
The Feed Is Dying - jonbaer
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/04/the-feed-is-dying.html
======
yolesaber
I recently got the algorithmic timeline for one of my more popular Twitter
accounts. The algo has rendered it completely useless - it prioritizes all the
wrong stuff and the lack of chronological ordering made it literally
_impossible_ to use during the debates. I wanted the sharp minute by minute
commentary of my friends and news outlets but instead I was getting memes and
dumb retweets from days ago. At least give the users the option to have a full
chrono timeline - I can handle the "information overload" just fine on my own
TYVM.

~~~
Jgrubb
On the web version go Settings -> Account. Under the "Content" section uncheck
"show me the best tweets first". iOS app has a similar setting, and it stays
synced with whatever is set there so however you disable it.

~~~
md224
I don't know... I unchecked that a while back and I still get annoying "while
you were gone..." curated shit. Maybe I have to log out/in or something?

~~~
zippergz
While you were gone is different from the algorithmic feed. It's a short
section you can easily scroll past to get to the main feed. The algorithmic
feed re-sorts the whole thing.

~~~
brlewis
I think FriendFeed got it right with "Best of Week" and "Best of Month" that
you could visit when you wanted.

------
partiallypro
The Feed is fantastic for live, on going events. I don't see how it can be
replaced. Of course Twitter has meandered in using an algorithm in their
timeline, which is just a huge mistake. The entire point of Twitter is that
it's the world as it is happening now; it's still shocking that Jack, etc
don't understand this fact and are continually trying to take the very things
that made Twitter unique out of the platform.

~~~
askafriend
It can't be replaced but it can be made easily mutable.

For example, imagine a quick-switcher that flips the feed from algorithmic to
time based with a single tap. That's a powerful feature and adapts twitter to
different use-cases fast.

I think the key here is to give users options instead of trying to shepard
them into a particular direction, especially with their bipolar userbase (e.g.
people use Twitter for various, seemingly disjoint use cases)

~~~
partiallypro
But making the algorithmic feed the default, alone, is enough to kill the
platform. For the mere fact of nudging, and human laziness. It will just make
the shit rise to the top, instead of the hidden gems that make Twitter golden.
Twitter has to be one of the most poorly run tech companies, outside of Yahoo.
They changed their API token limits, and destroyed 3rd party clients. They
bought TweetDeck and then utterly destroyed it.

Live data is their product, but they bury it with stupid business decisions;
utterly baffling. They tout MAUs during their conference calls (which they
always miss), but that has nothing to do with their product. Their product has
some of the top content providers, providing unique content in real time.
Facebook can't say that, no other platform sans Snapchat can say that.
Facebook has figured this out and that's why they are rolling out offerings
like Paper. Twitter doesn't get it.

~~~
r3bl
_Did_ Facebook figure it out? Because I don't see people actually browsing the
homepage anymore. What used to ne an exciting way to explore stuff has turned
into a bunch of pictures and a couple of Facebook videos ripped off from
YouTube. I haven't seen anyone browsing through their homepage excitingly in a
very long time. Now it's just a chat platform.

~~~
partiallypro
I see people every day going scrolling through their timeline on the Facebook
app on their phone. Maybe it depends on your what your timeline's algo is
showing you. I will say that I see much less Facebook engagement on the whole
from people ~28 and younger, even in chat; people have shifted to Snapchat. Of
course I'm a Windows Mobile user, so I am totally in the dark in that area
because their CEO hates Microsoft.

But that doesn't really have much to do with what I'm saying, Facebook has
figured out that original content is important (something it now lacks; if you
don't include Instagram), that doesn't mean they've found the solution.
Twitter doesn't seem to know that is important, but they already have somewhat
of a solution.

------
sambe
I've really felt like there's been a large decrease in feed quality of the
last six months to one year on Facebook and Twitter.

Feed is now dominated by adverts, endlessly shared click-bait, repeat content
(especially if conspiratorial/shocking/fake - a variation on click bait), and
the "you interact with this person sometimes, here's everything they ever do".
And begging me to follow Zuckerberg. Compared to a couple of years ago it
seems boring and shallow.

