Experiments Show The Severe Throttling On X Vs Bluesky

[Cristiano]

Not surprising, but still maddening. I fucking hate Elon Musk so much.

 

[WeFlossDaily]

I fucking hate Elon Musk so much.

Me too. He is the American version of russia's Durov.
BlueSky ought to plaster the phrase 'Elon Musk, go fuck yourself.' across their front page.
That would be a great slogan to show what they're about.
Death to Twitter. Slava BlueSky.

 

[Soen Eber]

Not surprising, but still maddening. I fucking hate Elon Musk so much.

Very plausibly, but he's missing the use case where users are following fewer people, with the platform still new to many, and are then able to focus more on the few channels they are following and thus have more engagement. He also mentions another possible use case stemming from X having a much larger base which could also skew the results, but he does not control for that as well. His methodology is basically good but could still use more controls.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Very plausibly, but he's missing the use case where users are following fewer people, with the platform still new to many, and are then able to focus more on the few channels they are following and thus have more engagement. He also mentions another possible use case stemming from X having a much larger base which could also skew the results, but he does not control for that as well. His methodology is basically good but could still use more controls.

You're right, but given that many of those controls would be very difficult to implement in practice, I think he did good enough. I think this is enough evidence to suggest manipulation even if I agree it's not absolute proof. Musk also has vocally been critical of Ukraine for daring to not bend over for Russia... So it seems very plausible and even overwhelmingly likely he's doing this.

FUCK Elon Musk! And fuck his bootlickers who buy his stocks and give him money.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Very plausibly, but he's missing the use case where users are following fewer people, with the platform still new to many, and are then able to focus more on the few channels they are following and thus have more engagement. He also mentions another possible use case stemming from X having a much larger base which could also skew the results, but he does not control for that as well. His methodology is basically good but could still use more controls.

Not to mention that his followers on bluesky are -recent- meaning they're currently active. Whereas a large portion of his followers on twitter probably followed him some time back and may not be as engaged or as they once were.

While I have no doubt that twitter algorithms are de-prioritizing pro-Ukraine / anti-Trump content and the people that post that kind of stuff... A proper test would be a brand new identity on -both- platforms, fishing for engagement along the same keywords/lines. Still easily skewed by whether someone with more reach retweets/reposts on one platform other other... but a little more oranges to oranges than what he did.

 

[Anya Ristow]

The obvious way to present a feed of posts to you is to present to you everything you've followed, in reverse chronological order. The problem is that this can overwhelm you, so algorithms try to present the most interesting stuff first, rather than the newest (or oldest unread) stuff first.

Facebook, for example, isn't in the business of presenting to you the posts you've asked to see. They are in the business of keeping you reading the platform for as long as they can hold you. So, they've come up with a system for prioritizing posts that they think will accomplish that better than chronology.

Better, for them. Meaning keeping you longer. Not necessarily doing what you want, or even doing something predictable.

Bluesky, if I understand correctly, is still presenting you the posts you've said you want to see, in reverse(?) chronological order. For the time being, while you are not yet following more than you can chew, this may be more to your liking. More predictable, more complete, more fair.

But eventually they will want to pay their bills, and eventually you'll follow more than you can read, and they'll "optimize" your feed. Just like everyone else does.

I hope I'm wrong. But I'm probably not wrong.

 

[Soen Eber]

The obvious way to present a feed of posts to you is to present to you everything you've followed, in reverse chronological order. The problem is that this can overwhelm you, so algorithms try to present the most interesting stuff first, rather than the newest (or oldest unread) stuff first.

Facebook, for example, isn't in the business of presenting to you the posts you've asked to see. They are in the business of keeping you reading the platform for as long as they can hold you. So, they've come up with a system for prioritizing posts that they think will accomplish that better than chronology.

Better, for them. Meaning keeping you longer. Not necessarily doing what you want, or even doing something predictable.

Bluesky, if I understand correctly, is still presenting you the posts you've said you want to see, in reverse(?) chronological order. For the time being, while you are not yet following more than you can chew, this may be more to your liking. More predictable, more complete, more fair.

