the algorithm is killing twitter and it's driving me insane

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Style Pass

2024-10-03 03:30:04

i am Upset about something right now, and i gotta get it off my chest in the way only an unplanned blog post can achieve, so here goes.

first off: there's three types of people who'll read this post: people who don't know what the inciting incident that triggered this post was, and are unburdened by any resulting preconceptions; people who do, and who are open-minded enough to engage in this discussion; and people who do, but who still have the tunnel-vision that comes with the framing they have adopted, where someone posted something Indefensible online, for which they must be Told Off, and every last piece of context and nuance that someone might want to inject is simply a distraction from this, the Real Issue

it is impossible for me to have a meaningful conversation with you if you are in the last group, sorry. please, i am begging you, switch off your outrage and cringe reflexes for a moment, if you are somehow reading this. because otherwise we are just wasting our time here. thanks.

i think complaining about algorithmic recommendations on social media is almost cliché at this point, so let me get this out of the way first: i don't think chronological timelines are the only good ones. sorting posts chronologically is itself an algorithm, with its own tradeoffs. i think it's a well-understood one with some clear benefits, though, and it might be a reasonable basic expectation that a microblogging-type service provides this as a convenient option, at least.