Threads launched without the ability to only see the people you follow.
To me that marked it as doomed from the start. Most people use Twitter to follow specific niches or topic areas, not as a general conversational platform. If I follow even one account that's posting low quality content at any sort of frequency, it seriously degrades the experience.
It's really a headscratcher how they launched without that. I guess the idea is that ad placing is easier if you have an algorithmic feed instead?
Ironically, the people who refuse to use the "Following" tab on Twitter are, I expect, the same people who are most dissatisfied with Twitter. If you use the Following tab, Twitter remains pretty damn great. It's when you allow an algorithm to feed you stuff that the experience can become something between unsatisfactory and toxic.
The "following" tab inserts algorithmic posts, and has for years now. Tossing in likes and other recommendation experiments. This means that even if you carefully only follow people you specifically want to see on your feed, if they start liking stuff that interests them but does not fit their feed, you now see it.
Some of these aspects have changed, but again, they are part of a larger recommendation experiment that twitter constantly pushes because a strict following feed = less money less engagement.
You cannot curate twitter as well as you think you can. It would be nice if that was possible though.
I was enjoying the first few days and went on a campaign to mute as many of these low quality accounts that had been ported in from Instagram as possible.
Then I just got bored, and realized it was just reclaiming the time that I had gained by quitting Instagram in the first place.
To me that marked it as doomed from the start. Most people use Twitter to follow specific niches or topic areas, not as a general conversational platform. If I follow even one account that's posting low quality content at any sort of frequency, it seriously degrades the experience.
It's really a headscratcher how they launched without that. I guess the idea is that ad placing is easier if you have an algorithmic feed instead?