IsMyXFeedFucked – Analyze How Your X Feed's Impacting You
200 comments
·January 19, 2025sureIy
matthewdgreen
Yup. I had a beautiful infosec feed that was incredibly useful. Sometime over the summer my "for you" devolved into wild political opinions, and many of the smartest people left the platform which turned by "Following" feed into a ghost town. Every time I used the app I came away feeling angry, and I realized I was happier not using the app than using it.
Fortunately about 1/2 of the smart people have shown up on Bluesky, and we can have technical conversations now. I'm hoping all the energy eventually comes back.
jcims
Infosec twitter had been self-immolating long before X. I basically solved the influx of weird stuff in one night by blocking everything that wasn’t related to my interests. The next day I was reading about rockets from my rocket peeps, radios from my radio peeps, and politics and posturing from my infosec peeps.
Havoc
That plus even the classic SV tech crowd is now so entangled in US partisan politics that you're more likely to hear about whatever outrage is happening in culture wars than a new technology. Complete write-off and I don't just mean X
smt88
The classic SV tech crowd wasn't worth following anyway. It was an endless stream of self-promotion and people pretending to have great wisdom because they exited one company once (or, worse, got a job as a VC).
nobrains
I have noticed searching for topics that interest me, ends up showing more content related to that search term in my feed. At least for some time. Just putting it out there incase someone wants to manually tweak their timeline using the search workaround.
sunaookami
Why not use the "Following" feed? You won't get any recommended content (besides ads without an adblocker) and only see stuff from people you follow.
Side note: It's annoying how many tech people started posting their political hot takes since ~2016. I unfollowed everyone who tweeted about politics.
NikolaNovak
It's tricky.
I don't post about politics on my social media feeds, but... I spend increasing amount of time feeling that I should start.
Context:
1. I come from a country that was torn into horrible civil war by populist leaders spouting exactly the same tactics and phrases as some of the North American elected leaders do now.
2. I don't believe in manifest destiny, I'm not religious, and so I don't believe that the average well being in USA and Canada is God given, inevitable, or guaranteed.
3. All it takes for evil to win is for good people to do or say nothing.
So... Is covering my head under the sand like the mythical ostrich and going LaLaLa over next 4 years the polite thing to do, lest somebody unsubscribe? Or do I have all but duty to try to encourage tolerance, bridge communication between my polarized friends and neighbours, speak of my past and hope for the future?
sunaookami
Posting about politics on social media changes exactly zero. In the end you will only have people with the same opinion as yours around you which distorts your world view. If you really want to get involved, you should start with your local community and make things better in your hometown. You can't change country-wide politics.
intended
Hey, so I weirdly have an answer to this.
Based on what you've written, you are choosing between polite self interest (unsubscribes), and vocal group interest (speaking out).
Essentially a choice between helping and staying out of the way.
The real question is your values, the reason you want to speak up in the first place.
In addition, it doesnt look like you want to speak up for the sake of it, but to prevent a dangerous outcome.
For a situation like this, its safe to say you will always be conflicted if you don't speak out.
What you will rue, is speaking out ineffectively. So speaking out without a plan, alienating people - NOT achieving the goal that motivated you in the first place.
At this point, i typically try and come up with a diagnostic question. Something that puts two values a persons holds in conflict.
Eg: If someone gave you a clear set of topics that would prevent this outcome, would you immediately speak up on them, even if you may not agree with the words? (I guarantee that these words prevent the outcome you foresee, and have no hidden knock on effects)
This asks how far you would go to achieve your outcome. Would you be willing to say things you dont like, to prevent populism?
If no, then there are conditions to your goal, or your goal is slightly different.
Knowing your motivations (just want to speak, want to achieve a goal, want to achieve a specific outcome, want someone else to handle it), helps you figure out what you want, and the limits of how far you are willing to engage.
jcims
I'm confident there are examples but I've yet to see anyone artfully navigate this.
A few years ago a bunch of folks I followed started adding politics to the list of things they would regularly talk about, which I fully support. But I don't owe them my attention and when the topics start to just become a steady stream of undifferentiated ranting about political topics I'm out. Then they would invariably take a self-righteous position to explain the drop in their numbers as people that 'can't handle the truth' and that they are better off without them, when the reality is that they mostly just spammed themselves out of an audience.
Do what you like of course, but for me unless the person is bringing new information or context to the conversation I'm out.
matthewdgreen
Because a lot of the smartest and most interesting people just stopped posting. And frankly I don't blame them. A good chunk of the reason is that the replies are recently much more angry and toxic, which makes the entire platform stressful to use.
