[matsemann]

"X" is in a weird place now. The monetization of engagement absolutely wrecked the feeds from my cursory glance. Just ragebaiting, vague posting, abuse (for a while, every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini" and it would post sexualized images of them). Someone vent viral by posting a picture of Steve Jobs' daughter (?), and people try to replicate that as that now generates money. Replies to posts are just bluechecks being insane, or farm accounts spamming unrelated stuff hoping to get impressions and generate some dollars.

I used to follow only cycling/urban related accounts for the town I live in. Most of them left, so maybe that's making it hard for the algorithm, but my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks, or lots of US issues (I'm not in the US). Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.

[QuantumNomad_]

> Most of them left, so maybe that's making it hard for the algorithm, but my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks

Working as intended. It has been very clear for a very long time (in “Internet time”) that Mr “Free Speech Absolutist” Musk is only really interested in supporting far right propaganda.

> Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.

Honest question, why would anyone willingly browse X? Why have an account there when it’s not even giving you anything nice? Delete the account. Stop visiting the site.

[matsemann]

> Honest question, why would anyone willingly browse X?

I don't know the psychology, but there absolutely is something akin to "outrage porn". Like, something in your brain wants you to go in and be outraged and annoyed about how stupid other's are, and how much better you are.

Tried to search around for why it happens, this has some thoughts, "The dangerous pleasures of outrage": https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/domestic-intelligenc...

> The pleasure of strong negative judgment becomes so enjoyable we seek opportunities to trigger it

[mysterydip]

Maybe it’s related to the tendency of a group to think the way other groups do things is weird/wrong to justify the existence/stance of the group. like “those people all look stupid, they don’t dress properly like we do” type middle school stuff.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

My guess is that outrageous things were important to pay attention to when we were in tribes?

[sidewndr46]

I generally look at the political & social viewpoints of others to try and understand their viewpoint to some degree. Not for outrage. Even if I consider those viewpoints extreme or counter to my own.

That being said I don't browse X.

[ksaj]

I stopped using all of that style of social media, mainly for this reason. First it was Facebook a couple decades ago. I figured I can deal with only hearing from my family once in a while, in real life and emails, and blissfully missing all those photos of the food they're about to eat.

Social media has just gotten worse and worse since Facebook, to the point I can't even bother with Mastodon anymore (and I don't. I gave that up a few months back).

The main thing I like here - I get the info I was hoping to see in the first place, but without all the baggage. Even when that baggage seeps in, it is (very) short term. The ycombinator news mods are exceptional.

This site isn't all that "Social" per se, but the threads generally stay on topic, and aren't constantly trying to sell you something nobody ever asked for.

AI is not the fakest thing in social media.

[leosanchez]

> every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini"

I get these tweets randomly in my Timeline as well. What I don't understand is why does Twitter think I should know about someone asking Grok to put xxx in Bikini

[mcintyre1994]

My guess would be that they amplify tweets involving Grok as a form of advertising. I think they disabled tagging Grok for non paying users, so I guess they do it to advertise its capabilities. And because their user base is so toxic that mostly means amplifying things like that.

[fabian2k]

This is a command to the Grok bot and used to generate an image based on the post and that specific prompt. After significant outrage they disabled it for non-paying users at least, not sure if they changed more about this later.

[blitzar]

If the "algorithm" thinks that I want to see <command to the Grok bot> from random accounts so jams lots of them into my feed then it is a pretty dumb algorithm

[ZeroGravitas]

Maybe X thinks X users might be unaware of the ability to pay money to see other random X users naked, so it's basically an advert for non-consensual sexual image generation.

[eucyclos]

I've been saying that about a lot of algorithms for a while now, but I think the issue is more that they're smart algorithms optimized for the wrong thing

[pjc50]

> my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks, or lots of US issues (I'm not in the US)

> (for a while, every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini")

This is now the purpose of the site: racism and sexism. There was once a time when it would have been the place to follow the Hungarian election, now I have to make to with a few people on bluesky.

[user34283]

My 'For you' feed is almost exclusively Photography, science and tech news.

I believe it strongly depends on what you interact with.

At some point I also had a lot of US news in my feed, but once I stopped opening those posts and instead used the 'Not interested in this post' button or muted the author, they disappeared.

Probably following other accounts or liking photography posts also helped.

[Hamuko]

They're not on my For You feed, but anytime I watch a video on Twitter and it automatically jumps to a next video, it's always something that would never be on my feed. These days, it's usually bodycam footage from the United States (which I don't live in).

[ThePowerOfFuet]

> it's usually bodycam footage from the United States (which I don't live in).

Ragebait.

[matsemann]

Meh, this borders on victim blaming. You can't deny they've done something to turn it the last few years. And there is no one of my interest left to follow, they've all jumped ship. I checked the "following" tab now, and there is nothing of interest there, they've all left.

[user34283]

I signed up a year ago, so I would not know how Twitter behaved back in the days.

All I am saying is that if you Follow accounts you are interested in and like a few relevant posts, the platform likely becomes quite usable.

[blitzar]

vague posting is the current meta