Welcome new twitter expats!
I know for a lot of you this is a temporary migration, and you'll head back once they fix the problems.
But before you go back to twitter, take this thought with you: the owners of twitter don't just push their agendas at you. You already know that, and probably think it doesn't affect you. But what you don't see is how much stuff is gone there now. You don't see who's gone, or what views aren't there anymore
I saw this and wanted to chime in about the algorithm fuckery going on there and elsewhere.
To start, I'll give an example about reddit, where the algorithm at the subreddit level is really people. And by that I don't mean users, I mean compromised subreddit mods.
Take r/conspiracy for example. That place, the mod team was infiltrated by MAGA. They took over, and used it to promote Trump and all things fascist. ...
@Pwnallthethings They coordinate off site on Discord/Telegram to brigade comment voting either with mass upvotes for what they like, or mass downvotes for messaging they don't like.. Mods do this mostly for plausible deniability, because they're not supposed to.
So the upshot is: Total ideological conformity. A social media bubble. Either join and agree, or be suppressed and ultimately banned. ...
@Pwnallthethings I bring this up because it's one form of ideological control in social media. Reddit corporate does it because volunteer mods were free. The company doesn't have to pay them. But the downside to this is it makes for a lot of marginalized voices. And Reddit is big enough that people complain elsewhere within the site. So people know.
Let's compare that to the new Twitter under Elon. ...
@Pwnallthethings This is also FREE. (no staff needed).
But, another point is that unlike Reddit, the system can control who sees what tweet. And since there's an AI ranking system, it can do fuckery like:
- shadow ban a tweet based on the ideology of the author and the message presented. It gets no views.
- show the tweet ONLY to those who oppose it. In that way, the tweet gets a lot of pushback and retweet engagement only from opponents. Dissuading users from writing that stuff.
- Or, it shows the tweet to followers and those who agree. Then the tweet gets a lot of support. Organic likes and retweets. The person gets followers. Etc. His MAGA friends get this.
So, you might think a tweet gets a lot of views, but only from people who oppose you. You get no followers and lots of pushback comments. Which increases engagement because opposition and anger is engaging.
And that's all hidden from users who are just trying to use the site to build community.
Pwnallthethings
Paranoid Factoid