Twitter's Algorithm: Amplifying Anger, Animosity, and Affective Polarization
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
In 2005 MySpace became all the rage and something shifted. It was the start of the "me" generation. Facebook amplified this and it became all the rage to ask "are you on Facebook?" at parties. Everything was new and exciting but we also had no idea what we were about to get into. The feed became an addictive creation that twitter then took to some next level. The "For you" tab is a joke. It's a way to continue to drive clicks, likes, retweets. All of this needs to end now. I honestly don't have the answer but I know part of it is probably less technology, less staring at screens and almost zero social media consumption. I so badly want to escape.
If social relationships cannot be maintained without social media, I have no doubt, it is the wrong social relationships "maintained".
Network effects just don't work like this. I suspect thinking that they do is related to the kinds of friendships the commenter has - small, intense, long term group friendships; and proximity friendships.
Personally I don't have the social capital to pull the dozens of people I keep in regular contact with off their preferred platform and into a new one. Very few people do. And I value those relationships far more than I hate the platforms that maintain them.
> If social relationships cannot be maintained without social media, I have no doubt, it is the wrong social relationships "maintained".
This is a value judgement, and not an argument. I have strong relationships with friends and former partners, as well as family, that I've maintained for decades through platforms like messenger - which is awful but ubiquitous - with real people who live across the world. We do meet when possible, but it's often years apart, and there's no one 'core group'. These are real world, profound friendships with people I met in person, lived or worked or studied with for years and care about.
I completely agree with the characterisation of the harms wrought by social media. But prior to social media, more than a very few distant friendships were all but impossible to maintain. And when you lost contact with an old friend, you could never be quite certain if they had lost interest, were too busy, or had perhaps died or suffered some great setback in life.
Value judgements are the ultimate arguments. In the end, nothing else matters aside from the kind of values we want to uphold.
Moreover - what you're describing is virtue ethics, which is only one of many ethical systems. Hold hard to your values and be evaluated based on your adherence to them. Personally I'm more of a soft utilitarian - it's the results of my decisions that matter, not how they adhere to an abstract value. But we all fight the chaos in our own way.
All of the above can (and have) yield in order to uphold some values, including the ultimate sacrificing of one's life (much less health or social contacts).
Plus, utilitarians have virtue ethics too. They just consider utility the virtue to uphold, downstream from that decision it's not different than plain old virtue ethics. After all the utility can only ultimately be judged by a value judgement (what we consider of higher utility). There's no neutral raw utility without a desired (value judgement) end result.
I'm a person who abstains from social media. My family has not. They can contact me individually, and some do infrequently, but they complain that I'm extra work and the rest of my family is more connected because they post content once and everybody sees it. So, I'm missing out on the healthy part of social media -- as anti-social-media as I am, I must acknowledge that there is some good to it. Your insistence that my family is the "wrong social relationship" to maintain is missing the baby for the bathwater.
This is one result...
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-soci...
On the other hand, the problem is with "everyone for themselves" solutions is that they're not enough to address an issue that affects you (and society in general in systemic ways) even if you personaly don't use the medium.
You don't need to care about something for it to affect you. Do you need a citation for this too?
I'm claiming (actually merely stating, this is more like "water is wet" that some claim that needs support, it's almost a tautology) that systemic/social effects (what most people do, even if you don't do them) affect people in a society even if they don't participate.
Specially that the majority people using social media also affects people not using them. Because even if you dont use them, your friends, kids, relatives, colleages, etc, do.
The effect ranges from people simple things like people driving the car in the same roads as you while checking their feed, people staring at their screens when you go out with them, to friends/spouses/relatives/colleagues/kids being addicted, depressed, manipulated, misinformed, and generally affected in multiple ways by social media in many ways that then brush of to you (except if you live in a desert), to others expecting you to be participating there and treating you weirdly if you don't, and several other ways besides.
It's the same way for many other things that are seemingly "individual" choice. You might not care about alcohol or drugs for example, but if somebody in your circle does, or even someone you have the misfortune to meet, it can just as well affect you (or their friends, relatives, violent crime rates, the health system, road safety, etc.).
Mobile service providers outsourced their customer "service" to open forums.
Mailing lists have been replaced by "Discourse" or unsearchable Telegram and Gitter channels. Nothing has a history any longer.
