"X" is in a weird place now. The monetization of engagement absolutely wrecked the feeds from my cursory glance. Just ragebaiting, vague posting, abuse (for a while, every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini" and it would post sexualized images of them). Someone vent viral by posting a picture of Steve Jobs' daughter (?), and people try to replicate that as that now generates money. Replies to posts are just bluechecks being insane, or farm accounts spamming unrelated stuff hoping to get impressions and generate some dollars.
I used to follow only cycling/urban related accounts for the town I live in. Most of them left, so maybe that's making it hard for the algorithm, but my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks, or lots of US issues (I'm not in the US). Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.
> Most of them left, so maybe that's making it hard for the algorithm, but my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks
Working as intended. It has been very clear for a very long time (in “Internet time”) that Mr “Free Speech Absolutist” Musk is only really interested in supporting far right propaganda.
> Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.
Honest question, why would anyone willingly browse X? And why have an account there when it’s not even giving you anything nice?
> every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini"
I get these tweets randomly in my Timeline as well. What I don't understand is why does Twitter think I should know about someone asking Grok to put xxx in Bikini
My guess would be that they amplify tweets involving Grok as a form of advertising. I think they disabled tagging Grok for non paying users, so I guess they do it to advertise its capabilities. And because their user base is so toxic that mostly means amplifying things like that.
This is a command to the Grok bot and used to generate an image based on the post and that specific prompt. After significant outrage they disabled it for non-paying users at least, not sure if they changed more about this later.
If the "algorithm" thinks that I want to see <command to the Grok bot> from random accounts so jams lots of them into my feed then it is a pretty dumb algorithm
Maybe X thinks X users might be unaware of the ability to pay money to see other random X users naked, so it's basically an advert for non-consensual sexual image generation.
I've been saying that about a lot of algorithms for a while now, but I think the issue is more that they're smart algorithms optimized for the wrong thing
I stopped using all of that style of social media, mainly for this reason. First it was Facebook a couple decades ago. I figured I can deal with only hearing from my family once in a while, in real life and emails, and blissfully missing all those photos of the food they're about to eat.
Social media has just gotten worse and worse since Facebook, to the point I can't even bother with Mastodon anymore (and I don't. I gave that up a few months back).
The main thing I like here - I get the info I was hoping to see in the first place, but without all the baggage. Even when that baggage seeps in, it is (very) short term. The ycombinator news mods are exceptional.
This site isn't all that "Social" per se, but the threads generally stay on topic, and aren't constantly trying to sell you something nobody ever asked for.
> my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks, or lots of US issues (I'm not in the US)
> (for a while, every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini")
This is now the purpose of the site: racism and sexism. There was once a time when it would have been the place to follow the Hungarian election, now I have to make to with a few people on bluesky.
My 'For you' feed is almost exclusively Photography, science and tech news.
I believe it strongly depends on what you interact with.
At some point I also had a lot of US news in my feed, but once I stopped opening those posts and instead used the 'Not interested in this post' button or muted the author, they disappeared.
Probably following other accounts or liking photography posts also helped.
Meh, this borders on victim blaming. You can't deny they've done something to turn it the last few years. And there is no one of my interest left to follow, they've all jumped ship. I checked the "following" tab now, and there is nothing of interest there, they've all left.
They're not on my For You feed, but anytime I watch a video on Twitter and it automatically jumps to a next video, it's always something that would never be on my feed. These days, it's usually bodycam footage from the United States (which I don't live in).
I created an account in X yesterday because I'm trying to get more involved into building in public and the social aspect of development and I was shocked to see nowadays you can pay for X premium where the more you pay, the more interactions you get to your tweets.
At the end I just deleted it and created an account into Bluesky instead.
It's probably not "the more you pay the more interactions you get", but there definitely is "if you pay, you get more interactions". Blue checks are boosted in top of replies etc., and is ironically often the exact people you don't want to see.
When X premium came out they said if I paid my tweets would be boosted more. I didn't pay, and my account with a few hundred followers went from 100ish views per average tweet to 10.
If you think you don't need to pay for engagement on there I can only assume you're paying for it and unaware of the difference.
You're missing the point. There's a difference between buying an ad, something that's clearly marked as an ad and inserted as an ad, vs having your normal posts appear organic but still getting put in front of more people.
Or, it's mainly the opposite. If you don't pay, you no longer get the organic, not even from your own followers.
Same here. Premium account, years old, barely post, banned with no explanation.
What’s worse: no way to notify followers or export data after a ban.
Lesson here: Never outsource your identity or communication to a platform you don’t control, treat them as disposable channels, that might disappear any day.
Posting here since I am curious if any friends on HN have faced the same AI based banning. I have had a Twitter account since like 2008 and they just did this- like folks on reddit are reporting appeals just get robo-rejected. Is there any way to reach a human at X? I have some SWEs and SREs in my linkedin account as second and third person contacts but reaching out there just feels wrong. Putting AI in charge of Auto banning 10+ year old paying accounts is insane. There is another thread on this same issue here https://www.reddit.com/r/twitterhelp/comments/1sfn3l4/has_an...
