When Twitter rolls out their algorithm timeline to everyone, it looks like there won’t be a way to turn this feature off. However, I will have my own method of turning it off. Turn off Twitter altogether–which I might be doing more of.
Twitter has become too much of a consumption thing for me–I spend too much time reading on Twitter as a way of procrastinating.
This year I’m focusing more on creating, so that means less time on Twitter. With this algorithm timeline development from Twitter, that means I’ll be spending even less time on Twitter. Hence, in a way, turning off Twitter’s new feature.
(hat-tip to Chris Thilk’s blog where I originally posted this thought in response to his blog post about Twitter’s algorithmic timeline.)
I know you’re not a fan of the likes and favorites, but these algorithm timelines screw up how people use the like and fav buttons.
People use them of Facebook to get the feed of people they like to rank higher. It really becomes a “I like this person” button and not a “i like this content” button.
It also works the other way around. People will see something they like, but see it’s from a person that posts way too much stuff all the time, and as a result the person will not like that post because they don’t want to see all their posts all the time. So wanting to, but not using the like button becomes a “i don’t like that person THAT much” button.
Yeah, aka, the popularity contest. I see that happening on reddit with comics. There are some comics that consistently get a high upvote percentage. Granted, some comics are just that good. But often, I think people are afraid of downvoting a comic that is really popular.
But this upvote/downvote on reddit is part of what makes the site work. It can be frustrating to get a downvote, but it also pushes down bad content. Newer comics like mine get more highly scrutinized, but fairly so, because of its newness, it must be judged more.
But it’s just interesting how there are some comics that exist on another tier where the faithful will often put in their upvote.