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Comment by danachow | Hacker News Reader

Your examples are still straw men.

I do occasionally have the misfortune of using twitter - sometimes a link is posted or sent to me, or I am curious if something specific is trending. It sucks ass and is unenjoyable in my opinion - the worst when someone tries to use it as a full blown blogging platform. It seems designed to exploit certain triggers for compulsive content consumption.

There are numerous similar testimonials of people that still regularly use twitter if not compulsively, so the straw men are irrelevant.

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You use twitter in a different way than the vast majority of users.

Twitter users follow people and see their posts. Their feeds are mostly their followers posts.

You ever look at the youtube home page when you're logged out? It's absolute garbage. It's also not the way most people use youtube.

> You use twitter in a different way than the vast majority of users.

Can you actually back this up with any evidence, because I don't buy it off hand. You're saying it's uncommon for a huge long tail of rare users and lurkers that just casually drop in to twitter to see some one off post/conversation from an aggregator or their friend sent them, or post/DM bitch to a company that fucked them? I have a twitter account, I have a handful of followers (all likely from more than 5 years ago), but I hardly use twitter enough to even care. And I don't think this is that rare.

> You ever look at the youtube home page when you're logged out? It's absolute garbage. It's also not the way most people use youtube.

I don't follow your point. Most people use youtube by following links from aggregators such as reddit or here. They don't actively participate in the youtube "community" with its cesspool of comments nor even subscribe (what is it - like 3 to 5 subscribers per 1000 views) - that is hardly the "vast majority".

> Most people use youtube by following links from aggregators such as reddit or here.

That's a strong assertion. You have any data to back it up?

> They don't actively participate in the youtube "community" with its cesspool of comments nor even subscribe (what is it - like 3 to 5 subscribers per 1000 views) - that is hardly the "vast majority".

I think you're right about the comments and even subscriptions, but you're entirely skipping the "algorithmic" way of using YouTube, which is using the suggested videos on the homepage like the person you were replying to alluded to, as well as the related videos. Also, searching.

YouTube can and will suggest new videos from channels it has decided you like on the homepage whether you're subscribed to them or not. It will also put them in the related videos, even if they're unrelated to the video you're currently watching.

>Most people use youtube by following links from aggregators such as reddit or here.

Huh? This is blatantly false. Link aggregators are not as large as you think. People go on youtube.com and watch the videos there, or check out their subscriptions, or use the search bar in youtube.

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