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I don't find it more pleasant in the slightest. I follow the people I want to follow because they write things I want to read. What does Twitter do? Send me people's likes & retweets of viral tweets, because people occasionally write "fuck", "idiot" & so on. I don't want this.

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Claire Berlinski.

@ClaireBerlinski

Aug 21, 2018

It is dangerous, yes, for once I agree with Trump. But he's missing the point. The notable thing isn't the banned accounts. It's the change in algorithms that's made Twitter so much more pleasant recently. uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa

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There are definitely some odd things going on; some of the people I find most interesting are rarely on my timeline any more. I'm increasingly having to manually go and periodically check what people have been up to, presumably missing a lot of stuff.

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People don't seem to be following anywhere near so readily any more, either, apart from fairly high profile accounts with a focus on popular topics. There's a gradual homogenisation that's reduced the value significantly for me.

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I'm not sure that the value of twitter to any particular individual, (perhaps excepting those w/millions of followers), is of any concern whatsoever to twitter. Creating safe spaces for commerce, yes. Promoting robust discussion, no.

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Medium- to long-term, it's a terrible idea to kill the user experience this way. You lose engagement, and while the initial fall may not affect bottom line, the next competitor will. But yeah, short-term I don't think they give a shit - or they wouldn't be doing this.

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The Facebook algorithm is more obvious; broadly speaking, I suspect it can be summed up as a mechanism for keeping people on Facebook for as long and as exclusively as possible. I can only assume that Twitter is ultimately aiming for the same.

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Reducing satiety by spacing out and randomizing gratification is a real thing (more clicks between each cool thing = more user clicks = more time on website). But it also leaves people feeling demonstrably "meh", and erodes their investment in what they're doing over time.

10:21 AM · Aug 22, 2018Twitter Web Client

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Maybe it's just too early, but my home timeline seems really sparse this a.m. Minutes between tweets

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Probably some of it is filtered. I've had the same thing happening while multiple follows were live. But it also seems like people are tweeting a bit less. Maybe because there is less engagement.