[dev_head_up]

Hmm. I'd say Scott is the only vaguely political account I follow. Next up would be one BBC News and a local newspaper account. Apart from that I follow mainly sports teams (my main use for it is scores and fantasy football) and some selected ones for tv shows. Less than 40 accounts in total.

If anyone can explain how Twitter uses that information to decide to hide Scott Adams from my timeline, I'd love to know. It seems to me that there's one obvious explanation.

[cheath]

In short, because they think you'd engage less with Scott Adams' content.

Filter bubbles are an algorithmic attempt to give you the content that you want the most. For example, Twitter might have identified at some level that you like and retweet sports related content more often than political content. Or even further, that you like left-leaning content more than right. So, they'll do everything they can to serve you what they think you want. If it keeps you scrolling, then they make more ad dollars.

All of these nuanced inputs impact what you see on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

The problem is, there IS a difference between what you want to see and what you should see. Just because you love cat photos, doesn't mean that the NY Times should be filled with them.

If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend this (9 min) ted talk on the topic: https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...

[dev_head_up]

I've seen that and I'm sorry, but I really don't accept your explanation. I've never retweeted/liked/replied or tweeted, ever. I'm a passive consumer. I don't follow political accounts, or search out political views there. If anything, I reckon I was clicking a lot on his blog links via tweets, so (presumably) he should have been showing up more... rather than not at all.

I don't mean to sound like I'm holding you accountable for this! It's just, well this kinda thing is well dodgy and I want to assure people I'm not just cribbing about this without a basis.

[pcthrowaway]

Just a thought, but even of clicking his blog links means you're engaging more, perhaps twitter is guiding their users to engagement in the form of scrolling through their feeds, since that's what twitter makes their money from. Thinking about it that way, maybe it makes sense to filter out tweets that are more likely to take you away from the site

[cheath]

Yeah, I see what you are saying. In that case, I am simply not qualified to answer your question.