I get your grief with Mailing lists though. The forced move from lists to web forums was pretty much a downer for me. Actually, I left every community which did that. I am too old to browser a bunch of web forums each day. If the new kids like that, let 'em play with eachother...
1) Delete your facebook account. It takes a month (because they don't let you delete immediately) but you won't miss it.
2) Leave twitter.
I believe social media is a net negative for society so I did the above. You can take responsibility for your own situation and do the same.
Twitter I can delete. I don't browse facebook, I try not to browse instagram - but these platform's messaging facilities, along with whatsapp, google chat, signal, telegram and more are used daily by my friends and family to communicate.
Sure you can simply cut off those who don't use your preferred platform. But I've seen what happens to people who do that - when the first facebook backlash occurred back in the late 2000s. They disappear from the real world 'social graph' of their non-local friends.
Of course it would be better if everyone used one, encrypted messaging app. But thats not likely to happen any time soon. Of course social media is a poison, as OP pointed out. But its utility for low effort passive relationship maintenance with my old friends from college, jobs, school etc is an essential part of my social life. I suspect thats true for millions of people.
Some of those Facebook people were good folks that I miss, sure, but my life is my own now.
edit: also, low effort friends aren't friends, they're either trophies you're keeping or else tasks you don't actually need. Friends are the people in your life. Your college buddies are your college buddies, you're only supposed to see them at reunions and occasionally at the hardware store. Stop living the paradigm that the corporate platforms make the most money from and start living your life. Get the hell off.
Phones continue to exist. Not to mention email! If someone doesn't warrant a phone call, or even email, are they truly your friend? Is that really a relationship?
As someone old enough to remember the days before social media existed, I find it hard to conceive of social media as "essential". Convenient? Sure. Addictive? Yes, certainly. But essential? No. Humanity indisputably survived and thrived without it. Indeed, the argument can be made that we were happier without it.
Spoken by someone who is extremely repulsed by the current Facebook/Insta, but it was a very unique and useful tool in my life.
That wasn't the advice. The advice is that if you want to maintain a relationship with someone, make a little effort to do so. Social media has made people ultra-lazy.
> Am I supposed to call them on the phone to get a verbal update on their life, or they are not my "true friends"? Have 1:1 sessions in Signal to discuss what exactly? Their Facebook photos?
I mentioned email, but your reply mentions everything except email.
Anyway, as far as what you're supposed to discuss, yes, you'll want to get an update on their life. "Hi, wondering how you've been. What's new with you?" Not that difficult.
It's almost as if social media has created learned helplessness, and we've forgotten how to be human.
exactly. Today people won't even comment on something, ask you something. They just see the posts/stories, or at max, click 'like' or one of the reactions.
You don't need to communicate every day or write long essays, but leaving a comment on a photo, or asking "did you like it?" if a friend post that they were watching a movie/etc, is not a lot of effort.
The point is you shouldn’t dictate how someone you are interested in staying in touch to use certain tools.
Ask for it?
> What if they came back a few months later with “we’re good. Didn’t check email for a while. Can you use FB instead?”
I'm not going to play hypotheticals. You can imagine a possible worst case scenario for anything. Confront that problem if it occurs, but what if it doesn't occur? You seem to be arguing that someone shouldn't even bother trying to leave social media, because there's a small chance that something inconvenient might happen. It's fatalistic and defeatist.
Nah. I closed twitter and anything meta except whatsapp (for family), in which I have a big large text as the profile icon to search for me in signal. I have exactly the same social life as before, and this has been going on for years. Don't let the FOMO win.
Everyone is at least on Whatsapp, Signal or Line. Just ask for their number... if you don't think it's worth asking, that's probably because they're not your friends at all.
This is not true, at least outside the US. The varieties of service people use to communicate vary much more than this. Line for example, isn't used by a single person I know. Many won't use whatsapp (as a Facebook company). Signal is strange and intimidating to non technical people and so on.
> if you don't think it's worth asking, that's probably because they're not your friends at all.
I'm specifically talking about good friends, non geeks, I've known for decades. They're comfortable with their platforms of choice. This kind of inflexible - my way or the high way communication style you're advocating, isn't a healthy or effective way of maintaining very long term friendships.