2024user
Examples of those people?
sureIy
I tried but I don't follow enough people I suppose (~100) and many probably left. This resulted in my "Following" feed being completely taken over by really prolific CSS guy.
calmworm
“It's annoying how many people started posting their political hot takes…” ftfy
cosmic_cheese
Discover feeds, if they try to be actually relevant to the user, can be a great tool for finding new people to follow and help keep the following feed fresh. I primarily follow artists on Twit-alikes and it’s how I once upon a time used it on Twitter and now use it on Bluesky.
A discover feed that’s not adversarial isn’t strictly necessary but it’s a significant selling point.
Yeul
My brother is an artist and he's looking into an alternative to Insta.
With the US going full into homophobia, Christianity and xenophobia it's time to divest from American social media.
sunaookami
>I primarily follow artists on Twit-alikes and it’s how I once upon a time used it on Twitter and now use it on Bluesky.
I still do this on Twitter and the "For You" feed works great.
vanrohan
Also make sure to remove bots from your followers. Having them in your social graph impacts your feed for sure. I made the "x bot remover" Chrome extension that automates removal based on simple rules. It's free.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/x-bot-remover/aohkh...
vborovikov
Thanks for the extension. By the way it only started working after I switched the X display language to English.
vanrohan
Thanks for letting me now, I need to fix this, or atleast mention it in the extension description.
Kye
Most of the tech people I recognize are on Bluesky now. If you follow enough of the same people, even the "Following" timeline won't help because they're just not there.
greatgib
What is infuriating is the fucked algorithm that is now showing in priority the tweets of Elon, even if you don't subscribe, follow or care about him.
That is the real problem nowadays, he destroyed the system to make it a self promotion tool first. I'm quite sure that always on feed tweets of him can easily brain wash hundreds of millions of people.
PartiallyTyped
I had him blocked and last I used xitter I still saw his stuff.
sroussey
Block him is the only way. The algorithm gives him 1000x over everything
hoseja
Weird, I'm not getting nearly enough Elon tweets as I would like. Each day there is news about another wacky thing he tweeted and I only learn about it afterwards.
tbihl
At the risk coming off as pedantic, it ceases to be a self-promotion tool if the system is destroyed.
numpad0
I don't get why people would be so kind as to use the "not interested" button, on Twitter or anywhere. Just block them all. Content creators are same thing as 10x engineers, they can't be manufactured and supply is limited. There should be only so many of them that are capable of writing passable spams that can be force pushed without mentally destabilizing the team that does it.
Not that anyone should go back to a dead website, just that not blocking is too nice.
sureIy
Good point. Unfortunately blocking people often takes more taps and achieves less. The platform definitely won't show you the creator, but can still show others exactly like them.
kbos87
My X experience has become scrolling through the 2/3 of posts I never asked for, including: 1) Elon's posts, though I never interact with him as a subject, 2) Ads from Trump-supporting PACs seeking donations, 3) Ads for hunting games with graphic depictions of animals being shot. Everything else is insultingly basic clickbait. These aren't topics I interact with, they are just representative of baseline content on X right now.
arnvald
To me the worst part is not even the feed (I can use “following” tab) but the replies. I often used to look at single threads to see replies there. Since they started prioritizing replies from premium users it turned into cesspool and I eventually stopped using X altogether
bjackman
I did the same, very quickly. I'm now on BlueSky and it's exactly like pre-Musk Twitter.
egeozcan
Bluesky doesn't have contact import yet (or I didn't see it). Are there any good lists for techie/nerd content? I really miss my old Twitter feed but most people I followed switched to Bluesky and it's a lot of manual work to find people again.
Kye
Here you go: https://goodfeeds.co/search?q=tech
threeseed
> started prioritizing replies from premium users
And often non-premium users are simply flagged as spam and hidden.
Which actually means that if Elon removes your blue checkmark (as happened recently with Asmongold) then it is akin to a shadowban.
extraduder_ire
You can change how replies are sorted for you via a button on the top right, but you have to change it every time you open some replies.
The problem comes from the default sort order shown to everyone though, not just you as you're reading it.
add-sub-mul-div
It's a de facto entry level advertising tier for the worst products and the worst takes. Everything on the platform is an ad impression.
matsemann
Yup, so short-sighted. Probably boosted numbers when lots of trolls bought premium to be noticed (where their obnoxious replies normally would land in the bottom with no views), but in the end I got so tired of the hostile environment that I just stopped using it.
sschueller
Everyone's x feed is FD. I don't not follow Elon yet his crap posts are littering the app when I open it. It's turned into his personal bullhorn of miss information and rage bating.
electrondood
He's either been radicalized by his own platform, or he's intentionally being provocative to drive engagement, to drive ad revenue. It's disgusting.
The hypocrisy is absurd. Like telling everyone to go fuck themselves, and then hours later, pleading for users to post more positive content... or making a big show of being worried about using AI untruthfully, and then repeatedly posting AI-generating images smearing people he doesn't like. Pretending like no one had "free speech" until he bought the platform, and then selectively banning vocal dissent he doesn't like.
He's a child. Such a waste.
wsintra2022
He may also have just had an in house AI running his socials for the last few years. Surprising not much discussion around that as a possibility.
XorNot
Why suggest AI when simply paying a social media manager for his twitter account would be a normal thing to have done at his level of wealth?
Which is something he has obviously done with his grind-centric videogame accounts and actual livestreams of him not knowing how to play on those accounts?
tombert
Even if that's true, he's still cosigning the account isn't he? He's putting his name on it, it's not weird for people to assume that these are his viewpoints and/or opinions, no matter how unhinged.
tbihl
FWIW, I can't recall seeing Elon except as retweets. The downsides are the bots, the exodus, and the stupid renaming, but it's been almost entirely improvement to me.
I was pretty tired of Mastodon and thus happy to return when Elon bought it.
ETA: I use a preferred subset of my follows for my main feed, a few subject-delineated lists for particular research, and occasionally my "following" feed to branch out.
BugsJustFindMe
> FWIW, I can't recall seeing Elon except as retweets.
I had to block his account to not see one of his posts at the top of my screen every time I logged in. I was a casual user and didn't follow anyone (only started logging in when it was impossible to see anything otherwise), so I had what could be called the "default" experience.
anarazel
I got Elon tweets in my notifications, despite having him blocked. That was the last straw for me.
daghamm
You honestly belive Musk does not boost certain tweets?
Do you remember this story??
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/report-musk-had-...
egeozcan
It's crazy how blatant it is. If you block him and his promoted bunch, you still get occasional fascist/racist bait on the feed. Following feed is also mostly dead because many people I followed left.
msravi
I use X to mostly follow politics and some math/physics, and the political feed in the "For you" tab is remarkably balanced. I actually maintain two separate lists called "Left" and "Right" that I slot accounts into, and I just go to each list's feed to see what each side is saying about something. The "For you" tab has a mix, and overall has been pretty well balanced.
timeon
I know that Twitter is US site but I still find it strange when people talk about balanced political views and talk only about 2-sides. Yes it is one more than in China but still...
msravi
I'm not from the US, but from India, and it's the same here. "Left" and "Right" may be misnomers, but there are effectively two main blocks at the national level, and supporters of each block get slotted into one of the two. Of course there are disagreements between members within each of the two blocks, but ultimately all the fine distinctions boil down to which of these two a voter would choose!
StefanBatory
Yeah, same for Poland.
You're either PiS/Konfederacja supporter, or PO/Left/P2050 parties. There is no chance of any other coalition, and everyone knows this.
Choice is - do you want to dismantle democracy, or would you rather not. Sigh.
null
threeseed
It really is unique to everyone and who they follow.
But when the US election came around all of our business For You feeds switched to political, far-right content even though we are not in the US nor political. And the fact that the EU is investigating X for its algorithm changes means at least some other people have had the same experience.
TacticalCoder
[dead]
lnrd
That's not balanced though. Only a small subset of people decides to actively talk about politics on social media. So most likely you see just the opinions of radicalized cronically online left-wing people and the opinions of radicalized cronically online right-wing people. None of those represent the real world and their arguments are almost always a repetition of the same bad-faith take on the current issue, just to get easy engagement from their community. It's not really a representative (or healthy) window to society.
That's the trap of politics on social media, they give you the illusion that you get a pulse of what society is thinking, when you actually just see a very vocal minority repeating the same arguments over and over again.
naiv
Same. I follow more 'right' and see also balanced left.
Thus I was wondering why people were always talking about hate and racism on x.
Bluesky is a different story, there I exclusively see left wing content. Full of hate.
liontwist
When you’re used to hearing one thing….
bokoharambe
[flagged]
TacticalCoder
[dead]
haunter
I just don’t get why don’t people use the “following” tab. You only see people you follow, if they post things you don’t like unfollow them that’s all.
that_guy_iain
Because Twitter switches you a lot and even then you also have all the random notifications from people you don't follow.
Oarch
Old twitter switched you all the time. I even used a plugin to switch me back.
