Discussion

• @razibkhan Razib Khan on x

  everyone on substack noticed that

• @literaryeric Eric Nelson on x

  I keep a spreadsheet of influencers (who might write books) and one tab is “will say literally anything for clicks.” Over the last two years, that tab and the most popular accounts on Twitter have become almost the same list. [image]

• @phl43 Philippe Lemoine on x

  This is so annoying. X is being criticized for deliberately throttling links, but instead of addressing that criticism (because he can't), Bier tries to reverse the accusation by criticizing the NYT for not being creative enough in promoting its content, unlike I guess the dozens…

• @akoustov Alexander Kustov on x

  The dumb craziness of Twitter and the complete self-imposed ideological capture of Bsky in one picture. Neither is good for substantive or academic discussion, but Bsky is especially bad for anything challenging left-wing ideas. And no, folks, NYT is not right-wing. [image]

• @richardhanania Richard Hanania on x

  Excellent point. Rightists love a NYT source when they can cite one as much as anyone. They themselves know the “other side” has higher quality, more credible work.

• @nikitabier Nikita Bier on x

  @NateSilver538 Data isn't accurate. Missing half the network. [image]

• @benryanwriter Benjamin Ryan on x

  Paying for high-quality journalism is good.

• @nikitabier Nikita Bier on x

  @NateSilver538 It's paywalled. If only 0.1% of users can derive value from the content, it will organically rank lower.

• @redsteeze Stephen L. Miller on x

  New York Times couldn't get the initials for NATO right three days ago. “Twitter needs to be artificially boosting the New York Times more” The amount of digging on this here it's kind of impressive.

• @petersavodnik Peter Savodnik on x

  This is the same story you find at every institution that has had its own right-wing insurrection: in response to “progressive” censorship, the new guard blows up the guardrails, leading to an influx of unserious but dangerous people who transform the institution into a joke.

• @catturd2 @catturd2 on x

  😂😂😂cry more Nobody cares about the fake news NYT.

• @alanmcole Alan Cole on x

  Do you know how I know users value NYT/WSJ/Bloomberg? Because the engagement maxxing accounts (I'm not a fan, but they know what works on here) still cite them for credibility. But you have “trained” them to not provide the link because they know that harms their engagement. [ima…

• @nikitabier Nikita Bier on x

  @NateSilver538 Links are not deboosted. We fixed that issue last year.

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 Nate is a huge retard

• @mikeisaac Rat King on x

  i mean look twitter never really drove significant traffic so it's not exactly something to fixate on. Google and Facebook are more important and they basically turned all traffic off over the past few years. but people (media) care about twitter b/c they stare at it daily

• @mikeisaac Rat King on x

  i dont think it's right to say tech writ large hates traditional media, but an enormously influential swath of it does influencers and non-traditional media produce real, valuable stuff. but a lot of it is based on information being dug up by old school reporting. it's symbiotic

• @micsolana Mike Solana on x

  seems true that quality has degraded across the social internet, which is partly a structural issue. but it's also true that huge media brands like the NYT are just really bad at social. when they aren't boosted, they fail. they have the resources, they should adapt.

• @ryanburge Ryan Burge on x

  In April of 2023, I was getting a third of my Substack traffic from Twitter. By August it was 1-2%. A quick Google search reveals that Elons first major algorithm tweak was in the Spring 2023. I saw the impact of that in real time. [image]

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  It's not my data. The source is Cluvio, which is linked to in the article. I'd link to it in this tweet, but ironically, that would kill engagement. And I know that traffic is hard to count. Especially for a private company. But if you have more accurate data, then publish it.

• @kirkegaardemil Emil Kirkegaard on x

  Good post on social media now and then. It's easy to complain but hard to come up with a viable business model. Twitter in its more golden years of less slop and partisanship wasn't making money.