Discord is basically small independent servers, where discussions and information primes over users. If you have some toxic people, they just get kicked out.
I run a server with a bit more than 1000 members, most of them teenagers. I'm always surprised how nice and friendly they are to other strangers on the net.
I also don't really want to talk to strangers. I'd like it to be network driven starting with real people I know or have met IRL.
In that case I guess WhatsApp is what most people use for groups that you know.
>I so badly want to escape.
Then why do you click on it? I like Twitter still because I just see what I follow and that's all.
I fail to see how an absolute withdrawal from social media has benefits over trying to manage and cultivate a more mindful approach.
For example, my family is in a discord channel. My SO's family is in a group text. My local motorcycle buddies are in a group text. My college friends from way back are on Slack. My expat coworkers from my last job are on Slack. My high school pals I'm still in touch with are on Discord.
And I get feed news on Mastodon, which is non-algorithmic. And it's great.
I still have accounts on those other sites for DM purposes, but I've deleted most of my past content and the rest is inoffensive stuff parked there just in case someone looks for a job or something.
I definitely miss out on the day-to-day of a lot of people I know, and that's a loss. But I still feel I have a net gain for my own mental health.
Again, this is only what works for me. YMMV.
Why do you keep using it then?
It's an honest question. I tried using Facebook many years ago, but I found it extremely boring, and only served for me to dismay at what some people I respect posted online. So I abandoned it, didn't even bother deleting my account. I just never went back there.
I never even created a Twitter account. Only time I ever browse it is when someone sends me a link to something there. I look at it and leave. I always thought the idea and implementation was repulsive.
I am always puzzled why people use those sites. Doubly so when they voice displeasure at doing so, such as yourself.
i only quit because i got banned without reason and got auto-rejected when appealing.
I dunno, Discord seems like this still to me now.
I, on the other hand, go to HN to complain apparently. :-)
There tends to be some drama around different attitudes to moderation on other servers but other than that they're usually fairly well-behaved and predictable by comparison. Twitter on the other hand seems to have opened some kind of hell portal giving 4chan a run for its money.
Twitter/Reddit/HN are too toxic for me to visit every morning, so I started allowing myself to visit these sites 1-2 per week before 5 pm. Evenings are fine as I’m already done with my work.
People are actually kind when you see each other’s faces. It’s bizarre how big the difference is.
It worrying how long it takes to realise it's happened. But after reading the several tweets from conspiracy nuts and right wing fruit cakes you notice.
Dunking was always a part of twitter culture, but it's got far more vicious, unrestrained, and stupid lately.
A client or service will inevitably be compromised. And with it, the private keys of some, or assumed all, using it, whether stored by the service or logged on entry by a compromised system.
Private keys should be chained, master->subkey, with subkey the public key of the service __or a solution like that or that ends in the same result. When (not if) a service or key is compromised, the key can be blacklisted and/or any key co-signed by a compromised service blacklisted.
I'm confused by the oversight. It's also been raised here https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/issues/97
Until then, I'll have to keep my updates of what I had for breakfast to myself.
Nobody else is responsible you click on political stuff. Nobody is responsible you join every moral crusade that gets started. Even on HN where there is no personalized algorithm, even on technical issues, most people vote and comment with their moral/political sensibilities a lot of the time.
So in conclusion it's not them, it you.
>I am increasingly worried that human success and failure are ruled by taste — the demand side, in economic terms.
>If there are fewer beautiful and charming residential post-World War II neighborhoods, it is because most people do not want to live in them. If there are fewer movies today with the dramatic impact and compositional rigor of “Citizen Kane,” it is because people do not very much want to see them. It is not that it is too difficult or expensive to make another “Citizen Kane.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-03/are-th...
* Sergeant York, a superhero war propaganda film
* Honky Tonk, a racy Clark Gable / Lana Turner western
* Louisiana Purchase, a zany Bob Hope musical
For the record, Citizen Kane was a flop, and there were many excellent movies made this year.
This is a bad argument.
Quite simply: when was the last time you went in Twitter to see an intelligent argument that opposes yours? Never, because such a thing simply requires more than 280 characters, and multiple cited sources.
280 chars with a single source is enough for a "look how bad my enemies are" hot take, however.
