"I do not believe Meta can serve as a replacement for twitter. Its DNA is censorship and sponcon, two of the biggest murderers of art and truth" -me, September 2023
Frankly, Threads’ biggest problem for me was its connection to FB & Insta. That part is just awful. But as you note, that connection is also how it functions, not just what it serves.
Anyone fleeing Twitter because a rich asshole bought it and switching to a platform owned by Facebook always had me scratching my head. "Threads by Facebook" told my brain to tune it out as a viable alternative right away. Using Threads is hardly any worse than staying on Twitter, why even bother
Well said. Meta also has political connections to which they've given access to data about users, etc. That's not quite an environment for free communication facilitated without bias.
Whatever. I'm still not adding another Meta platform when I can avoid it. No one I know in real life uses Threads, and the people I follow online use other platforms too so I'm not missing anything.
I don't wanna be too mean, but Threads having sponsored content and non-following content pushed into your feed by default made me lose interest from day 1.
When I logged in today, I was met with a questionnaire from threads bout the feed and what can they do to make it better. Funny. For a long time he smugly rebuffed any such feedback. Now he is scrambling
That doesn't even make sense. The posts that I want to follow are in my feed. That is what my feed is, people that I have chosen to follow. The 'For you' which threads suggests, should be similar, but not the same people. Because if it's the same people then I have two identical feeds.
What good is a social media platform if it doesn't have a "Following" feed. It's just like, show me a bunch of ads and other shit that I didn't ask for, please. 🤮
It was an incubator project for text posts on Instagram (along the lines of community posts on YouTube, I presume) that was rushed out after Elon started messing up Twitter.
You could see how well that was going to work out from the average quality of comments on IG.
That's part of why I never joined there in the first place. Facebook and Instagram show me so little from those I follow, to the point that they're useless to me
My god, that would be a great idea. Imagine a place where you could share artwork without an algorithm that tries to force self harm and suicide on kids, and 5 billion scam ads for stuff you never asked for…
"They've found a way to counter our operant condition Skinner Box/Milgram Experiment for positively reinforcing right wing neofascist culture war indoctrination. They were the pellets and they've removed themselves, so we're now trying to bring you back your pellets."
Right? I see more from accounts I don't follow and never heard of than I do from people I know and who I follow. I spend a lot of time clicking Xs beside those weirdo accounts.
I wish we could do to them in other "feeds" in their lives what their algorithm did to us on Twitter. For example, they're listening to SiriusXM in their car, and every few minutes it randomly switches to some station they've never tuned to on their own, and it's always a station they hate.
Let’s never forget that Musk used X as a weapon to get his master elected and he succeeded. What’s left now ? A bunch of haters on X that cannot channel that hate anymore. It’s over.
Xwitter is a joke, and Meta is no better. All both companies seem to care about is keeping up the toxicity and the algorithms. The only thing I care about as far as toxicity goes is the System of a Down album.
Kinda like how streaming tv realised network tv had it down pretty much from the get go (ads in shows, weekly episodes, more casual watchability), social media companies are too realising that people mostly just want to see the people they follow after years of forced disruption and needless change.
Paying for a blue tick was one of Elon's worst innovations, and Threads adopting that was a bad move. The worst part of my Threads feed has blue ticks next to their names.
People are starting to realize social media platforms with centralized control cannot be trusted. Feed customization is 100% feasible, but they choose not to trust users. It’s a feature, not a bug.
You snooze you lose. Bluesky has got a better community and a better experience overall. Searchability is significantly better and the less I can give Zuckerberg. the better.
The sad part is that we all told them months ago what we wanted in an alternative to Twitter and they failed to deliver. Bluesky stepped in and is filling that void nicely.
They're turning the temperature down on the algo, but they're not changing the recipe. My guess - this is an effort to cut off a flight to Bluesky while Bluesky's hot, they'll give more weight back to algo content before long.
My response (1/2): Threads can’t compete because we make our own algorithms on Bluesky. Don’t want to see a Discover feed? Delete it. Want to see people who don’t post as much who u follow? Pin it to home. Want to have a tab 4 science & a tab 4 news without following those specific people, you can!