Automated decision making processing, such as banning, must be avoided under the GDPR. Those facing this issue should throw a complaint at their DPA. I'm sure Musk would love another series of fines in the EU.
Yeah I know- I have accounts on bluesky and mastodon as well- but I try not to isolate myself to one network, there are plenty of non-usa accounts that were only on X who I followed for technology and art/photography stuff. shikata ga nai I guess.
As far as I know reddit does the same thing. If you don’t follow normal human patterns you will quickly get banned. I read some guy’s report where he got banned 8 times detailing each behaviour and indeed it was nothing crazy.
I'm not touching seedy X any more - if there's someone linking to it the 'toXcancel' extension shows me the content while shielding me from Musk's actual sht pit.
Most social media has been has been utterly untenable forever, but Twitter and Discord are the most troublesome in my experience. It's so hard to create and use a new account on those sites without the rigmarole of captcha (due to suspicious activity) -> banned (due to suspicious activity) -> captcha (due to suspicious activity) -> verify email (due to suspicious activity) -> banned (due to suspicious activity) -> verify phone number (due to suspicious activity). Then, want to follow someone, or join a guild? Hmm.. your account reputation is too low. Try again in a week?
I don't know how people do it. I can only figure it's my fault for running Linux or Firefox or not Signing in with Google™, upsetting the data harvesting overlords.
Back when they still had staffed support, and were called twitter, I'd have to spend a week or more back and forth with them when I inevitably hit the demand for a phone number. Most of the time the account got unlocked.
This was usually a few weeks/months after they were in the news for selling people's phone numbers.
Discord annoys me with this. I tried to ask a question about GrapheneOS on reddit and they auto deleted it and said we use discord now. I don't have discord so I signed up and can't post until I verify my email. So I verified a burner and don't have permission to post in that channel. A couple of days later I did, but the motivation had passed.
It's so strange to put your interactions behind a walled garden that demands verification, especially for something like GOS. But even then, making people wait a day or so without telling them is such an antipattern
I needed to create a Facebook account to verify some Facebook posting functionality worked as we wanted it to. Ok, easy. Tried using my work email. No, not allowed. Hmm, try creating a new email. Nope. Tried to create an account on my personal device with a personal email. Nuh-uh.
I've never seen a service so opposed to me using it. There's no option for dev accounts either.
I've also been suspended for breaking their terms and services, even though I haven't done anything wrong. It was probably my VPN. Luckily, my account got unsuspended, but I ain't using that platform anymore
The classic "if it disagrees with me, it's a far-right neo-Nazi" rhetoric. Sadly thiss is becoming depressingly common in certain corners of tech discourse.
X has the best AI news, the best virality for good content and sure - it has a lot of shit, but community notes and curated feeds keep the noise low.
It still has the best AI news because users are not quitting it. Even the most fervent left leaning folks I know cannot quit it. Too bad it fell into the wrong hands and became a shell of its former self
Its not just in tech circles. It really started around 2020 with C. "Everyone needs to agree this time" extremely backfired and ruined our ability to discuss things.
Not really. George Orwell has noted this phenomenon in his 1946 book "Politics and the English Language". He attributes it to a knock-on effect of wartime propaganda.
This. No other platforms has a system akin to CN's. For me personally, I could never stand using any platform that is aggressively tone policed towards whatever official truth. Not Truth Social, not BlueSky.
Other places are like playgrounds, X is where the adults go to talk.
Not all platforms are agressive about the tone-policing and "real life" is not a platform. AFAIK, we still don't live in a world where the moneyed class get to set the rules about who is allowed to exist in "real life".
Also: scale and context matters. Someone telling you to shut up on a movie theater is not out of place, but whoever was next to you in the theater does not get to decide what you say in a bar or a PTA meetiing.
This hyperbole does more to turn people away from Bluesky and other sites more than X to be honest. There are clearly lots of politically moderate, wholesome "politically inert," and international X users. The people who are vocal about having left seem more extreme and less tolerant to me.
Perhaps for related reasons, I've also recently heard Elon Musk being described as a "literal Nazi" a lot, and I'm sure that kind of wild rhetoric has a similar backfire effect with anyone who has any familiarity with him.
Maybe describing him as a "literal Nazi" is a bit exaggerated (although there was that thing with the Nazi salute last year), but you only have to remember what he did at DOGE (https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/04/world/lancet-usaid-global...) and maybe take a look at what he posts (and reposts) on X to realize that it's not too far from the truth...
Well said. This is how I feel about Bluesky. I've read so many exaggregations from bsky users that I would definitely not want to join that sort of echo chamber. Better leave the extremists alone.
You will never find historical footage of a nazi saluting at an angle to the body like that. It just looks like footage of Hitler because they both have very jerky, exaggerated movements.
And that's probably because they're both neurodivergent men who had abusive fathers, but that's not typically what people dislike Nazis for.