It's a shame, because getting off social media fully is hard now - so much actual research and professional interaction requires it as well. But eurgh.
I use Twitter to follow many AI researchers and it's great to keep up with the latest papers and so on.
Also Twitter supports long tweets now, and people have always created threads anyway.
Now I just follow fellow makers and tech people. Twitter is fun again.
Why would you want to use a social network for this purpose?
If you want an intelligent argument that opposes yours, then read a book. This is a serious suggestion, not sarcasm: books are wonderful!
Strange premise. As a Christian I don't head to mosque or synagogue. Similarly, I don't use Twitter in that way
Ranking by expected user engagment increases user retention but is negatively related to quality.
[1] https://integrityinstitute.org/blog/ranking-by-engagement
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.16941.pdf (page 5)
As shown in the paper itself, regardless of the political tribe, there's a persistent positive feeling that comes with reinforcing the viewpoints of the in-group.
(page 4) It should also be noted that the personalized tweets are self-reported to be rated slightly higher than the chronological tweets, with political tweets being the exception. In short, when politics is filtered out, the Algorithm is doing its job well.
> 1.3 Tweet value to reader
> For each tweet, we also have users assess whether they value seeing that tweet or not (“When you use Twitter, do you want to be shown tweets like [@author-handle]’s?”, where users choose between “Yes”, “No”, and “Indifferent”). We find that overall, tweets shown by the algorithm are rated slightly higher (0.05 SD, p = 0.024). Interestingly, however, when restricting to political tweets, those recommended by the personalized algorithm lead to significantly lower user value than those in the chronological timeline (−0.14 SD, p = 0.004).
Dataset-wise, it's heavily skewed towards left-&-far-left Democrats (page 12, Tables 5 & 6), & young people (page 13, Table 4).
Having said that, this study is quite unfortunate in its timing - it managed to time it's data collection at the exact point in time where Elon Musk was forcing his employees to manually boost his tweets so that he could get more views than Biden [1]. So basically while the twitter algo had been pretty stable for the last decade they managed to time their data collection over the exact week where the moron decided to start messing with it to stroke his own ego.
[1]:https://proofpointisolation.com/browser?url=https%3A%2F%2Fww...
I like this analogy.
I don't know how twitter has me profiled, but these days it sends me onlyfans models, Matt Wallace, J.K. Rowling, Ed Krassenstein, Bitcoin influencers as recommended tweets to read.
Funny thing is, I don't follow anyone and nobody follows me, I just have a twitter account to occasionally (once a week?) read what Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and some musicians I like are tweeting about. I'm a liberal leaning centrist, I don't care about American politics much, or bitcoin, or onlyfans... I'm so curious how it decided to start serving me all this content that is so outside of who I am.
Also for those curious, this research is out of Berkeley and Cornell:
Smitha Milli, Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell Tech
Micah Carroll, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Berkeley
Sashrika Pandey, Undergraduate Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
Yike Wang, Undergraduate Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
Anca Dragan, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Sounds like Musk has replaced the personalized recommendation algorithm with "Just recommend Elon's likes to everyone".
It's a joke, but I honestly wouldn't be too surprised if he did something like this. His fallacy as a product thinker is that he imagines everybody wants what he wants.
This works for Tesla which sells essentially a single product (the 3/Y are the same car while S/X sales are a blip). His product intuition for a car has been good. But his intuition for what people want out of Twitter is completely wrong because he doesn't seem to grasp that there are a hundred thousand different Twitters — each country and user group and subculture has their own idea of what it is and how they want to use it.
This is likely the problem. Social networks seem to put your account in a weird “starter” bucket if you don’t engage with it in the way it expects.
You’re probably getting pushed some weird version of the algorithm that some PM once devised when tasked with getting inactive users or new users engaging better.
Twitter just wasn't entertaining enough for me, if I'm in the mood for that sort of entertainment I'd rather read Hackernews or watch youtube.
BTW accountless twitter got better under Elon: it's now possible to just bookmark one's follows offsite, and poll their page every so often, without as aggressive login walls as under Jack. Also nitter.net seems to have survived the API armageddon quite nicely and is good for accountless twitter with even fewer distractions.
Multiple onlyfans, or Aella Girl? Because if it's specifically her accounts, the algorithm is probably thinking you're a tech nerd.