Feel like u want to engage with a more diverse pool of people or feel like u need to protect ur peace? Adjust ur feed & settings. There’s no algorithm deciding what u want to see & it’s all chronological. (2/2)
My final post of "Too f'n late!" to their adding things post election to make it seem as if they give a crap should be the only thing posted to that site at this point.
Honestly not sure, don't use it enough to really pay much attention. I wouldn't consider them personal attacks but usually see several anti woke/lgbt posts when I browse. Usually I just block it and move on.
Too late! Nearly everyone in my art circles left in 22. When he throttled views if you included links in your post... where people posted their stores & where to buy their art. Became a terrible place for creatives. I got more traffic on Tumblr after him. TUMBLR!
funny, they're trying to adjust things to keep people - but you'd still be at their whim, maybe they rollback the changes tomorrow, or the next day - maybe they tell you, maybe they don't.
It really does. I tried to delete my Threads account on my Instagram app and following their instructions are a waste of time. Honestly cannot figure out how to get rid of threads. It’s worthless.
You will notice we have adjusted the chemical mix in the gas chamber, slightly reducing the cyanide and increasing the zyklon. Keep the suggestions coming
this move makes no sense. The whole point of the “for you” feed is exactly to see more posts from random people you don’t follow (hopefully about topics you’re interested in - or not, too).
if you want to see more from people you follow, click the “following” feed.
it’s not rocket science.
What I think corporations miss about here is not the quantity of users, but the quality. 1 user that comes daily, interacts and supports is worth 10 repetitive bots
To me the craziest thing about it is that it's almost a testament to how little value is typically generated from most of the attention economy. What kind of value is really being generated from the monetized impressions honestly?
Exactly. And no matter how many bots they throw into their platforms, the bots don't buy shit, so it's a money loser for them. Eventually you are marketing to machines.
"We've normalized rage farming and, yes, we can see where that might be a problem if you want to sell anything that isn't sado-masochism, firearms, drugs or the Republican Party...."
So odd. I made lists at X, and got notifications from specific people. I only looked at my lists and the specific people. My life was actually pretty good at X, considering.
Anybody who lets any algorithm determine what they see is handing their brain on a silver platter to someone else. Nope.
With both FB and Threads, my feed is filled with people I do not follow or care about and it's one of the reasons why I spend no time on there outside of a few small groups.
This is what I wanted from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads - and never got, no matter how I tweaked my settings. It's too damn late for them to catch up now.
Comments
Frankly, Threads’ biggest problem for me was its connection to FB & Insta. That part is just awful. But as you note, that connection is also how it functions, not just what it serves.
https://bsky.app/profile/kottke.org/post/3lbs4pr2utu25
Fuck X.
Let that site die.
I don't know how people use it.
https://youtu.be/nR0lOtdvqyg
I’m staying & growing here & if they need some $ from me to prevent them from eventually selling to any of those other losers, I’d do it.
You could see how well that was going to work out from the average quality of comments on IG.
fuck zuck.
They FUAFO.
BlueSky it is.
But there’s a 💩load on Instagram all of a sudden.
Thank you 👍
Threads is dead.
They sound desperate.
Good Luck to them there.🤣
Scared to death, scared to look
Dipshits operating Twitter: in order to make you continue to pay us we are improving the thickness of your echo chamber’s insulation.
You told us political talk was discouraged - once we had somewhere else viable to go WE LEFT 👋
I don't want to see any posts designed to normalize bigotry. Not a single one.
Today, got two posts from branches of Putins 'Reform' party in the UK.
I have done several counts and found it is well over half. And half of the rest is stuff I am simply not interested in.
Its like slow motion corporate suicide and all in the name of maximizing profit
I'm so shocked
They were giftwrapped an opportunity to be #1 and they chased their algorithm and engagement metrics instead
Good. I'm ecstatic another BilliBro platform isn't #1
junk platform
It's only hard if your product is built on fundamentally different assumptions
https://bsky.app/profile/johnstokvis.com/post/3lbhsmoutfs2l
Starve them of oxygen
if you want to see more from people you follow, click the “following” feed.
it’s not rocket science.
A goddamn following feed with posts sorted from newest to oldest:
Anybody who lets any algorithm determine what they see is handing their brain on a silver platter to someone else. Nope.