Just realizing that for a lot of you this is probably your first And only Twitter cluster, you haven't experienced the same dynamics happening in different circles due to algorithmic incentives. maybe your first online community at all
Conversation
okay, i Will try to elaborate.
So each social medium has its own dynamics. TikTok has the "for you" page, an entirely algorithmic feed that doesn't care who your friends with. discord and reddt have niche channels u join. FB/insta u connect w IRL people
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Twitter has a weird mix where you follow people and get to see their posts, but you also see a lot of other posts via retweet/sharing/algorithm.
This makes it more of a public forum than a deliberate nest of communities. tho unlike TikTok, you have some control over who you see
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The Home timeline uses some kind of secret spice algorithm similar to the For You page. It shows you viral tweets, things your mutuals have liked, trending topics. This algorithm changes sometimes. I think that it has changed again recently since the new CEO, and for the worse
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People think you can avoid this by using Latest Tweets mode. but note that it doesn't say All tweets show up as they happen. If they did, there wouldn't be people like Visa inventing ways to get a view like "old Twitter"
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Replying to @harveykrishna_ and @GeniesLoki
I only got three – ttt for mentions, qqq for quote tweets, and "old twitter": filter:follows -filter:retweets -filter:replies
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The secret to understanding Latest Tweets mode is in the SimClusters paper released by Twitter a couple years ago.
This algorithm simplifies recommendation across the astronomical number of tweets and users by creating *artificial communities*
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This is being done to you right now. are you a U-node or a v-node?
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these artificial communities — SimClusters — are found by first separating accounts into large accounts and small accounts. A rough guess from the numbers in the paper suggests the line is somewhere near 10k followers.
these are the v-nodes above
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similarity is then calculated across the graph of which U-nodes follow which v-nodes.
If you follow similar big accounts to someone you've never interacted with, you will be clustered into the same group. these are c1 and c2 in the example diagram.
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“People who like Joe Rogan will like each other” communities huh?
This sounds like arranged marriage actually. Or arranged communities. Graph elders putting followers together.
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hahaha It kind of does! I don't have a background in that kind of culture, does it give you any special insights
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It’s conservative social management that buys local harmony by worsening global rifts. It’s how unstable hot-war tribalism turns into stable cold-war caste system.
Ingroup trad crowd loves it because they don’t see/care about the dark, toxic shittiness towards which it’s headed.
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"How'd you meet?"
"We found each other randomly online, it was so weird!"
The algorithm: 😏
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