undefined | Better HN

0 pointsBitwiseFool4y ago0 comments

I loathe how often BrooklynDad_Defiant!, DutyToWarn, OccupyDemocrats, Palmer Report, Gravel Institute, Jeff Tiedrich, and many others always end up being the top tweet of whatever trending topic there happens to be. I refuse to believe this is a coincidence or the result of organic participation. Their appearance is far too consistent, predictable, and durable. Politically motivated trends also start appearing around a paltry 2,000 mentions, which seems absurdly low.

But also, in terms of non-politics, I am so tired of seeing "JUST ANNOUNCED".

0 comments

orhmeh094y ago

FWIW, BrooklynDad_Defiant! is a paid operative for the US Democratic Party: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

If the Democratic Party is paying him to tweet really well, can trending topics by him be the result of coincidence or organic participation?

rconti4y ago

I suspect these social networks don't really care, but I block any and every "public" facebook page that gets shared in my feed. Of course, you still see "what was your first car? from 93.7 THE OCTOPUS Des Moines, or whatever page you haven't yet blocked, but at least it gets rid of the worst, most-often shared offenders like the ones you cite. I'm assuming Twitter doesn't let you do that, though. I wish Facebook would give you an option "never ever ever show me anything from a public page". I will never care that a friend shared or posted on a public page. I will only ever care about their own content, and the groups I choose to be a member of.

(Incidentally, this is more broadly my problem with the default-public nature of Twitter).

I just wonder at what phase of growth-and-bust the networks will start to care a bit more about serving the demands of their eyeballs.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse