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Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

So I have never really used twitter much and I don't think I even signed up for it ever. But I want to double check something -- is it the case now, as this post suggests, that if you follow somebody, you do not see their posts? Isn't that the main purpose for the follow function?

Why would you do that? Why would you have a follow function and break it? And what else do you show people? I mean if your user follows someone, then it is what they want to see, why wouldn't you show them what they want to see?

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The basic premise with algorithmic feeds is that users are lazy and don't do a lot of active discovery, so their follow lists tend to be pretty small. The algorithm can show them a mix of content where some of it is sourced from their existing follow/like graph (e.g. followed by someone you follow) and therefore likely to be interesting, and some is pushed on other less user-centric grounds. (E.g. in Twitter's case: "The CEO wants to be popular, so everyone sees his posts.")

Ideally the user is happy to discover new content that both complements their existing interests and occasionally introduces them to something new and exciting, while the company is happy to have an algorithmic lever that helps with ad placement. This theoretical win-win ideal may not get realized very often in practice...

Ok but that does not explain why you would actively remove content from their follow graphs. Sure, perhaps you can use the follow graphs to see what other stuff the user might be interested in and serve that, but why actively prevent the user from seeing posts that he has explicitly said he wants to see?

Presumably because feed real estate is so scarce and there are commercial motivations to show something else, so they start filtering out followed posts on the pretense of improving the quality of the feed. And that becomes a slippery slope.

"Ok, this user follows N. But N's latest post is already 15 hours old and it had poor engagement. Probably that means it's low quality and it's not worth including at all."

"why you would actively remove content from their follow graphs"

It makes sense, if you think you know better, what the user wants to see. Or, if you somehow make more money by doing so.

In either case, personally I like to decide, what I see myself, but I might actually be a minority (soon). Many people are apparently fine with intransparent algorithms making the decisions for them.

The first big algorithmic timeline I remember was Facebook, and it came at a time when the biggest complaint was "all I ever see on my feed is what people had for lunch". The idea was so you'll see the wedding pictures you care about but not the lunch photos you don't.

> "The CEO wants to be popular, so everyone sees his posts."

This is so insane to me. Some weeks ago I had to create a twitter account because I wanted to contact a developer for an app I'm using and the only contact information he had was his twitter account. I created a dumb account with my Google account and I was surprised that the first tweet I see is from Elon Musk. How small your ego has to be to request being featured first for every new account that is created? I remember I saw his face in the account creation process and I thought to myself "I would never follow this idiot" and still this guy is the first thing I see.

I wont be opening that cesspool anytime soon.

There are some problems with just showing people the people they follow in chronological order. It limits the amount of accounts you can follow, it buries accounts that post on times you don't reach by scrolling, your timeline can get spammed full by account you like but also post or retoot/retweet.

Sadly providing an algorithm that provides this is not what makes money so with most solutions you're stuck with an algorithm that just tries to show you what will keep you from clicking away instead.

The stupid thing about this is that Twitter has a great measurement system for evaluating the tweets. They have likes, retweets and quote tweets. It would not be that hard to make some inferences based on those metrics mixed with some randomness that would create a nicely curated timeline for most. You could even allow users to up the randomness or give some more explicit preferences.

If you follow someone you're still more likely to see their posts. You just see other stuff too in the "For You". It's algorithmic, and at times annoying - but contrary to the article is still very valuable in my experience.

I would say twitter stays about 1.5 months ahead of every other site I know of on AI news in particular. I've usually had time to demo new tools for quite a while before hearing about them on HN or elsewhere.

There are two tabs on the Twitter ios app. The first is called “For You,” and the next “Following.”

The first appears to be randomised or from The Algorithm, but as I far as I can tell, it’s mostly random.

The second also seems randomised but from people you follow.

> The second also seems randomised but from people you follow.

That’s not true.

The following tab is only showing you who do you follow with posts in chronological order

I don’t see every post from everyone I follow even if they’ve just posted. So there’s some filter on that tab as well.

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