FB is particularly bad, but partly seems my friends are part of the problem
(and/or click bait is hugely on the rise; it works). Twitter maybe a bit less
so, but this out-of-sequence stuff is terrible. Also miss the early Twitter
days when I found interesting randoms to follow from the public firehose, now
all celebrity focussed.

~~~
Yhippa
It would be nice if they could prioritize things by letting the user indicate
"I want to see more/less of this stuff" and then build the algorithm based on
that. I bet they did their testing on that and realized that users never end
up doing that so they're going to try to come up with their own strategy. I
agree with you, my feed has really dropped in quality even after blocking
clickbaity sources like BuzzFeed and other content farms.

------
gue5t
When users don't own their technology, they get jerked around by whoever does
until they jump ship for greener pastures.

You can claim the market will solve this (users will sell their time and
speech to a higher bidder, now that Twitter's prices no longer seem
competitive), but if people were empowered to have their computers do what
they want, it never would have happened in the first place.

~~~
PretzelFisch
What user owned communication network ever caught on en mass and is used by
most of the establishment?

~~~
meric
Email.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Not even close - at least not for consumers. See: @aol, @yahoo, @hotmail,
@comcast, @gmail etc....

Enterprises usually own their servers, so I would grant that caveat, but even
that is going away with cloud providers.

~~~
dangerlibrary
Email is an open protocol that many providers have implemented. That's an
important distinction.

Try sending a tweet to a Weibo user and see how that works out.

~~~
k2enemy
A year ago I would have agreed with you, but it is getting to the point where
it is very difficult to run your own mail server (I still do).

In the name of fighting spam, Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc. have made it a real
chore to get messages delivered to their networks. I still haven't figured out
how to get messages delivered to AOL.

------
sbierwagen
Twitter rolled out the algorithmic TL to my account the other day. Of the
first 12 tweets on my TL, 8 were really badly targeted ads,[1] and the other
four was one of my friends liveblogging a TV show I don't care about. Twitter
shuffled the order of her tweets in doing so, of course.

The promise is that algorithmic TL will show you the best organic tweets, and
relevant ads. In practice, the ads are trash and the organic tweets are just
as bad as usual, but in the wrong order.

1: Diapers, cars. I don't have kids, and while I've been looking at cars, I
sure as hell won't buy a _new_ one.

~~~
equalsnil
Oh wow, your recall rate is excellent. Thank you, Citizen! The advertising is
working!

------
Animats
_" Enter the curated feed"_

We could call it a "blog", and the people who curate the feeds could be called
"bloggers".

~~~
andrewstuart2
Inevitably there will be too much content to digest, though. At that point we
might create services that offer smaller "blogs," with limited-length content.
Maybe call them "microblogs."

------
ThomPete
Hmm I don't understand the point of this article.

A feed is a feed. It doesn't matter how it's created. There is utility to the
chronological feed as there is the the algorithmic.

Curation has been happening for a very long time. The problem is that it's not
enough even to curate.

For those who experience the problem, the issue really is that they have so
much information of potential relevance but still can't read more than one
feed item at a time (unless it's just pictures)

[http://000fff.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/12/model_01.png](http://000fff.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/12/model_01.png)

This wont be solved by it being curated because that introduces another
problem which is whether you trust the curation.

Not sure it can ever be solved. But the feed isn't dying. It's fundamental.

------
jcoffland
The "X is dying" article is dying. But seriously, I know every journalist
wants to be the first to call the end of a trend but this is like calling the
end of sentences or puppies. Time organised lists are here to stay.

~~~
settsu
Any journalist that "wants to be the first to call the end of a trend" has
ceased being a journalist and has become a marketer.

------
mrweasel
>Unfortunately, chronological order doesn’t scale well.

True, I guess, but what if my feed is already curated, by me. Facebook, for
instance is annoying to use, because it can't seem to remember that I just
want everything, in chronological order. I don't have a ton a people on
Facebook, nor do I care to, but I do want to see everything these people post.
It won't amount to more than 30 minutes of content a week anyway.

If you had to enable "curated feed", would you turn it on? For most people,
even those who have a large number friends or follow a ton of
people/companies, I suspect the answer would be no.

------
ilamont
The other thing about the transformation of my Twitter feed is it is now
mostly oriented toward images - photos, dancing GIFs, videos, or logos
associated with accounts being retweeted.

