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glimshe | on: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
I keep hearing this about Twitter and Facebook but my experience is completely different. I believe the default experience is as you describe, but after I started following dozens of retrogaming groups, old games are all I see in both places. Even the ads became relevant and, believe it or not, interesting. I've clicked on a couple, which took me to small creators in the retrogaming and RPG areas.
eitally | parent | next
The same is true with Reddit. The default feed is absolutely awful, but the bar required to curate something individually interesting and useful is too high for most new users, given the toxicity + banality of the default.
evantbyrne | root | parent | next
I finally quit my barren Twitter when the Musk takeover resulted in my feed being flooded with porn (including illegal content) and arabic carpet cleaning ads. I seriously doubt anyone's default Reddit front page has ever looked like that.
commandlinefan | root | parent | next
I keep seeing people say they've experienced this, but I've been on twitter for years (pre Musk and stayed post Musk) and I've never once seen porn on there. How does this happen by accident?
swatcoder | root | parent | next
They're going to have a pretty developed and stable picture of you and what you respond to by now, especially of their view of you aligns with high- value placements already.

So they probably don't bother to audition that kind of content for you very often because they already have strategies that milk your attention, engagement, and wallet better.

When you hear other people share their experience as new or different users, keep in mind how customized all these platforms are and how idiosycratically optimized they'll already be for you as a long-time, engaged user.

Most people can't go back in time to get where you are, and don't have any sure (or worthwhile) road to get there.

SmirkingRevenge | root | parent
In my case, my (now deleted) account (which was primarily read-only) would get several porn bot followers per day. If I didn't log in for a week, I'd have dozens of new "p#i#c#s#i#n#b#i#o" type accounts following me.

Towards the end, there would often be porn in replies of many posts on all kinds of topics, like politics, news, etc.

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WalterBright | root | parent
I don't see any porn in my feed. Some of it is salacious, but not porn.
ge96 | root | parent | next
YouTube is nuts when not logged in as well. Those crazy clickbait thumbnails eg. Mr. Beast or whatever.
jiggawatts | root | parent
My logged-in YouTube shows me almost entirely 3blue1brown, Applied Science, and the like. Logged out it is 100% chum and garbage.
ge96 | root | parent
I wish the home was better showing the stuff you followed vs. having to go into subscriptions tab.

edit: there are a limited number of tiles to show but yeah

lupusreal | root | parent | next
On reddit the defaults are shit and the rest of the site bans you by default until you've karmawhored yourself past an arbitrary threshold on those defaults. Trash website.

I used to use it years back. Some subreddits were really great but they all inevitability devolved so I lost any interest in maintaining active accounts there. r/skookum had really interesting content for a while but devolved into idiots reposting the same skookum brand wrenches over and over again.

i_love_retros | root | parent
I'm sorry but reddit is trash. Every subreddit, no matter how niche, is basically cringy phrases being repeated or photos of some "home set up" or said niche product someone bought who is looking for validation of their decision. It's so bad I blocked reddit from my search engine results.
eitally | root | parent
Clearly we're using different subs. ymmv.
i_love_retros | root | parent
Provide an example of a sub that isn't like that?
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runjake | parent | next
Agreed. The X ads were terrible and annoying until I flipped on that "Let X ad track you" and at least I get tolerable ads on mobile. (uBlock Origin blocks them on desktop)

The For You feed varies week by week but is generally okay. I make heavy use of lists, mute words, etc to clean things up.

X is a train wreck, but an interesting and useful one, depending on who/what you follow.

WalterBright | root | parent | next
I bought a premium account on X and the ads went away.

I bought a premium Prime account on Amazon, and yet some of their shows still have embedded commercials. grrrr.

runjake | root | parent
I have Premium and I still get half the ads as free.

Plus, I get constant ads to upgrade to Premium+ for ads-free.

Premium+ is probably what you have.

tomrod | root | parent
I use bluesky and so far have no ads and lots of great journalism and academic lists to follow. Greatly enjoying it, feels like Twitter 2012 or so.
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grues-dinner | root | parent
Use Firefox and you can block them on mobile as well.
runjake | root | parent
Safari, with an ad blocker, does block them on mobile, as well. I should have noted I was talking about the X mobile app.
threeseed | parent | next
I run a number of business X accounts which are post-only.

The very second the US election got underway all of our accounts started to heavily promote right-wing political content. Even though we specifically said when we signed up that we aren't interested in anything like that.

chasd00 | root | parent
This happened to me on imgur, i explicitly filtered out politics but once the election got underway I started seeing it everywhere (except in imgur's case it was left-wing content). I turned off the politics filter and then turned it back on and they vanished for a time but then slowly leaked back in. If i reset the filter every week then i could keep political related content hidden for the most part.
qqqult | parent | next
same, people keep complaining that their twitter feeds are full of violence, porn & political bullshit but I get 0 of that

I haven't gone out of my way to restrict my timeline either, I follow ~1000 accounts I just don't follow or interact with accounts that post any of that crap.

celticninja | parent
Don't worry it will come, it takes a while but then you start getting sent outrage bait, stuff you will disagree with just to get you involved.