
Using Deep Learning at Scale in Twitter’s Timelines - hunglee2
https://blog.twitter.com/2017/using-deep-learning-at-scale-in-twitter-s-timelines
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ungzd
It does not work for my timeline at all. Maybe the idea of algorithmic
newsfeed is ok, I dreamed of it in the times of RSS and Livejournal. But last
few days twitter became almost unusable. It shows "You might like" almost
every time I open it, and it is filled with content that I hate. Shady
political posts, glamour chicks posting cans of cosmetics. It shows tweets
liked by someone as if it's retweeted instead of liked.

Maybe it's optimised for rage which drives more page refreshes? Twitter
started to look like it's really dying, desperately trying to squeeze last ad
juices from its userbase.

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tanilama
It is a disappointment that this article merely scratches the surface and
didn't give even slightest details. It is more like PR than a tech blog
because it merely shares anything substantial.

~~~
gaius
"We have really cleverly done a thing that no one actually wanted" is the
summary

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gaius
But noone actually wants a "relevant timeline". They want all the posts by
their friends most recent first, and that's it. Twitter's contributions to the
creation and reinforcement of echo chambers has done the entire world an
enormous disservice.

~~~
argonaut
This is such a backwards-looking point of view.

0\. The fact is, _I_ want a algo timeline. There are far too many posts in a
day for me to read everything.

1\. People made the same complaints about Facebook's algorithmic feed. Very
few users complain about that anymore (outside of HN, I guess). If anything,
without FB's algo feed, users would be overwhelmed with a flood of posts. FB
will surface very granular posts like a friend liking something, so we are
talking about multiple thousands of potential news feed posts per day. And if
FB were to take out that granularity, that means potentially missing tens of
highly relevant posts a day.

2\. Obviously I don't have any inside info, but I guarantee you Twitter split
tested the algorithmic timelines and is also measuring user engagement and
they wouldn't have kept this highly complex feature (with probably a whole
engineering team dedicated to it) unless there was a big boost.

3\. Q1 of 2017, the first quarter they rolled out the algo timeline, user
growth accelerated.

4\. I don't know a single person with experience growing/measuring consumer
web products who thought the algo timeline was a bad idea. It is such an
obvious piece of low-hanging fruit.

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altcognito
My first thought when I saw what twitter was doing with my timeline was, "oh
man, now they've gone ahead and ruined my twitter feed just like they ruined
my Facebook feed."

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ItendToDisagree
Why isn't a working method of disabling these sorts of sorting 'features' ever
provided?

Seems like they could please the "I want to see relevant" and the "I want to
see most recent" camps.

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dcre
Settings > Timeline > uncheck "Show me the best tweets first"

Does that not work?

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michaf
I do not see that option anywhere.

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dcre
On web it's under Account > Content (the bottom section).

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closed
> We measure a model’s quality in two ways. First, we evaluate the model using
> a well-defined accuracy metric we compute during model training. This
> measure tells us how well the model performs its task – specifically, giving
> engaging Tweets a high score.

Very curious to know what this metric would be. Maybe some combination of
likes, retweets, and viewing time? Or maybe including a general liking term
(i.e. liking a person's tweet gives a small boost to all their tweets).

~~~
eehee
Anecdotal experience with twitter's timeline suggests it's viewing time - and
that they haven't considered that people are just spending more time finding
the tweets they're looking for...

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dmvaldman
It's amazing how many bright minds are paid to sort lists in a particular way.

~~~
axiom92
s/sort lists in a particular way/find the particular way to sort lists//.

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stevebmark
Please don't do this, Twitter. This is a step away from growth. There are so
many problems you should fix. A ranked feed will ruin the quality of content
and it will become another mindless Facebook/Instagram clone. I don't want
this and I love Twitter.

~~~
egypturnash
Ironically, with people using its new tool to make Big Text On A Gradient
Background built into the post box, Facebook is now looking more and more like
Playskool Twitter.

