Twitter Rebrand to 𝕏

[Stive Pesley]

I hesitate to bump this topic, but just when I thought there were no more nails  left to hammer into Twitter's coffin, I see today that they are now planning to make people's "likes" private

So if you like a tweet, the only person that knows you liked it is you and the author of the tweet

Maybe doesn't sound so bad, until you remember that Twitter now boosts tweets depending on popularity, and is still crawling with bots who can artificially each plough through thousands of tweets a day smashing the like button and boosting the reach of the post. Now you have no way of seeing if a post is organically popular or bot-popular

With an impending US election, what can go wrong?

Of course it will put an end to the witch-hunting of famous people who get spotted liking a contentious or edgy post, but a by-product of that is that it potentially opens people up to blackmail if you're a neo-nazi and you see that someone famous has liked your post...fancy a few quid? Threaten to leak the screenshot...

[therealhantsram]

25 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

I hesitate to bump this topic, but just when I thought there were no more nails  left to hammer into Twitter's coffin, I see today that they are now planning to make people's "likes" private

So if you like a tweet, the only person that knows you liked it is you and the author of the tweet

Maybe doesn't sound so bad, until you remember that Twitter now boosts tweets depending on popularity, and is still crawling with bots who can artificially each plough through thousands of tweets a day smashing the like button and boosting the reach of the post. Now you have no way of seeing if a post is organically popular or bot-popular

With an impending US election, what can go wrong?

Of course it will put an end to the witch-hunting of famous people who get spotted liking a contentious or edgy post, but a by-product of that is that it potentially opens people up to blackmail if you're a neo-nazi and you see that someone famous has liked your post...fancy a few quid? Threaten to leak the screenshot...

Didn't they do this on Insta a few years ago. The logic was supposed to be to raise quality by stopping people chasing likes.

Also I think the algorithms mostly focus on comments and retweets; likes are only a minor factor in determining engagement.

[Day]

38 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

I hesitate to bump this topic, but just when I thought there were no more nails  left to hammer into Twitter's coffin, I see today that they are now planning to make people's "likes" private

So if you like a tweet, the only person that knows you liked it is you and the author of the tweet

Maybe doesn't sound so bad, until you remember that Twitter now boosts tweets depending on popularity, and is still crawling with bots who can artificially each plough through thousands of tweets a day smashing the like button and boosting the reach of the post. Now you have no way of seeing if a post is organically popular or bot-popular

With an impending US election, what can go wrong?

Of course it will put an end to the witch-hunting of famous people who get spotted liking a contentious or edgy post, but a by-product of that is that it potentially opens people up to blackmail if you're a neo-nazi and you see that someone famous has liked your post...fancy a few quid? Threaten to leak the screenshot...

Non issue really. How many times would you go through the like list to verify the people are genuine?

With all the changes, this has to be right down there at the bottom of the s*** list.

Looked earlier, I now 72 followers on X. Never posted once yet have a constant flow of followers then unfollowers. If you watch Musk’s account he gets around 100k a day, wild really. Shows he’s done absolutely nothing to stop the bots.

[ariotofmyown]

9 minutes ago, Day said:

stop the bots.

You've been told about this before, please leave out the politics discussion.

[Comrade 86]

14 minutes ago, Day said:

Looked earlier, I now 72 followers on X. Never posted once yet have a constant flow of followers then unfollowers. If you watch Musk’s account he gets around 100k a day, wild really. Shows he’s done absolutely nothing to stop the bots.

Same. Opened a 'burner' account a few months back and have nearly 60 followers. A while back I started looking through the list and they are all bots. Of course I knew this as like yours, the account was used only to view and not to post. For balance, I think Facebook is crap too these days and Insta is going the same way. Pretty soon, all these platforms will just be bots arguing with one another or liking each other's posts.

[Stive Pesley]

1 hour ago, Day said:

Non issue really. How many times would you go through the like list to verify the people are genuine?

With all the changes, this has to be right down there at the bottom of the s*** list.

Looked earlier, I now 72 followers on X. Never posted once yet have a constant flow of followers then unfollowers. If you watch Musk’s account he gets around 100k a day, wild really. Shows he’s done absolutely nothing to stop the bots.

I guess I agree it's a non-issue on a day to day basis for casual users, but I sometimes found it helpful to get the measure of someone who shows up in your replies. If you can see their likes, you get an idea of what sort of character they are and whether they seem genuine or not. I also have a mate who was going to get some work done by a builder but when he checked his likes, he had liked loads of racist posts, so he went with a different builder on principle

Fundamentally though - Musk is only doing it to cover up the fact he hasn't got rid of the bots (which was the first thing he said he'd do) so the platform is further undermined.

It becomes very easy for nefarious forces to manipulate the platform by paying for likes from a a bot farm that artificially boosts whatever message they want to make appear popular. Making likes private makes it almost impossible to detect this behaviour

[Carl Sagan]

The removal of public likes is to prevent the offense archaeologists destroying lives and livelihoods by going through accounts so they can get people cancelled for liking something that's not progressive. As has been said, Insta did this years ago. It's a shame it has to be done, but will lead to a healthier, more honest exchange in the town square.

[Stive Pesley]

There is nothing "healthy" about wanting to disguise or hide away bigotry.

Accountability is always paramount. If someone wants to "like" a post that is "not progressive" (now there's a euphemism!) - they should have the guts to stand by their views

 

[DarkFruitsRam7]

6 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

The removal of public likes is to prevent the offense archaeologists destroying lives and livelihoods by going through accounts so they can get people cancelled for liking something that's not progressive. As has been said, Insta did this years ago. It's a shame it has to be done, but will lead to a healthier, more honest exchange in the town square.

There are pros and cons. I agree that it's far too easy to destroy people for historical likes and posts that may no longer reflect that person's thinking. However, it's absolutely in the public interest to see what politicians are publicly liking. If someone running for office likes several posts along the lines of, say, "Hitler was right", it's the electorate's right to know that IMO. It's not like it's a private message.

Whether or not that specific example justifies the whole thing I don't know. 

 

[ariotofmyown]

7 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

The removal of public likes is to prevent the offense archaeologists destroying lives and livelihoods by going through accounts so they can get people cancelled for liking something that's not progressive. As has been said, Insta did this years ago. It's a shame it has to be done, but will lead to a healthier, more honest exchange in the town square.

Archeology = 2 years ago.

I've got in-date food items in the cupboard that are older than a certain "non-progressive" post.

[ariotofmyown]

41 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

There are pros and cons. I agree that it's far too easy to destroy people for historical likes and posts that may no longer reflect that person's thinking. However, it's absolutely in the public interest to see what politicians are publicly liking. If someone running for office likes several posts along the lines of, say, "Hitler was right", it's the electorate's right to know that IMO. It's not like it's a private message.

Whether or not that specific example justifies the whole thing I don't know. 

 

"We should have appeased Hitler" is now "non-progressive" in our zany, polorised world.

[Comrade 86]

It's a real shame, as for all its faults, Twitter used to be a really vibrant community with a very loyal and ever-growing user base. Sadly, Statista now estimate headcounts to be over 10% down from their historical high (2022) and if anyone were allowed to properly investigate bot numbers, one suspects the picture would be significantly grimmer still. 

Worse still, Reuters report that ad revenue has declined by at least 55% and unless users wish to pay to view any and all content, which they evidently don't, this trend heralds a decline akin to that we saw with Myspace. 

[Eddie]

I have 6 followers.

All seem to be bots. I've never posted - just check the Derbyshire CCC updates occasionally.