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by rogerallen 1175 days ago
"Today, the For You timeline consists of 50% In-Network Tweets and 50% Out-of-Network Tweets on average, though this may vary from user to user."

I have spent significant effort creating a network and there you go choosing to ignore my efforts by putting in 50% of crap-I-don't-want-to-see.

That is why I despise your algorithm.

3 comments

> "Today, the For You timeline consists of 50% In-Network Tweets and 50% Out-of-Network Tweets on average, though this may vary from user to user." I have spent significant effort creating a network and there you go choosing to ignore my efforts by putting in 50% of crap-I-don't-want-to-see. That is why I despise your algorithm.

This is just one feed (the "For You" recommendations feed), they also have the "following" feed tab next to it that is 100% your network (want you want), and it remembers your selection when you change between them (they fixed that a few months ago), so really this is kind of a pointless thing to despise for that reason. It's just an option you can 100% avoid if you don't want to see it.

In fact, Twitter is probably one of the only few left in the large social media space that actually gives you an 100% following network feed (minus maybe ads) in chronological order that REMEMBERS your selection (Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok don't). Which makes this even more silly to say. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok do all have in-network exclusive chronological order feeds, BUT they are extremely hard to find, or don't remember your selection to them.

Hate of Twitter is easy to spoon out, but at least complain about things that aren't already solved for you.

I'm not on twitter enough for the chronological feed to be appealing to me, and instead want to see the notable tweets from the accounts I follow since the time I last visited. There's no straightforward way to achieve this, but if anyone else has this preference, the workaround is to create a twitter list with all the accounts you follow and set it to show top tweets first.
If you try to use the Following tab on Android, every refresh brings you back to the For You tab.
Is your app up to date? I have it on my iPhone, iPad, and an Android device which all have no problem always remembering the "Following" tab selection. As well as desktop/web.
Pressing the home button on Android often switches the tab over to "for you"
Care to comment on this? [0] Surely Twitter hasn't open sourced and released the recommendation algorithm as you predicted right?

Or perhaps when a prediction didn't go according to plan, let us complain about another thing...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35213705

He's not going to fuck you.
Says the one who cared to comment in the first place, 16 days ago and you getting angry after taking a simple joke too seriously after the fact that Twitter open sourced it's algorithm.

HNer's like you just make me laugh all the time with silly replies like that just being unable to cope.

I said I despised the algorithm, I did not say I hated Twitter. Now I at least know why I hate it.

Yes "Following" is what I use. The reason I use it is because of this algorithm that thinks I could possibly want 50% tweets that make me "engaged^H^H^H^H^Hraged". To me, that is a ridiculous mixture.

I'm happy they have a "Following" and I sure hope they keep it, but I will not be surprised if it goes away.

I'm confused, then why not just use your 'followed' feed instead of 'for you'?
Because the Followed feed is purely chronological. An interesting tweet from someone I follow could have happened 3 hours before I opened the app, and I would miss it.

This is why I preferred the old For You tab - it was (mostly) the people I had chosen to follow, but meant that I had the best content show up whatever time of day I opened the app. This is particularly important when I'm in the UK and most of the people I follow are in the US, so they're not tweeting generally at the same time I'm on the app.

I'm also confused. You can still see everything you've manually curated.
On the android app at least, a recent update made it so pressing the home button while you're in the "followed" tab switches to the "for you" tab. It's extremely annoying
If only there was any other way to visit a website.
"Control Panel for Twitter" plugin. You can get rid of "For You".