Sometimes the people I follow append the images, but most of the time Twitter
attaches the images to individual tweets or RTs. It's possible to disable most
of the images on my phone (via the Twitter app settings), but on the Web the
images cannot be stopped. Even if autoplay videos are disabled, the preview
image will still show up.

It's irritating and lowers the value of the feed I have created on Twitter.
Most of the time I just want to read opinions or retweets of the people I
follow without an image or logo getting in my way.

~~~
intrasight
Filter out the images. They don't fit in 140 characters and thus shouldn't
even be there.

------
rdslw
I see two big problems with algorithmic/curated feeds: * conflict of interest
between reader and (algo) curator. FB (as an example) wants reader to stay as
long as possible on its site and to make the reader to regular comeback to FB,
including preferring by the reader FB and not others. This is done by (algo)
curator playing with our dopamine levels (read novelty seeking preference of
human brains) presenting things which create 1 (stay) and 2 (comeback). In
fact feed is curated based only on 1 and 2 with constantly run A/B experiments
by FB. This is WRONG to reader. * all this 'feeling connected' being 'within
circle of similar to you people' etc, puts you in a closed circle of
opinions/views. This cramps critical thinking of the reader. Whats' more
dangerous, it distorts (humans are really weak on this) our view how world is
composed. We see too much of sth, and dont see (curator removed them) things
we don't agree with. We conclude how world is constructed (e.g. everybody
supports some presidency candidate, because 80% of "likes" and "shares" in my
stream are about him (concluded by curator because I clicked on some of them).
This has WRONG influence on our learning and critical thinking and forms
untrue perception of world impairing our reasoning.

p.s. sorry for my english.

------
deanclatworthy
There is a giant possible Game Of Thrones spoiler from last night's episode in
the image of this article. Be warned. I haven't watched the episode yet but
now I'm rather annoyed.

~~~
petepete
Thank you for this, I haven't clicked.

------
staticelf
I disagree, the curated feed sucks and spending time on facebook proves it.

------
overcast
All the more reason I've felt better about closing my "social media" accounts.
The little that was useful, has been rendered worthless.

------
tschellenbach
I think there is a place for both chronological and personalized feeds.
Chronological works well if the realtime component is absolutely essential to
your app. For apps that have a lot of content or users visiting infrequently
you will often want to show the best content, not the latest content. That's
where the personalized feeds come in.

I believe Twitter and Instagram are doing this because the chronological feeds
don't work well for a large portion of their users. You do wonder why they
don't disable it for their most active users. (why try to reorder something if
the user sees it all anyway?)

We provide both chronological, ranked and personalized feeds over at
getstream.io

Demand for personalized feeds is definitely picking up rapidly, also among
smaller apps.

------
inthewoods
It'd be nice if there was any form of data to support the position of the
article. I know that among my non-technical friends there seems to be no worry
about algo feed vs time-based feed - and there doesn't seem to be any slow
down in their scrolls through their Facebook/Instagram/Twitter feeds. I get
wanting to call a change, but lacking any data it's hard to take seriously.

------
karmacondon
Going to use HN for some quick market research... would anyone be willing to
pay for a human curated news feed? Say $10 or $20 a month for someone to go
through news sources and pick out the stories that will be interesting to you,
and potentially summarize them?

I'm thinking of curation based on a personal relationship instead of an
algorithm. You would indicate that you're interested in machine learning,
libertarian politics and cooking (or whatever), and people would check hn, new
york times, etc and compile lists of those items. I know it's not the same
thing as this post, but it's a problem and I'm wondering if anyone else feels
it strongly enough to pay for a solution.

~~~
berberous
FYI, this is what Jason Hirschborn does with a number of verticals (fashion,
media, tech, etc): [http://recode.net/2014/05/01/read-this-jason-hirschhorns-
new...](http://recode.net/2014/05/01/read-this-jason-hirschhorns-newsletter-
business-just-raised-a-seed-round/)

I personally have unsubscribed as I favor RSS feeds, but I recommend them
highly for people looking for someone else to weed through the crap for you.
He does a great job.

I don't think he's begun charging yet. I wouldn't pay. I suspect he could get
a decent niche to pay though.

------
nikanj
This is get for having psych majors optimize the feed for an optimal mix of
reward/stale to achieve maximum addictivity. Skinner box, now available in
Facebook

------
hebbarp
How about time being the best curator? I see what is live. I have a choice to
see the past by scrolling back. I can't see the future, well for obvious
reasons. For news/event based content, chronological is the best bet, IMHO.
For content of archival value, one can apply various curation techniques. So
the assertion that the feed is dying is wrong. It can't and it won't.

------
r721
I wish services would be clearer with how much of content the user I follow
produces on average. Let's say, I consume 1000 tweets per day on average,
therefore I shouldn't follow someone who produces 500 tweets per day, and
really think about following someone with 100 tweets per day.

------
tehabe
I actually get confused when I see something on Facebook which has been posted
three days ago. Also I'm not really sure Facebook knows what I want to read.
There is no "I don't want to read those posts right now" button.