But eventually they will want to pay their bills, and eventually you'll follow more than you can read, and they'll "optimize" your feed. Just like everyone else does.

I hope I'm wrong. But I'm probably not wrong.

Remember when Google's semi-official saying used to be "Don't be Evil"?

Yeah ... that.

 

[Anya Ristow]

Remember when Google's semi-official saying used to be "Don't be Evil"?

From what I understand, Bluesky is open-source. If they turn evil, someone could start up a not-yet-evil version with their own code. I have high hopes that Bluesky won't turn evil. But I'm a chump, so I will probably be disappointed.

 

[Anya Ristow]

FWIW I use FreeTube to view youtube videos. You "subscribe" to channels, and organize them by keywords of your choosing, without even having to sign in to youtube. You can't like or comment, but you can view your "subscriptions" in the order they release videos, without youtube trying to decide what you want to see. The downside is you get no recommendations feed, either, which removes one avenue for discovering new stuff. But youtube recommendations have been horrible for years, anyway.

I subscribe to A LOT of channels, but I'm able to keep up with all of it. Mostly, by not viewing most videos. But I refresh the list of releases fairly often, and stop browsing when I run into videos that have already been presented (from memory) or viewed (it tells me that).

This is a more natural way to view subscribed content, and from what I understand, people are still able to do this in bluesky.

 

[Noodles]

Facebook, for example, isn't in the business of presenting to you the posts you've asked to see. They are in the business of keeping you reading the platform for as long as they can hold you. So, they've come up with a system for prioritizing posts that they think will accomplish that better than chronology.


Bluesky, if I understand correctly, is still presenting you the posts you've said you want to see, in reverse(?) chronological order. For the time being, while you are not yet following more than you can chew, this may be more to your liking. More predictable, more complete, more fair.

Facebook is so annoying.

I will like pages or join groups I find might be interesting. But it NEVER shows me content from most of this. It just... Suggests more.

Why should I follow or like the suggestions if they are never shown?

As for Bluesky. It has both methods already. The main feed is the reverse chronological feed. The Discover tab, is basically, the algorythm. Its popular from what you follow, popular related to what you follow, the occasional new person sprinkled in.

Personally, I like the Discover feed.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

The obvious way to present a feed of posts to you is to present to you everything you've followed, in reverse chronological order.

That is the only honest way, it's what I always strive for, like on Google Plus I put everyone into a single Circle and followed that, and that bypassed their wimpy algorithmic filtering such as it was. If there are too many posts I simply follow fewer people.

From what I understand, Bluesky is open-source. If they turn evil, someone could start up a not-yet-evil version with their own code. I have high hopes that Bluesky won't turn evil. But I'm a chump, so I will probably be disappointed.

They're not actually distributed, and their "federation" is kind of a fake. Actually running the whole stack would be super-expensive.

And, we already have lots of actual examples of distributed federated systems you can use as a base, you don't need to take the code from Bluesky. There's Mastodon or even Usenet for just two.

 

[Khamon]

Facebook is more readable when I automatically X the ads, sponsored, reels, people I may know, you looked at foo so might want to see this, and such things. It helps to do that on Instagram as well. Sometimes I achieve three full days of reading a personal feed before that the algorithm recalculates and launches a new invasion.

 

[Cristiano]

He did a follow up video:

 

[Essence Lumin]

Facebook is more readable when I automatically X the ads, sponsored, reels, people I may know, you looked at foo so might want to see this, and such things. It helps to do that on Instagram as well. Sometimes I achieve three full days of reading a personal feed before that the algorithm recalculates and launches a new invasion.

You might want to look at

F.B. Purity - Clean Up and Customize Facebook

It won't work to post the link above to facebook though, they filter the site out.

 

[Noodles]

You might want to look at

F.B. Purity - Clean Up and Customize Facebook

It won't work to post the link above to facebook though, they filter the site out.

I always forget how long I have used this until I sit down at someone else's computer because they asked something about Facebook.