I've never knew been switched since the acquisition.
agos
during the old twitter times you could use a third party client, that was the trick
blitzar
Old twitter for me was tweetdeck - pure time based posts of followed & lists.
That experience no longer exists.
haunter
>Because Twitter switches you a lot
What does that mean? Twiter doesn’t switch my tabs on its own, neither on desktop or mobile.
>and even then you also have all the random notifications from people you don't follow.
I only get notifications from people I don’t follow if someone likes my tweets or they reply
that_guy_iain
I feel like you don't use Twitter that much then. Because they added the whole notifications about new posts feature a while back and it's not based on who you follow and I believe famously it's like that so Musk gets more views. And I feel like my tabs get changed on a somewhat frequent basis but I've stopped using it to really keep track.
jp57
If I were to use this credulously, I'd be committing the same error as believing everything in my X feed.
I have no idea who made this tool or what their biases are, why would I believe their analysis any more than I'd believe a stranger on X? I can't find any information on who is behind this.
The different axes that they uses for analysis (health, political balance, "vibe', etc) are all inherently subjective. How are they measured?
null
refulgentis
I very much doubt it even works or tries to, even though a lot of barriers have been lifted recently (I'm handwaving at https://xkcd.com/1425/ x the input being just a video x output sold as rigorous deep analysis)
I have a stroooong feeling this is just a wrapper around Gemini, as it has video input.
peanut-walrus
Screen recording and processing because it's easier than just scraping now is wild.
BugsJustFindMe
This way you don't need to trust them with access to your phone.
dymk
The other option is to give a random website your Twitter username and password or install a browser extension.
natdude
haha IKR!
yomismoaqui
I made was tired of reading political crap from some accounts I follow and created a Chrome extension to filter them out.
Just define topics you don't want to read about and the AI filter will hide them from your feed.
Technically is just passing the text to Gemini Flash 1.5 with a simple prompt to detect if the tweet is from a forbidden topic.
You can try it here: https://twitter.cercaapp.com
sebmellen
You saved me from having to make this. Thank you!
Is the source available? Can this be ported to FireFox?
yomismoaqui
No source available but the JS code for the extension should be readable on your extensions dir. I'm using MutationObserver to check for tweets appearing and then extract their texts and send them to the server.
Server side code is just some Go to handle calls to Gemini Flash, auth, tracking quota usage...
To be honest even the prompt used is quite simple, the fun part has been optimizing it using promptfoo for running the evals.
KTibow
There's a surprising number of extensions like this (see https://github.com/thomasj02/AiFilter, https://unbaited.danielpetho.com/) although it seems most are Chrome-exclusive
natdude
Oh cool - its like anti-virus for your brain. AI firewall! haha
eddieh
Yes. Negatively.
Not sure analysis is needed. Algorithmic feeds are fucked and impact you negatively. All of them!
You have no real control over what you see, they're ephemeral, nobody has a shared experience, and that's _only a few_ things that are fucked.
natdude
UPDATE:: The uploading function was not working for a large number of users - this has now been fixed! (it was an issue with the callback URL not being set in the .env which meant file upload progress wasn't returned to the client).
If you have attempted to use this previously without success, please retry - it should work fine now :)
null
PixelForg
It says that my feed is pretty fucked, but I only follow pixel and anime artists :) I unfollow anyone that posts anything other than art repeatedly, I guess it is an echo chamber of some sorts.
natdude
Oh interesting - thanks for the upload. Ahh - its the N/A political diversity being seen as 'low' when a null should just have no impact on score.
Thanks! Will work on a fix
__rito__
Happened for my feed as well. It had ZERO political content but showed me a fully red bar for lacking political diversity. It showed N/A%.
fbcpck
Similar results here (the vibes)! Explains why I it's hard for me to relate with the ongoing twitter / bluesky discussions
natdude
Wow nice! That's literally the best result I've seen yet!
natdude
Oh interesting - thanks for the upload
skywhopper
Not sure why anyone sane keeps using X. Bluesky has reached critical mass at this point and has proven its reliability under pressure, and has far better tools for managing your feed.
bdangubic
people are sheep :) they will believe that X was bought to usher a new are of “freedom of speech” so if most X users believe this (they do) why would they ever leave? going to bluesky is like leaving your own parents to go to foster parents
My X feed is FUBAR.
My feed was tech-only. Real people publishing real stuff.
Last year X started occasionally showing some random content like Reddit, I'd mark them as "not interesting" and move on.
Since last month there's no tech content by tech people, there's exclusively junk worse than on Reddit's homepage. No amount of "not interesting" will fix it. Oh, there's porn now too.
I stopped opening X altogether.