I am an engineer from Brazil working with Deep Learning and NLP. For years, my strategy to avoid social media addiction was simple: I curated a list of researchers and labs in my field, and I only browsed the "Following" tab. I ignore the "For You" tab completely. I treat it like an RSS feed: I want to see what happened in order, and when I reach the post I saw yesterday, I stop.
Some time ago (I think last year?), they split the timeline into two tabs: "For You" and "Following". It was annoying that they removed the old global setting to default to chronological, but I could live with just clicking "Following" every time I opened the app.
But things got much worse last week.
My "Following" feed started feeling weird. Less informative, more controversial, and out of order. Then I noticed that inside the "Following" tab, there is now a dropdown menu to sort by "Popular" vs "Recent".
It seems the default is now "Popular" (algorithmic). Even if I manually switch it to "Recent" to get my chronological order back, it resets on the next access.
They are effectively forcing the algorithm down our throats. I imagine an algorithmic timeline is much better for ad injection and "doomscrolling" engagement because every refresh gives you something new, whereas a chronological feed has a "end" state.
It is super frustrating. I really want to move away from X, but the signal-to-noise ratio for niche technical content is still too high there to just leave.
I just want to vent my frustration.
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