2024 ELECTION THREAD

Elon Musk is promoted by default , if you start reading him because that's the only content you have (as you didn't follow anyone else) and spend time on it, he promotes rightwng content at times and that starts the loop.

But take me who is very rightwing but in a different way than most super-rightwing people (no election denial content for ex); i recently wanted to check some vegan arguments (ethical ones, not health-related ones) and i interacted with vegan accounts, i started being pushed a ton of vegan (and anti-vegan) content even if i didn't follow any vegan (or anti-vegan) activist.

And that happened almost immediatly when i was in the reading phase yet, before i started asking actual questions in vegan discussions

I dont interact with posts other than to bookmark something I want to remember. I follow a few hundred accounts and then a few dodgy accounts just to see what the other side is saying. routinely those handful of accounts get promoted above my hundreds of others. those, and the few liberal accounts but I figure the latter is due to the election and their large base.

and I exclusively use the Follow tab and never the For you.

Not commenting on twitter specifically as I don't use it, but this would comport with my experience of how Google-operated platforms work. For example, I sometimes get ads and youtube video suggestions based on what I post here. I know it has to be based on what I've posted here, since it's extremely specific and not something I'd researched or looked at anywhere else. One example I remember was having a discussion here about some specific grammatical rule and then getting youtube video suggestions about something very closely related. I hadn't searched for it or anything like that and I don't usually watch or get recommended grammar-related videos, so my posts on this forum were literally the only possible source for it.

In a country where approx half of the politically interested people will vote for trump in less than 2 months, in a landscape where basically everywhere else you aren't allowed to make the claims that are absolutely normal among them, where do you think they will all tend to be and talk among themselves?

That's very different from claiming you will be awashed in alt right content if you don't want to, just try to block the first 3 accounts you dislike/hate/are disgusted by (dunno, like Loomer and Walsh from the video itself) and start searching for minecraft videos or hockey results or whatever and then tell me if you get "for you" alt right racist stuff anyway.

If that happens then i will start agreeing there is something weird going on, otherwise it's just normal algos working like everywhere else, except on twitter rightwing content isn't censored so you get proposed that if you spend time on that!

I'm no attorney, but I don't see how you can sue someone for saying some % of x group is doing something bad since that is not saying any particular person is doing the bad thing.

What ground could I sue a politician that said "some people that are named mickey eat dogs" since that politician isn't specifically saying the great bahbah is eating dogs? If we can start suing politicians for saying something bad about a particular group I think I could sue every president in my lifetime.

Not a lawyer and it seems like a pretty weak case, but Vance was dumb enough to admit he was intentionally lying and that he knowingly spread lies to get the media to talk about immigration with disregard for what might happen to Hatians in Springfield. That’s getting closer to a legit if individuals can show damages that were foreseeable.

You'd rather just vote for them.

his one follow was laura loomer as well, yes he unfollowed, but that's the only info they had (and yes they 100% went off that)

i mostly use twitter for sportsbetting content, a cohort that generally leans pretty far to the right and i never get any of that stuff in his feed

i do get the elon stuff unfortunately, but that's it

yup just last night i got a whole new set of youtube recs based on some posts made in the online dating thread

victor you "only bookmarking" is lol, bookmarking 100% tells the algo "this is the kind of content i like"

The fact that alt-right content is highly promoted in his algorithm at all is the problem. There’s no other platform with open holocaust denial, hitler apologia, and “blacks are inferior” accounts.

