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Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

Am I in the minority of folks that enjoy Twitter's algorithmic sorting?

In the classic timeline view, I always felt the urge to check my feed all the time, in case i missed part of the conversation or the like (a la "FOMO.")

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That’s great, but GP was complaining that their preference is literally undone. There’s no consumer-friendly reason to change explicit preferences.

On one of my accounts where I follow a lot of people, the algorithmic sorting works wonderfully. On my main where I only follow a few people, it is terrible. I pretty much only check Twitter in Tweetbot now, becasue if I had to use the algorithmic sorting only for my main, I'd probably stop using Twitter.

So it'd be really nice if we could choose which one we like, and most importantly, that the choice sticks.

I think the better way to handle this would be a tab that includes all the stuff they think you'd like. Good things you missed, things your friends have liked, discussions they're in, people you should check out, tweets that are probably relevant to you based on your behavior.

I honestly wouldn't mind seeing that stuff if I have a, "Oh, what else on here is good" feeling. But it makes me crazy that they keep insisting that I really must want to see it right now, when I am very sure I don't.

That's how https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ works. You have a Home column, which is strictly things the people you follow have tweeted and retweeted, in chronological order; and you have a separate Activity column for those other things (and optionally more columns for searches, lists etc.)

Wouldn't it be annoying then if Twitter kept switching you to chronological?

I want to see all tweets of the people I follow. Precisely because I decided to follow them. It's the whole point of the site for me. Seeing all the updates from accounts I care about.

I think a lot of people like Twitter's algorithmic sorting. I've heard they have internal data supporting that it's better for most users. That's fine. FWIW I like Facebook's algorithmic sorting. But I use Twitter differently and time-sorted works better for me on Twitter. (As a secondary thing; time-sorted also avoids the injection of most of the tweets from people you don't follow.)

The offense is that they deliberately undo your expressed preference every week or two. I also hate the cutesy language of "you're back Home".

you're probably not alone but the issue here is forcing it on the user. that the option exists means they understand some people want a raw timeline which makes repeatedly changing the display that much worse

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