algorithmic timelines | ResearchBuzz: Firehose

March 28, 2023

Engadget: Twitter’s secret VIP list is the reason you see Elon Musk’s tweets so often

Engadget: Twitter’s secret VIP list is the reason you see Elon Musk’s tweets so often. “We now know why Twitter’s algorithm seems to recommend some users’ tweets so often. Newsletter Platformer reports that the company has a secret VIP list of a few dozen accounts ‘it monitors and offers increased visibility’ in its recommendation algorithm. The accounts include Elon Musk, as well as a handful of other prominent Twitter users.”

March 20, 2023

The Conversation: Algorithms are moulding and shaping our politics. Here’s how to avoid being gamed

The Conversation: Algorithms are moulding and shaping our politics. Here’s how to avoid being gamed . “In a recent paper, I coined the term ‘algopopulism’: algorithmically aided politics. The political content in our personal feeds not only represents the world and politics to us. It creates new, sometimes “alternative”, realities. It changes how we encounter and understand politics and even how we understand reality itself.”

Research & Opinion 0

March 3, 2023

Slate: What Happens After You Become a Main Character on Elon Musk’s Twitter

Slate: What Happens After You Become a Main Character on Elon Musk’s Twitter. “That Twitter’s changes had produced a new generation of ‘main characters’ became apparent in January with the viral fame of ‘menswear dude,’ aka fashion blogger Derek Guy, whose @DieWorkwear account had been recommended to many tweeters with little interest in fashion.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0

March 1, 2023

The Conversation: How fitness influencers game the algorithms to pump up their engagement

The Conversation: How fitness influencers game the algorithms to pump up their engagement. “In our recent article for the Academy of Management Journal, we explain how just establishing a social media presence doesn’t mean a would-be influencer can easily reach clients, as the social media platform’s algorithm determines who sees what posts, and when. And even if influencers do attract large followings, social media users shouldn’t necessarily buy what the influencers are selling.”

Research & Opinion 0

February 15, 2023

Platformer: Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

Platformer: Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first. “Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0

February 14, 2023

The Verge: Twitter is just showing everyone all of Elon’s tweets now

The Verge: Twitter is just showing everyone all of Elon’s tweets now. “Several of us here at The Verge are seeing more Musk replies than usual, and I personally counted five at the very top of my feed, with many more sprinkled in between tweets from other users. The same is true for some accounts that don’t even follow Elon Musk.”

Tweaks & Updates 0

January 18, 2023

University of Southern California: USC study reveals the key reason why fake news spreads on social media

University of Southern California: USC study reveals the key reason why fake news spreads on social media. “USC researchers may have found the biggest influencer in the spread of fake news: social platforms’ structure of rewarding users for habitually sharing information. The team’s findings, published Monday by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, upend popular misconceptions that misinformation spreads because users lack the critical thinking skills necessary for discerning truth from falsehood or because their strong political beliefs skew their judgment.”

Research & Opinion 0

December 13, 2022

Daily Beast: Gen Z Is Ready to Torpedo Social Media’s Echo Chambers

Daily Beast: Gen Z Is Ready to Torpedo Social Media’s Echo Chambers. “Our social media feeds are complex and infinite. They are online spaces that are curated by algorithm data that predict what we like. By tracking our every move, social media will seamlessly find and give us content that is, as TikTok so presciently states, ‘for you.’ It seems that our decision to double tap or swipe up has bigger consequences than we think. And members of Gen Z, myself included, are anxious to see social media structures dismantled and reformed into something that we don’t have to fear.”

Research & Opinion 0

December 1, 2022

TechCrunch: Twitter is going to show you more tweets from people you don’t follow

TechCrunch: Twitter is going to show you more tweets from people you don’t follow. “As new Twitter owner Elon Musk tinkers around with the social network’s feature set, more algorithmic recommendations are apparently on the way.”

Tweaks & Updates 0

August 4, 2022

New York Times: Can We Resist the Age of the Algorithm?

New York Times: Can We Resist the Age of the Algorithm?. “People can choose to be ruled by algorithmic thinking without running a literal program to figure out what’s popular. And the fact that we have a specific form of technology that makes it easier to squash risk and creativity is hard to separate from wider trends toward sclerosis, repetition, what I spent an entire book calling decadence.”

Research & Opinion 0

August 2, 2022

Washington Post: Social Media Can No Longer Hide Its Problems in a Black Box

Washington Post: Social Media Can No Longer Hide Its Problems in a Black Box. “There’s a perfectly good reason to break open the secrets of social-media giants. Over the past decade, governments have watched helplessly as their democratic processes were disrupted by misinformation and hate speech on sites like Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Twitter Inc. Now some governments are gearing up for a comeuppance.”

Research & Opinion 0

July 31, 2022

The New Yorker: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

The New Yorker: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants. “This rejection of the social-graph model has allowed TikTok to circumvent the barriers to entry that so effectively protected early social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. By separating distraction from social connection, TikTok can directly compete for users without the need to first painstakingly build up an underlying network, link by link.” Terrific, thoughtful writing here.

Research & Opinion 0

July 28, 2022

The Verge: Facebook and Instagram are going to show even more posts from accounts you don’t follow

The Verge: Facebook and Instagram are going to show even more posts from accounts you don’t follow. “Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double the amount of content from recommended accounts people see while using Instagram and Facebook by the end of 2023. He said that such recommendations currently account for roughly 15 percent of the content on Facebook, and that the percentage is already higher on Instagram.”

Tweaks & Updates 0

July 27, 2022

The Conversation: There is a lot of antisemitic hate speech on social media – and algorithms are partly to blame

The Conversation: There is a lot of antisemitic hate speech on social media – and algorithms are partly to blame. “Scholar Sophie Schmalenberger found that antisemitism is expressed not just in blunt, hurtful language and images on social media, but also in coded forms that may easily remain undetected. For example, on Facebook, Germany’s radical right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, omits the mentioning of the Holocaust in posts about the Second World War. It also uses antisemitic language and rhetoric that present antisemitism as acceptable.”

Research & Opinion 0

TechCrunch: Twitter is going to show you more tweets from people you don’t follow

New York Times: Can We Resist the Age of the Algorithm?

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