RFC (repost): Priority of algorithm usage across different (Twitter) features

[twister21]

tl;dr: fewer algorithms for home feed generation, more algorithms for content & author discovery across the core features Topics, Trends, Lists and Search

Introduction

X platforms (including Twitter, a text-focused service) shouldn't serve a “For You” home feed by default that includes any embedding space (e.g., subscribable creators, tweets or videos “based on your likes”) or a large amount of social graph content, apart from likes and reposts if this hasn't been explicitly disabled, because it isn't suited for users who follow a wide thematic variety of content, and algorithms can't outperform human beings in picking whose posts best fit in one's personal feed. Instead, content moderation is done more effectively by following the right and unfollowing the wrong accounts or topics, but the current feed systems don't allow that and need improvement.

Extending curation options and enabling platform interoperability (via shared following lists and histories as well as superfeeds and supersearch) is more reasonable than cloning related platforms, such as YouTube, Substack/Medium, LinkedIn or Discord (https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/60763).

Overview

Introduce new sorting and filter options for (now multiple) following-only home feeds (see Feed restructuring) and provide separate methods to discover follow-worthy accounts and notable posts through better use of a user's

• topic following list, which should be fully viewable via /topics, and individually via /t (human-readable identifiers are more useful than generic (such as snowflake) topic ids for direct URL access), also show non-post data records on the sidebar
• view history, which should be accessible via /history, and pausable, searchable, selectively deletable (individually, multi-selectable and/or by time period) as well as clearable
• recommendations, which should be filterable by source used for generation

as well as

• general data record similarity (such as Twitter's SimClusters system for accounts), filters (such as topics) and sorting
• account summaries
  • highlight all major topics/subtopics an account posts about (with percentage distribution)
  • allow following (account, topics) pairs
  • auto-generate lists (by account type) based on affiliates
  • link connected accounts of other platforms, and show post type statistics
• search
  • semantic search feature
  • quick access for advanced search
  • additional search options (topic: name; Space: title; account: biography, location; video: description)

Data feeds

Feed lists should have Standard sorting & filter options, depending on data record's type (followable|post).
Followables (account|topic|community|list) feeds should have a multi-follow feature.

Post can be, for example:
Twitter: tweet, Space
YouTube: video, short, livestream
Medium/Substack: article
LinkedIn: job

List (public/private) can be, for example:
Post list: YouTube playlist, Medium list, Twitter bookmark folder
Account list: Twitter list

Topics are automatically assigned to data records, e.g. via Twitter's topic-social-proof service.

Feed restructuring
Home

• "For you" should be replaceable by a "Most interacted" tab, serving (unseen and/or Standard filter options respecting) top posts from the account following list
• accordingly, "Following" is renamed to "Latest", or introduced if it doesn't exist yet

Custom topics

• once all content of the home feed has been seen, the (new) custom topics feed should appear
• posts listed either grouped by topic or individually (with topic link) based on sorting preference

Explore
(Twitter's Explore page currently only shows trends, tweets from (five? of) the topics a user follows and unfilterable recommendations)

• should be enhanced or introduced (see below, Explore feed)

This way, users can remove the recommendations from their own timeline and not miss out on highly relevant content without losing the ability to discover novel content. In practice, it can be previewed on a home feed sidebar card titled "Explore more" or "More activity" (instead of "who to follow"), above/below the trends card, if they haven't been hidden.

In addition to each platform's type-specific feeds, there should be a super(home|account|topics|trends) feed as well as a supersearch feature (via x.com). Similar types across platforms should be treated as identical, e.g., Twitter: tweet/reply; Substack: note/comment; YouTube: post/comment.

Explore feed
Should consist of automatically curated content:

• trending tags and the links of the topics they belong to
• popular (or custom sorted) data records grouped by Standard filter options datetime ranges (expandable preview sections)
• recommended data records based on social graph ("followed by one/multiple account(s) you follow") or related to following list, like or view history

These feeds should be seperately viewable (via /trends, /popular, /recommended), and additionally filterable by data record's type.

Trend feed
(the term is used differently, in this context: popular tags based on posts (how Twitter uses it),
alternatively: individual popular posts (how e.g. YouTube uses it), ambiguity should be removed by using the same name for the same feature)

• improve grouping ("Trending with" currently only works in some cases)
• quick switch for regional, personal ("For you") and (custom) topic-filtered trends, perhaps also historical and international trends (requires translation)
• prevent hashtag abuse (incorrectly labeled content) by implementing an additional filter for (trending) hashtag feeds
• add option to preview top post(s) for each trend
• map events to hashtags, show additional information if available

Reply feed

• replies should additionally be (sortable)/filterable/groupable by
  • content density score (factual statements, questions, statistics, external links, graphics)
  • spam score/marked as "probable spam"
  • reactions-only (emojis, punctuation marks, and potentially meme replies)
  • sentiment ([positive/neutral]|negative)
  • context/recurring keywords (replies that refer to the same thing)
• quote posts should be treated as filterable replies
• reply restrictions for accounts (mentioned, following) should be reader-configurable filters instead, and the option to disable replies doesn't make sense

This would greatly improves the experience, and the original "Community Notes" are replies, curated in a meaningful way.

Standard sorting & filter options

sortable by:

• datetime of creation (latest|oldest)
• popularity (top|least relevant): number of
  • post: replies + likes + reposts (= engagement), views (most seen), engagement/views ratio (best)
  • followable: followers
    • account: subscribers, affiliates
    • post list: views
    • topic|community (= members): posts, authors

filterable by (optional):

• datetime range of creation (last 24h|72h|7d|30d|6m|1y|10y; current or selected year; all-time; custom timespan)
• topic(s)
• post: liked, reposted (true|false)
  • tweet: threaded (true|false)
• account: type (personal|organizational|automated); professional category; verified, (inter-)governmental, subscribable, affiliated (true|false)