~~~
takno
What's even better is that I've almost always seen the 3 day old post (and
often even liked it) 3 days ago, but it's apparently still the "most relevant"
thing for me to see. I do wonder if I'd appreciate the algorithmic model
better if the algorithms weren't just so damn bad

------
dredmorbius
The algorithm is an idiot.

My social medium of choice is, despite my many and loud gripes about it,
Google+. It's not even nearly awesome (none of the major options are), but,
for a while at least, it offered two compelling features.

The first is Notifications. Action on your own posts, posts with which you've
interacted, and (selected) people mentioning you, will show up in your
Notifications list (which ought be a stream in its own right). This is, if you
think about it, one of the highest possible signifiers of relevance: something
you've _already indicated an interest in_ in which _others are interacting,
often directly with you_.

The other was Search. After a couple of years, even the vast wasteland of G+
had accumulated a catalog of interesting posts, and via Search those could be
found. Search was always a bastard child, and it's considerably worse now than
it had been for a long time, but given a keyword signifier, it would,
sometimes, return relevant content.

I actually wrote a really embarassing mash note to G+ management -- Vic and
the project's then product manager -- highlighting this.

The response of Google was, of course, to kill both features, or attempt to do
so valiently.

The problem with the algorithm is that at best it can _guess_ or _assume_
intent. _But it never fucking bothers to ask you directly, or to allow you to
indicate your preferences._

I've likened this to a _good_ salesperson. These exist, and I've on occasion,
despite my anti-commercial tendencies, encountered and _appreciated_ them. The
good one will size you up as you enter a store, _compose a good idea of what
you 're looking for_, consider elements (say size or measurements for
clothing), and match these with stock. _Then they 'll ask you what you're
looking for._ They'll return with a selection of items and, often, a few
others. _They 'll read your responses, even subtle, on what's been offered and
take a "no" as a "no"._

That is the one feature that is missing from virtually _all_ current
electronic information interfaces. I wanted, an hour or so back, to tell
Amazon to show me _only_ books published matching a subject from 1990-1999.
Actually, filtering by cover colour would also have been useful. No can do.

For media streams, the thing I most want to do is _filter crap_. Again, G+
offers no such capabilities. There are websites I never want to see (say, WSJ
at HN), topics or people I don't care to hear about, etc. The best option I've
got is to uncircle or block crap, which actually works quite well. But finer
controls would be hugely useful.

Twitter's experiment seems to be headed the same way. And it's not going to
work.

Because the algorithm is an idiot.

------
mrmondo
I've seen a lot of this recently yet I find myself using and enjoying Twitter
and RSS more than ever, not saying it's wrong - but it is an interesting
outlier if correct en mass.

------
WWKong
So feed is dying or not? Seems it is thriving with curation?

------
swrobel
This is not news. We feeble humans cannot continue to drink from the ever-
growing reverse-chronological firehose. Algorithms will only get better.
Progress marches on.

------
zatkin
What other ways are there to present content to users if it's not through a
feed?

~~~
emmab
Topic hierarchy involving either vote based sorting, temporal sorting, or
personal relevance sorting. e.g. forum -> subforum -> thread; HN's comment
system.

You can extend it to allow multiple topic parents via a tagging system, but
this usually seems to complicate things.

facebook has wall -> post -> comments, but could add richer hierarchy above
post

------
erichocean
[DELETED]

~~~
mynegation
Ask your friend if they have a patent.If they do not - tell them to get it
first. Then try to do something with it, they can always sell it if that does
not work.

------
vonklaus
Search Engine wars are incoming. End of 2017.

------
d02
If The Feed dies, will The Seed supplant it?

