Social-media researchers overemphasized the platform now called X for years. But now, as it rapidly changes into something new and frightening, we risk paying too little attention.
Twitter’s influence has always been overstated by the media type, and the personalized recommendation algorithm it used has always been a black box to be gamed, and what this article really showed is that it is an inheritly unfair game and the people who writes the rules of the platform (in this case, Musk), can push whatever hot take they want to push to influence public opinion, and people who don’t have that level of access to Twitter will brute force follower with bots in the hopes that it’ll lure more real users to influence.
So, dead internet theory and all, until we fully automate Twitter to bots influencing bots. There is no authenticity anymore, it’s all disinformation from all sides.
Nowadays, I like to pretend that I never had a Twitter or Insta. Not a healthy way of coping, I know, but it’s way less stressful that way.
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Twitter’s influence has always been overstated by the media type, and the personalized recommendation algorithm it used has always been a black box to be gamed, and what this article really showed is that it is an inheritly unfair game and the people who writes the rules of the platform (in this case, Musk), can push whatever hot take they want to push to influence public opinion, and people who don’t have that level of access to Twitter will brute force follower with bots in the hopes that it’ll lure more real users to influence.
So, dead internet theory and all, until we fully automate Twitter to bots influencing bots. There is no authenticity anymore, it’s all disinformation from all sides.
Nowadays, I like to pretend that I never had a Twitter or Insta. Not a healthy way of coping, I know, but it’s way less stressful that way.