By Michael Krieger: Ever since I took the plunge and joined Twitter a little over two years ago I’ve had an unbroken love affair with the microblogging site. Prior to Twitter, I had essentially zero presence on, or interaction with, any social media. Although I tried Facebook in the distant past, I found it to be generally useless and uninteresting. As such, I was very hesitant to try something new; however, after consistent badgering by friends I ultimately relented and haven’t looked back since. Twitter can be used for all sorts of purposes, but for those who are interested in staying up to date on certain topics, pundits, or breaking news generally, it can be a very serious and effective tool.
That is how I use Twitter. It’s my direct link into the thought processes of some of the smartest minds in the world. It is also where people in the thick of things choose to share “what’s happening” in real time before they share it anywhere else. This is incredibly valuable.
Since I take my timeline pretty seriously, I carefully select accounts to follow so that it is as clean and simple as I can possibly make it. It is this lack of clutter that makes it so useful. Unfortunately, it appears Twitter is determined to add clutter to my timeline without my permission.
So what am I complaining about anyway? Recently, several people have noted tweets in their timelines that didn’t seem to belong. Apparently, we now know that this is no accident and that Twitter has indeed changed its policy. The Guardian reported that:
Twitter has officially changed its definition of the’ “timeline” of tweets that users see to include content from accounts that users don’t follow and which haven’t been “retweeted” by those they do follow.The actual change is outlined on the company’s page: What’s a Twitter timeline? Here’s the big change:
But the move is proving increasingly unpopular with experienced users, who complain that it is pushing inappropriate or unwanted content into their timelines.
Additionally, when we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that’s popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline. This means you will sometimes see Tweets from accounts you don’t follow. We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting.The real question is, will the change actual make your timeline “even more relevant and interesting,” or will it make it more like Facebook? This is a very important question, particularly in light of some people’s observations concerning the difference between Twitter and Facebook when it came to the ongoing unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. For example, I was very intrigued by a recent article on Gigaom titled: Twitter vs. Facebook as a news source: Ferguson shows the downsides of an algorithmic filter. Here are some excerpts:
While Twitter has been alive with breaking news about the events in Ferguson, Mo. after the shooting of an unarmed black man — video clips posted by participants, live-tweeting the arrest of journalists, and so on — many users say Facebook has been largely silent on the topic, with more info about ice-bucket challenges by various celebrities. Is this a sign of a fundamental difference between the two platforms? In a sense, yes. But it’s also a testament to the power of the algorithms that Facebook uses to filter what we see in our newsfeeds, and that has some potentially serious social implications.While I can live with a small number of sponsored tweets and retweets, I’m not sure I can live with an account that is increasingly filled with clutter a la Facebook. Even more worrisome, what if this is only the first step, and Twitter ultimately chooses to not show you all the tweets from people you voluntarily follow, but rather just decides independently what you see and what you don’t see. Facebook already does this as I outlined in my piece: Was the Department of Defense Behind Facebook’s Controversial Manipulation Study?
In the end, Facebook’s model may be better suited for creating a network of actual friends and close relationships, and for keeping the conversation civil, but it isn’t nearly as conducive to following a breaking-news story like Ferguson, unless you have taken the time to construct lists of sources you follow for just such an occasion. And then there’s the other aspect of the Facebook environment that makes it more problematic as a news source: namely, the fact that Facebook’s newsfeed is filtered by the site’s powerful ranking algorithms.
As University of North Carolina sociologist Zeynep Tufekci pointed out in a recent piece on Medium, the Facebook algorithm makes it less likely we will see news like Ferguson, for a number of reasons. One is that the newsfeed is filtered based on our past activity — the things we have clicked “like” on, the things we have chosen to comment on or share, and so on. That keeps the newsfeed more relevant (or so Facebook would no doubt argue) but it makes it substantially less likely that a sudden or surprising event like Ferguson will make its way past the filters:
As the term “algorithmic censorship” implies, Tufekci sees this kind of filtering as a societal issue as well as a technical one, since it helps determine which topics we see as important and which we ignore — and David Holmes at Pando Daily has pointed out that if Twitter implements a similar kind of algorithm-driven filtering, which it is rumored to be considering as a way of improving user engagement,Twitter may also lose some of its strength as a news source.
In a sense, Facebook has become like a digital version of a newspaper, an information gatekeeper that dispenses the news it believes users or readers need to know, rather than allowing those readers to decide for themselves. Instead of a team of little-known editors who decide which uprisings to pay attention to and which to ignore, Facebook uses an algorithm whose inner-workings are a mystery. Theoretically, the newsfeed ranking is determined according to the desires of its users, but there’s no real way to confirm that this is true.
Think this can’t happen to Twitter? Think again. Adweek recently reported the following:
Twitter has 271 million users who are active and logged in, but then there are many more visitors who never announce themselves. This is the biggest challenge facing CEO Dick Costolo, and he’s not ruling out any changes, including potentially filtering what users see rather than serving them every message.
He was asked today if Twitter would ever go with an algorithm like Facebook has, which only serves messages it thinks are most relevant. Right now, Twitter shows users every message sent by the people they follow. “We’re not ruling out any kinds of changes,” Costolo said.
To turn into this:
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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