Just so we're on the same page, bahbs, you definitely are appalled by your boi JD deliberately spreading lies about Haitian-Americans legally living and working in the US, right? We all agree that that's unacceptable?

why is it lol? when did I say it didnt?

but honestly, the best way to deal with twitter is to create a list and then just follow the list - that largely removes the algo from the picture and then just gives you that curated feed you want

also, as someone who worked for a social media startup and helped design those things myself

i can't emphasize enough that what people think they are signalling is not what they are actually signaling

the algos don't care if you're liking laura loomer ironically just to unlike and then skip ahead - all it knows is that it chose her

and frankly, since she's all over the news right now (and most of us never heard of her a month ago), it's far more likely that she's just been trending a ton with searches and new followers and that's why she's at the top of the list not because elon is trying to astroturf her presence

i stopped watching after he followed the anime pet account - but before that he was clicking and interacting with all the stuff that said he hated and since he was a clean account with no info beyond "he followed laura loomer and then unfollowed but never followed anyone else and then clicked on a bunch of conservative tweets" so that's all it gave him because that's all he knew what people liked

it's like with tiktok, they don't give you a feed based on what you like, they literally just track whether or not you watch the video to completion or not and surprise surprise, when it's a very cute girl doing cutesy stuff people are going to watch it to the end because it's just a few seconds anyway and then before they know it their entire feed is just cute girl content

like i have zero respect for this person and find this kind of content atrocious and repugnant - the thought of doom scrolling through content like this for large chunks of time is pure torture to me - but sure enough, in a 5 second dose, i'm 100% going to watch this because she is insanely adorable in it

and then the algo takes over and it's game over i'm going to get a ton more of this until i start actively seeking out and viewing other kinds of content to reinforce to the algo that was more of a one off than a preference for the genre

let's test, i'll go back and reload youtube now after that search to find and then watch that video (there were a few others which borrowed from it to make something else so finding the "original" took a few clicks so now youtube must be certain i am into that stuff now

and sure enough the 2nd short rec is now a girl video when what i mostly watch there is poker/esports/history/animals but i don't often watch shorts on youtube so that search was quite powerful in steering the algo towards more sexy girl shorts and this time i guess they merged it with the videos i watch on china that people share in the china thread 😀

and yesterday because of the online dating thread thing i mentioned earlier, i got a rec for a dating advice video (i shared it in online dating) so now my regular video feed has one mixed in - the rest are all reasonable, the dating advice one is new and based off the fact i watched one yesterday - youtube is taking a chance that this is a new genre for me

those companies even use heatmaps to focus on where the user attention is to know the optimal places to put the premium stuff they want you to see - it's all very sophisticated

so they obviously know more about your preferences than you think you tell them - this is also why a lot of people are telling on themselves when they complain that "twitter is nothing but anti-trans stuff" as we've seen that posted a lot by the same people who actively engage with anti-trans posters - they are probably doing the same on twitter so then twitter is like "oh this is the content they like to engage with, i'll find more for them"

Well I’m sure baham thinks those comments are t meant to divide people ?
Only dems use hate and division speech ….

But it’s ok , at least baham made is weekly supportive paid narrative for republicans outlets .

i'm saying that bookmarking that stuff is by far the strongest indicator you can possibly give that you approve of that kind of content, you're not just saying that you liked it, but that you liked it so much you'll want to revisit it later

again, if you want to have "clean twitter accounts" make burner accounts just for that bookmarking etc stuff - twitter is designed for that and makes switching between accounts seamless and easy

I mean, juggling multiple accounts and doing manual documentation is too much effort. I am not bookmarking anti-trans or liberal stuff. thats kinda the point, it boosts that stuff in spite of my actions.

another case in point is the rise of people like Jake Shields and Jackson Hinkle and all those manosphere grifter accounts.

i'm on twitter every day and have no idea who those two are

he didn't admit he was intentionally lying and that's one of the many completly made up narratives by your side but it doesn't matter anymore at this stage, i realized it a while ago.

Not necessarily approval, but a clear signal you will engage with it (it can be to criticize it ofc). They want engagement which translates into time spent in the site /app, which translates into ads viewed.

I know for you those are the same but for normal people (especially non american ones) they aren't at all, but i can't elaborate further in this forum because of rules so i won't.

You can block elon and fix the elon stuff very easily

LOL

He actually did make a statement indicating he doesn't care if its true or not. He pretty much admitted this was revenge for the couch ****er stuff