Are you proud of this comment? Is this the person you wanted to be when you were a kid? Disputing whether a Nazi salute was actually a Nazi salute because the executor of the Nazi salute doesn’t have the skill to execute it correctly?
Yes, let's get the protractors out to find out if the man who's turned Twitter into a far right cesspool, and has served in a far right government, and constantly tweets far right things, may just have far right sympathies. /s
Ceasing to believe what your own eyes and ears are telling you, in as far as those things may challenge your political beliefs, is generally a road that leads nowhere good.
Well my own eyes and ears are telling me that it's clearly not a nazi salute so idk what you want from me. I take this allegation as seriously as I took that 4chan campaign to find pictures of Taylor swift with her hand in a similar position and declare her their "Aryan goddess".
> I've also recently heard Elon Musk being described as a "literal Nazi" a lot
The chatbot run by his company has called itself 'MechaHitler' multiple times, and Musk himself did what is widely regarded as a Nazi salute during Trump's second inauguration.
I guess to expand on my earlier post, it's generally a good thing that these kinds of absurd allegations are counterproductive and generally not convincing, because if they were more readily believable they would be quite irresponsible. Real violence has occurred because of beliefs (and posts) like this.
I used to follow only cycling/urban related accounts for the town I live in. Most of them left, so maybe that's making it hard for the algorithm, but my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks, or lots of US issues (I'm not in the US). Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.
Working as intended. It has been very clear for a very long time (in “Internet time”) that Mr “Free Speech Absolutist” Musk is only really interested in supporting far right propaganda.
> Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.
Honest question, why would anyone willingly browse X? And why have an account there when it’s not even giving you anything nice?
I get these tweets randomly in my Timeline as well. What I don't understand is why does Twitter think I should know about someone asking Grok to put xxx in Bikini
Social media has just gotten worse and worse since Facebook, to the point I can't even bother with Mastodon anymore (and I don't. I gave that up a few months back).
The main thing I like here - I get the info I was hoping to see in the first place, but without all the baggage. Even when that baggage seeps in, it is (very) short term. The ycombinator news mods are exceptional.
This site isn't all that "Social" per se, but the threads generally stay on topic, and aren't constantly trying to sell you something nobody ever asked for.
AI is not the fakest thing in social media.
> (for a while, every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini")
This is now the purpose of the site: racism and sexism. There was once a time when it would have been the place to follow the Hungarian election, now I have to make to with a few people on bluesky.
I believe it strongly depends on what you interact with.
At some point I also had a lot of US news in my feed, but once I stopped opening those posts and instead used the 'Not interested in this post' button or muted the author, they disappeared.
Probably following other accounts or liking photography posts also helped.
At the end I just deleted it and created an account into Bluesky instead.
As always it’s because it’s never actually about free speech, just freedom of consequences from their own choices and behaviour.
You are confusing X ads for X premium or you are mistaken.
If you think you don't need to pay for engagement on there I can only assume you're paying for it and unaware of the difference.
You're describing advertisment in general. Same with FB. If I throw enough money at a posting ad, I will gain interactions.
Or, it's mainly the opposite. If you don't pay, you no longer get the organic, not even from your own followers.
What’s worse: no way to notify followers or export data after a ban.
Lesson here: Never outsource your identity or communication to a platform you don’t control, treat them as disposable channels, that might disappear any day.
I don't know how people do it. I can only figure it's my fault for running Linux or Firefox or not Signing in with Google™, upsetting the data harvesting overlords.
This was usually a few weeks/months after they were in the news for selling people's phone numbers.
It's so strange to put your interactions behind a walled garden that demands verification, especially for something like GOS. But even then, making people wait a day or so without telling them is such an antipattern
I've never seen a service so opposed to me using it. There's no option for dev accounts either.
Real discussions with friends happen in group chats, without all the crap and noise.
X has the best AI news, the best virality for good content and sure - it has a lot of shit, but community notes and curated feeds keep the noise low.
Other places are like playgrounds, X is where the adults go to talk.
all platforms are tone policed, yes even real life. If you don't notice it, you're either not looking, or you agree with the tone.
Also: scale and context matters. Someone telling you to shut up on a movie theater is not out of place, but whoever was next to you in the theater does not get to decide what you say in a bar or a PTA meetiing.
Perhaps for related reasons, I've also recently heard Elon Musk being described as a "literal Nazi" a lot, and I'm sure that kind of wild rhetoric has a similar backfire effect with anyone who has any familiarity with him.
That's because they are. Not all of them, of course, and not companies, but the general populace absolutely is.
And that's probably because they're both neurodivergent men who had abusive fathers, but that's not typically what people dislike Nazis for.
Ceasing to believe what your own eyes and ears are telling you, in as far as those things may challenge your political beliefs, is generally a road that leads nowhere good.
The chatbot run by his company has called itself 'MechaHitler' multiple times, and Musk himself did what is widely regarded as a Nazi salute during Trump's second inauguration.