• @jason_koebler Jason Koebler on x

  this is how the vast majority of new subscribers are (or were) obtained, yes

• @micsolana Mike Solana on x

  for example, given we know links are deboosted (this is denied but like, come on lol) why is the NYT posting a link to a paywalled article and calling it a day? yes, links are great... but we are also all free to produce native content. https://x.com/...

• @besttrousers Matt Darling on x

  @AlanMCole @aarmlovi Especially insofar as the worst engagement maxing accounts cite them and then I am unable to find a specific article where the claim originated.

• @kareem_carr Dr Kareem Carr on x

  @NateSilver538 I suspect what's happpening is they fired all their people with social science backgrounds, and therefore no longer have the in-house expertise needed to construct a scalable mathematization of the concept of “high-quality” content.

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  It seems e.g. like lots of people clicking on a link would be an unambiguous signal of engagement. It's *off-platform* engagement, and you guys have the right to deprioritize that. But that's what Facebook did, and it made them literally completely irrelevant to the news convo.

• @asymmetricinfo Megan McArdle on x

  @micsolana It's not that they can't figure out how to go viral on social media, it's that they can't figure out how to do that without cannibalizing their business model. X has every right to deboost links but the result will be lower-quality content because given the low margins…

• @cesifoti César A. Hidalgo on x

  @NateSilver538 The algorithm could definitely use some improvement. It is unbalanced by prioritizing the worse content of popular accounts over the best content of more modest accounts. We have lots of smart people in here that could help at least find a better heuristic for this…

• @jaybaxter Jay Baxter on x

  @NateSilver538 More context for how it used to work (before Nikita launched the new better link UI):

• @richardhanania Richard Hanania on x

  Once again, smarter conservatives simply are unable to comprehend that quality actually matters. They see a chart that is dominated by Eric Daugherty, Gunther, and Catturd, and go “libs all left, that's why there's no intellectual diversity.” What distinguishes these accounts

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  In what sense is it intellectually dishonest, Nikita? The context is clear. My thesis is: I think your algo surfaces too little quality. And I think your excuses in these back-and-forth exchanges have been validating of that. To your credit, it's clear enough you agree with me.

• @richardhanania Richard Hanania on x

  Elon Musk: The best evidence that the X algorithm pushes low quality info is that it gives us Nate Silver tweets. Not that Gunther and Jackson Hinkle dominate the algorithm. How can someone so smart in some areas be this stupid? https://www.richardhanania.com/ ... [image]

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  There's nothing organic about it; it's deliberate choices you and the team are making. And although those choices may have been defensible in the abstract, they're clearly resulting in low-quality content rising to the top. You're a smart dude, you can build a better algo!

• @yimbyland @yimbyland on x

  They don't even try to fix X anymore. They just look at you like this and ask you to stop using it the way it's designed. [image]

• @david_ingram David Ingram on x

  @nikitabier @MikeIsaac There's no one left at X who works on content partnerships? That's surprising if so, because I see people online who say they work on content partnerships at X. I also see X announcing content partnerships with specific publishers.

• @juliangough Julian Gough on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 It's by far the most-subscribed-to paper in the US, and its account's followers are disproportionately likely to be subscribers. Your “people won't be able to read it” argument is completely inapplicable in this case.

• @ryanburge Ryan Burge on x

  When I first started my Substack, it was before Elon changed the algorithm. About 1 in 4 clicks on my posts would come from Twitter. If I post a link this morning to my newest post, 1 in 1500 or 2000 clicks will come from Twitter. They are absolutely still deboosting.

• @soncharm @soncharm on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 hi Nikita quick question, can you help me find the quote-tweet-but-with-the-context button

• @neeratanden Neera Tanden on x

  Elon Musk's X is lower in quality in every way than Twitter was pre Musk takeover. You could get reliable breaking news on this site, learning about situations all around the world. Now misinformation and information are indistinguishable. It's a Musk failure.

