Twitter will charge users to be able to vote in polls

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1640502698549075972

by partiallypro • 3 years ago

35 16 3 years ago

TillE• 3 years ago

The only semi-serious use of Twitter polls I've ever seen is stuff like "which game should I stream next". It's very obviously not a representative sampling of anything except your most engaged followers.

I'm sure other services exist, but it's annoying to do this when Strawpoll just shut down last year.

Also I check out the For You tab from time to time, and the only "bots" I've ever seen are the ones which post cute animal pictures.

capableweb• 3 years ago

The only semi-serious use of Twitter polls I've ever seen is stuff like "which game should I stream next". It's very obviously not a representative sampling of anything except your most engaged followers.

Unless you manage to achieve global representation, most polls work by taking a sample from a specific population. In this case, it usually involves a segment of your followers or, occasionally, a broader Twitter audience. However, it clearly does not include people who refrain from participating in random Twitter polls.

The polling conducted by your online newspaper represents a portion of their readers. When they perform on-the-ground reporting, the sample consists of people present at the actual physical location, and so on.

This is the reason we aggregate multiple polls to obtain global numbers because individual polls inevitably have a limited audience, one way or another.

oneeyedpigeon3• 3 years ago

Here in the UK, our news services literally report on Twitter polls as if they were incredibly meaningful. Now our news is going to be even more biased.

ewoodrich• 3 years ago

Leading with Twitter polls seems to understate the rest of his tweet:

"Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.

The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle."

AHOHA• 3 years ago

Will that really stop it!? Don’t think so, I remember I did some analysis years ago and bots don’t behave that way, there’s usually a “trusted” or verified account that propagates the bots and use them to spread their info, so you would still get those recommended tweets by “verified” accounts, and these tweets are bumped by bots for example.

fortyseven• 3 years ago

Putin is pleased.

anonymousab2• 3 years ago

I guess he's still really, really mad about how all his own polls went.

flockonus4• 3 years ago

Classic malignant narcissistic, the results must be manufactured against him, it can't just be the average response to his actions.

flockonus4• 3 years ago

Willing to put money to a prediction:

1. This decision will be reverted within 3 months after goes live, as they see engagement, therefore ad revenue will fall flat

2. Twitter is gone from lack of revenue / gets re-sold / becomes generic news site / etc.

The average twitterian won't effectively curate their own timeline, either can't or grew too depends of the algo, to make the Follow tab work sufficiently well.

oneeyedpigeon3• 3 years ago

The average twitterian won't effectively curate their own timeline

Is it even possible to do that? I was under the impression that 'the timeline' (I assume you mean the "For You" feed) was an auto-generated feed that I have no control over.

flockonus4• 3 years ago

I only figured their crappy new UI after a friend pointed out, turns out there is a "Following" tab-thing to the right side on the header, those are the chronological tweets of people you actually follow.

anonymousab2• 3 years ago

It still respects block lists and mutes, as far as I can tell.

Though that may change as some twitter folks have mentioned how much of a burden that block lists supposedly place on the site.

LinuxBender• 3 years ago

I would expect that people just link to 3rd party polls.

rsynnott• 3 years ago

Burying the lede a bit. Musk is literally the only person in the world who cares about Twitter polls, but the algorithmic feed will also be tithe-payers only. I can only imagine how comically bad it will be.

Twitter will charge users to be able to vote in polls

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