really like to see added is the ability to mute words within a list-feed only. I think that would take care of 90% of the problems you mention.
Most viral stories are only relevant for the entertainment value and don't leave deep footprints. If something gets whipped up to the point that all my non-political peeps are posting about it, then I usually don't mind being aware of it.
But I generally surf X through a lens of an alien anthropologist, and so I find a lot of those big viral moments interesting from that perspective.
This describes what I have been feeling, but haven't been able to articulate. (Thanks, Gummi!) I find I'm less and less interested in my X feed, even though I mostly only look at the Following feed. A few years ago, it was my main reliable source for what WAS really happening. But now, many of the accounts I follow seem more interested in methods of driving engagement to increase their revenue share. It's disappointing, but also good in that it leads to less scrolling and more participation in real life, as you so often recommend. At the end of the day, what we have most control over is our immediate environment: family, community. Those are the best things to focus on. I will stay on X as things can change, and there are fun moments too, but I don't stay glued to it as much as I used to. To be perfectly honest, I miss the original Twitter days where posts were limited to 128 characters! That was a unique thing and I thought it worked well.
I have appreciated following you, especially during covid. I too was censored and deplatformed under the old regime and was very frustrated there was no recourse. Thankfully the Twitter files showed what government censorship looked like in the freest country in the world...and it went far beyond Twitter and much deeper than just one corrupt administration. However, this is not my experience on X, but unlike you I am not an influencer so I have no interest in accumulating followers. I decide who I want to follow, which is now down to 129, which is still far too many, as I am only interested in about 2 or 3 dozen folks that post useful and interesting information. I imagine there is all kinds of crap on X as you noted, as there is in life and found daily in the legacy media which I still read/watch, only to understand the current dominate narrative, but I haven't seen anything like that on my feeds...racism, sexism, antisemitism. If I did, just like in life, I would remove it. Thank you for your continued contributions.
All of your points above plus there are so many videos. My feed is almost all irrelevant videos when I am just on X to read interesting takes. Whilst it was great Musk bought Twitter to restore free speech, in my opinion, his main goal was to train his AI.
Gummi forgot to mention the proliferation of AI-generated slop. I mute any account that shares or creates this kind of content.
And while I like Community Notes, I think the launch of Grok was a turn for the worse. Grok is a nuisance and not a reliable arbiter of anything.
THIS. I don't have time for videos. Plus my phone volume is always on mute. I just want/need to be able to quickly (and quietly) read about what's happening.
You have done a good job explaining why X is less of a place for me to even get the news. It all feels so extreme.
NOSTR is the future