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Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

Something like this recently disturbed me. Mitt Romney published a tweet storm a few days ago making his case against Donald Trump. They all showed up in my feed - I don't follow Romney, and the tweets weren't marked as sponsored, but somehow Twitter decided I should be seeing them anyway.

I'd hate to think Twitter decided it was for the public good that everyone read what Romney had to say about Trump.

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How do you think the media mughals made their billions. They made them doing exactly this.

So you think some one paying twitter to get those tweets to show up? And not through the "sponsored" system?

Dunno. Hard to say. Could be, or could be their algo saying you would like it. They will always claim the latter.

It's a recommendation engine, it's not Twitter decided everyone should read it. Obviously you read, follow, consume content related to this so the algorithm decided you'd probably like Romney's tweets too (because they were super popular)

Why doesn't this recommendation engine ever show me anyone else's tweets? Why only Romney, and why now?

Unfortunately that train has already left the station, and to thunderous applause from the media. Twitter already carefully curates hashtags; it's not hard to imagine they'd take the liberty of promoting a series of tweets that they feel are important.

This simply is not true.

Oh, wait, you're spreading your subtle forms of influence.

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