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The new Twitter ‘For You’ Page is genius for Twitter but probably not for your attention span.
Obviously the name takes inspiration from the ‘For You’ page on TikTok which is the main page for users on the platform. It suggests videos based on the likes, amount of time spent viewing, engagement and every single data point you can possibly get from a 3 second scroll with your thumbs.
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It’s algorithm is really good. So good that it completely changed the way social media is consumed and how the internet works. Short form content went up and to the right and every other social media app is copying and integrating elements from TikTok into their own platforms.
Our boy Elon doesn’t want to miss out on this fun so Twitter announced a new ‘For You’ page at the top which will recommend tweets to people based on a mixture of their following, likes and suggested tweets that Twitter thinks you will like. I have been clicking on the ‘Following’ tab when using Twitter but that feature is really good.
It kind of feels like YouTube shorts on YouTube. I have successfully been able to avoid using TikTok since its inception and have avoided clicking on the YouTube Shorts tab for the past 2 years but they finally got me.
YouTube Shorts algorithm has improved and it recommends videos based on your long form content. Also doens’t help that my long form podcast consumption on YouTube perfectly compliments the 40 second clips of podcast highlight reels on YouTube Shorts.
Also doesn’t help that I am experimenting with a automated YouTube Shorts channel that uploads a bunch of clips a day to see how the algorithm works.
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Now back to Twitter. Twitter used to have one main Timeline with an option for Latest tweets or the Default view. If you selected the Latest tweets options, it showed latest tweets from your following and kept it that way as default. The default view also had a lot less recommended tweets from people that you did not follow.
Now they are experimenting by showing you tweets from people you don’t follow on the ‘For You’ page. It’s showing more tweets that cause outrage and hooks you in more. I am sure this doesn’t increase unregretted minutes spent but doubt Elon cares. That’s just a PR stunt to fake care about how users spend their time on Twitter while trying to maximise number of minutes spent on the site.
At the end of the day, he bought the town square. Other billionaires bought the building or newspaper publication but he bought the entire town square where everyone congregated. Now he’s going to hook everyone in with this ‘For You’ Page.
Also funny that this was his tweets about the topic last May.
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There’s an easy solution to this. uBlockOrigin and blocking the element that contains the ‘For You’ page. That’s it.
