For news, algorithmic social networks are a failed experiment

In 2016, when Twitter replaced its purely chronological timeline with one that used an algorithm to determine what users saw, I declared it to be a minor whoop at most—a 2.35 on a scale of 1 to 10. Maybe I was too serene about the change, which theoretically helped people see worthwhile tweets that they might otherwise have missed. But I don’t blame myself for failing to anticipate that Elon Musk would someday buy the service and twiddle its algorithmic knobs to suit his purposes, from boosting his own hate- and hoax-laden tweets to throttling ones that include links to unimportant stuff such as, you know, news.

Today, if you find your Twitter default feed to be filled with awfulness, there’s an easy explanation: It may still be called “For You,” but it’s really For Elon.

Over on Meta’s Threads, the experience is so Twitter-esque that its default feed is also an algorithmically arranged view called For You. Instead of toxicity being the problem, however, it’s placidity.

Launched in the wake of Musk’s Twitter takeover, Threads got huge fast by letting users sign in with their existing Instagram accounts. It also seemed to aim for an atmosphere that was akin to Instagram at its best—calming, convivial, and decidedly uncontroversial. Head honcho Adam Mosseri was frank about the service’s desire to de-emphasize news and politics, seeing them as baggage for a new social network to avoid rather than selling points to embrace.

But while Threads has racked up an impressive 275 million monthly users, the hottest refuge for Twitter defectors is now Bluesky. At the end of October, the social-networking startup—a spin-off of Jack Dorsey-era Twitter—had about 13 million members. Since the U.S. presidential election, it’s surged past 24 million users, welcoming throngs of newbies who do like to talk about current events, just not on a social network operated by Donald Trump’s new best friend.

Meanwhile, election night revealed the downside of Threads’s willfully news-adverse algorithm. It chose to display stale items posted before polls closed and it was clear Trump had won, including some posts that were irrelevant at best and (if you were rooting for Kamala Harris) possibly heartbreaking at worst.

Like all tech giants, Meta does its best work when it faces actual competition. In recent weeks, Threads has gotten a sudden infusion of new features, many of which seem inspired by Bluesky’s sudden boom. It’s also tweaked its algorithm to show more posts from people you’re following rather than random interlopers you aren’t, which should theoretically improve relevance all by itself.

At least for me, though, these renovations haven’t resulted in a noticeably timelier “For You” feed on Threads. Mine still has a whiff of day-old newspaper to it: On Tuesday morning, for example, it was devoid of anything related to the political drama in South Korea.

Meta might yet teach its AI to more consistently show the right posts at the right time. Still, there’s a bigger lesson it could learn from Bluesky, though it might be an uncomfortable one for a tech giant to confront. It’s that introducing algorithms into a social feed may cause more problems than it solves—at least if timeliness matters, as it does with any service that aspires to scoop up disaffected Twitter users.

For a modern social network, Bluesky stays out of your way to a shocking degree. (So does Mastodon; I’m a fan, but it seems to be more of an acquired taste.) Bluesky’s primary view is “Following”—the most recent posts from the people you choose to follow, just as in the golden age of Twitter. (Present-day Twitter and Threads have equivalent views, but not as their defaults.) Starter Packs, which might be Bluesky’s defining feature, let anyone curate a shareable list of users. You can follow everyone in one with a single click, or pick and choose, but either way, you decide.

Now, Bluesky does have some algorithmic aspects. The “Discover” tab, which shows posts from people you don’t follow, is a rough equivalent of the “For You” feeds on Twitter and Threads. “Popular With Friends” is exactly what it sounds like. But these views are secondary. They’ll live or die based on whether they provide any value, not because they’re the first thing you see when you open the app. So will any third-party algorithms that anyone constructs using Bluesky’s open architecture.

The power of a reverse-chronological feed of posts from people you select yourself has always been obvious. It makes a social network feel personal, vibrant, and real. That’s why 2016-era Twitter users got freaked out about the prospect of change even before the company imposed an algorithm on the process.

Bluesky confirms the virtue of using algorithms sparingly all over again. Its current growth spurt is heartening evidence that getting back to basics might even be good business. Musk’s Twitter may be beyond repair, but if everyone else in social networking takes notice, we can only benefit. Even as we speak, Threads is reportedly getting ready to introduce its own version of Starter Packs. Bring them on, I say—along with anything else about Bluesky’s delightfully human-centric nature that Meta cares to copy.

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The craft of Craft. If someone asked me to provide three examples of iPad apps that truly show off what a developer can do with Apple’s tablet, the note-taking app Craft would be one of them. (So would Procreate, and I’m not sure about the third one.) The latest version, Craft 3, is out now. It’s a wonderfully feature-rich product whose new features—in domains from task management to fancy formatting—make it a viable alternative to Notion. But Craft’s overall polish and the balletic grace with which it incorporates elements such as drag-and-drop go far beyond Notion’s merely workmanlike experience. The Verge’s David Pierce has a full review; one of his favorite new features—a quick-add button that lets you instantly start typing away and even leave text pinned to the bottom of the screen until you decide what to do with it—isn’t yet available on the iPad. But Craft’s developer tells me it’s on the way. (The app is also available for iOS, MacOS, and Windows.)

A tech reading list. Speaking of The Verge, I enjoyed this list of the best nonfiction tech books of all time, as chosen by its staffers—not because its picks match mine, but because they’re almost completely different, including many tomes I haven’t read (yet). Come back to this newsletter next week, and I’ll tell you about some of my favorites.

You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Wednesday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters.

For news, algorithmic social networks are a failed experiment

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