38 Comments
author

I've just never had any reason to switch. Google integration is useful in various ways, really like the Galaxy series cameras. Had an iPhone for work as a second phone at a couple of points and didn't quite fall in love. I *am* a PC to MacBook convert FWIW (the Fake Nate tweeting from my hacked account was right about that lol). But also don't mind diversifying technology providers a bit.

Expand full comment

No one cares, by the way this was the most boring article I've read. -"Oh Twitter thinks I care about a football call because I watched a video about it"

Expand full comment

My perspective has been exactly the same except, even though I own and like my iPad, my exposure to MacBooks has left me cold.

Expand full comment

They almost got me with the 'free fries.' Thanks, Dom.

Seriously though, there ought to be a law or something where if your company is of a certain size or importance, then a customer has to be able to talk to a human being at some point. And when did we opt in to all the voice command bs when you're on the line? I much preferred pressing a keypad to barking into the phone like an imbecile. "Urinary Incontinence!" "Urinary Incontinence!" I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Expand full comment
Oct 22, 2023·edited Oct 22, 2023Liked by Nate Silver

The man, the myth, the legend, the Android user? A real blow to my conception of Nate Silver. No wonder he's on the outs with the elite class, he turns all the group texts green!

Expand full comment
Oct 22, 2023Liked by Nate Silver

This is the most hilarious thing I've read all day

Expand full comment

Exactly the same thing happened to me last week. The fact it created a new account for me ensures that my email address is connected to that new fake account so I cannot use it to retrieve my old account. I barely used Twitter in last ten years, and still had about 30K followers left. I don't really care, but I want people to know that if @BoraZ tweets anything, it wasn't me.

Expand full comment

I'll follow him, if I can retrieve my old beloved @No_such_user, and let you know

Expand full comment
Oct 22, 2023Liked by Nate Silver

Was your two-factor authentication SMS text, an Authenticator app, a hardware token, ...? I’ve read that SMS has some vulnerabilities.

Expand full comment
author

Yeah SMS text and have heard similar.

Expand full comment
Oct 22, 2023Liked by Nate Silver

As a Minnesota grad, I must be very spicy #online to say that a punt coverage team is now, more than ever, keyed into not clobbering a guy after he signals for a fair catch.

Even if that signal is weak or wonky (one might even say, the Signal is not very high relative to the Noise).

Expand full comment
Oct 22, 2023Liked by Nate Silver

Cannot believe you’re an android guy

Expand full comment

This might be because you followed only Elon. Sounds a lot like his posts.

Try a control account where you follow only Nate Silver. Maybe it'll be decent.

Expand full comment

Your Twitter getting hacked gave us this gem so for that I am grateful, ha.

Expand full comment

As a 26-year-old male who is only mostly heterosexual, I can still say that our brains are not pleasant places to be trapped. Here’s to your speedy recovery, friend.

Expand full comment

Hah, that... sure is something. I haven't been back to Twitter in a month or two -- Mastodon is fulfilling my modest social media urges nicely, and most people I was following have abandoned the X boat -- but I'm almost tempted now, just to see.

Thanks for the Sunday laugh. "Discernibly trapped in the brain of a 26-year-old heterosexual male" indeed. :)

Expand full comment

I'm curious to hear what your feed is like if you only follow yourself (i.e., NateSilver538).

Expand full comment

They call it the explore/exploit tradeoff in reinforcement learning: how much to rely on things you know the user likes vs test out new things the user may like.

I think social media feed algorithms are all way, way, way too skewed toward exploit. It gets the vaguest idea that you like something and then off it goes, forever and ever, amen. If this is actually engagement-maximizing it's by addicting people to things they don't really like and is generally extremely antisocial

Expand full comment

Twitter is not the only place that seems to have a right-wing conspiratorial bent. YouTube shorts also really likes to throw those at me(despite my best efforts), and did so even more when I first started using it. I wonder if there’s something to mine about infinitely scrolling algorithms and their propensity to highlight conspiracy theories.

Expand full comment

Probably drives engagement. If you like the conspiracy, you are inclined to follow it more, if you dislike the conspiracy, you are inclined to anger-comment retorts. Both count as views and time-on-app.

Expand full comment

The problem with shorts is they play as you scroll past them, giving engagement.

I'm right-wing instead of left but I don't watch any political content on youtube, but nonetheless I occasionally get the opposite issue and start getting political left stuff. If I'm careful to just block creator or do the "I don't want to see this" option (instead of down voting) it usually goes away.

Expand full comment

I'm probably going to sound ridiculous saying this, but having used Twitter multiple hours a day for the past several years, I'm only now finding out that you can toggle between algo feed and chronological feed. I'll blame it on my use of the browser version.

Expand full comment