"My algorithmic timeline, better known as the "For you" tab, devolved into a broken fire hydrant of tweets from blue-checked engagement farmers, shameless meme thieves, clout-chasing Republican politicians, and pseudonymous YouTubers posting weird, uncanny rage-bait. For a brief period, X even made "For you" the default setting, nudging users toward this slurry of boosted content and away from a simple chronological feed."
"Anytime I opened the app and neglected to select the chronological feed, I was not really experiencing Twitter as I'd previously experienced it, or wanted to experience it; I was using a new and different version of Twitter that a reactionary billionaire thought I ought to see instead."
"Today the site's basic mechanics remain weighted toward feeds that incorporate some form of algorithmic input. The "For you" tab still appears to over-index on Musk's posts and perspectives. The "Following" tab defaults to ranking posts by their popularity, which can make it very challenging to try and follow breaking news stories on the app."
Following Elon Musk's 2022 acquisition of Twitter, the platform's algorithmic timeline deteriorated significantly, flooding users with low-quality engagement content from verified accounts, meme thieves, and rage-bait creators. Musk made the algorithmic "For you" feed the default setting, overriding users' preference for chronological feeds from followed accounts. The platform's mechanics remain heavily algorithmic, with the "For you" tab over-indexing on Musk's content and the "Following" tab defaulting to popularity-based ranking rather than chronological order. Users seeking the original Twitter experience must manually adjust settings to access recent posts. European researchers conducted a 2023 study examining how X's algorithm affects user behavior and content consumption patterns.
#social-media-algorithms #twitterx-platform-changes #content-moderation #user-experience-degradation #algorithmic-bias
Read at Fast Company
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