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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The basic premise with algorithmic feeds is that users are lazy and don't do a lot of active discovery, so their follow lists tend to be pretty small. The algorithm can show them a mix of content where some of it is sourced from their existing follow/like graph (e.g. followed by someone you follow) and therefore likely to be interesting, and some is pushed on other less user-centric grounds. (E.g. in Twitter's case: "The CEO wants to be popular, so everyone sees his posts.")

Ideally the user is happy to discover new content that both complements their existing interests and occasionally introduces them to something new and exciting, while the company is happy to have an algorithmic lever that helps with ad placement. This theoretical win-win ideal may not get realized very often in practice...

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Ok but that does not explain why you would actively remove content from their follow graphs. Sure, perhaps you can use the follow graphs to see what other stuff the user might be interested in and serve that, but why actively prevent the user from seeing posts that he has explicitly said he wants to see?

Presumably because feed real estate is so scarce and there are commercial motivations to show something else, so they start filtering out followed posts on the pretense of improving the quality of the feed. And that becomes a slippery slope.

"Ok, this user follows N. But N's latest post is already 15 hours old and it had poor engagement. Probably that means it's low quality and it's not worth including at all."

"why you would actively remove content from their follow graphs"

It makes sense, if you think you know better, what the user wants to see. Or, if you somehow make more money by doing so.

In either case, personally I like to decide, what I see myself, but I might actually be a minority (soon). Many people are apparently fine with intransparent algorithms making the decisions for them.

The first big algorithmic timeline I remember was Facebook, and it came at a time when the biggest complaint was "all I ever see on my feed is what people had for lunch". The idea was so you'll see the wedding pictures you care about but not the lunch photos you don't.

> "The CEO wants to be popular, so everyone sees his posts."

This is so insane to me. Some weeks ago I had to create a twitter account because I wanted to contact a developer for an app I'm using and the only contact information he had was his twitter account. I created a dumb account with my Google account and I was surprised that the first tweet I see is from Elon Musk. How small your ego has to be to request being featured first for every new account that is created? I remember I saw his face in the account creation process and I thought to myself "I would never follow this idiot" and still this guy is the first thing I see.

I wont be opening that cesspool anytime soon.

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