• @bretdevereaux @bretdevereaux on x

  The idea that only paywalled links get deprioritized here does not fit my experience. ACOUP is not paywalled at all, but click-through from here basically collapsed post-Musk as the algorithm changed. A part of why I am on here less and bluesky more - it doesn't hide links.

• @nikitabier Nikita Bier on x

  @NateSilver538 Can you stop quote tweeting without the context? It's intellectually dishonest.

• @catturd2 @catturd2 on x

  LOL

• @nateduncannba Nate Duncan on x

  Great points here. One thing I'd add is Twitter really got worse when the default view was no longer just tweets of people you follow in chronological order. Once it got algorithmized as the default view it got worse. I use exclusively lists to avoid this, but avg Joe doesn't.

• @akarlin Anatoly Karlin on x

  There was a strong elite consensus that Hillary would win in 2016. Silver was way more skeptical than the mean in that class! Perhaps even more so @elonmusk himself - who donated to Hillary's campaign. Why would he do that if he thought Trump was going to win? [image]

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  @NateSilver538 It's surfacing you to me right now, which is evidence for your argument

• @richardhanania Richard Hanania on x

  These people are actually happy to be part of a movement where Catturd is their intellectual leader. Why doesn't the New York Times become more like him! Huh, libs? Afraid of open debate?

• @modeledbehavior Adam Ozimek on x

  @NateSilver538 They could publish the algorithms like Elon promised and clear a lot of this up.

• @mattvanswol Matt Van Swol on x

  @NateSilver538 I was going to stay out of this, but I'll jump in here. The only reason I am big on X is because “the media” literally left an entire open lane for me to fill in 2024. After the first initial days of Hurricane Helene, nearly all MSM packed up and left. I continued …

• @ryanradia Ryan Radia on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 About 1 in 12 U.S. households has an NYT digital subscription [image]

• @yacinemtb Kache on x

  >tweet data >data is incorrect >"its not my data! someone else got the data" isn't this like the famous betting guy

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  A (super cute!!) pet photo from Catturd™ gets literally 50x the engagement of a link to incredibly important original reporting from the NYT on Iran. According to your own on-site numbers @nikitabier. Do you consider this to be a desirable outcome? [image]

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  And yes, I have criticisms of pre-Elon Twitter and obviously Bluesky, too. But things tend to get especially broken when you suppress outbound traffic and break links to the rest of the web, as with Twitter now or mid/late-2010s Facebook.

• @timcast Tim Pool on x

  NYT is dying

• @nikitabier Nikita Bier on x

  @David_Ingram @MikeIsaac We don't have a “relationship” with anyone. It's a social media platform, where everyone has an equal opportunity to participate. Elon's opinion on the publication has no impact on their ranking in the algorithm.

• @bing_chris Chris Bing on x

  Something I can't get past is that the rig is so obvious on twitter yet they haven't really had a significant insider event, going to the press or congress or really any oversight body.

• @jaredlholt Jared Holt on x

  can you stop using a core function of this website? it's sketchy

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  The NYT published a link to critical original reporting on Iran 45 minutes ago. A good, fair story. They have 53m followers. The engagement metrics you display say they got 94 likes and 33 retweets out of that. Is that accurate? And if so, shouldn't you work on a better algo? [im…

• @nikitabier Nikita Bier on x

  @MikeIsaac For what it's worth: NYT has not experimented with their captions on posts in 20 years since the launch of Twitter. While the entire world has evolved their posting style to convert people to their newsletters (e.g., threads, etc), NYT still has their social media mana…

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  That isn't really what the tweet you're self-quoting says. It says it's hard to establish the quality signal associated with a link and so each tweet should “stand alone”, and also the platform design makes it hard to engage with such tweets. Maybe fix that? [image]

• @modeledbehavior Adam Ozimek on x

  Nominate Nate to lead the Twitter user guild and negotiate with the platform on our behalf

• @alx @alx on x

  Did you know that @nikitabier and @elonmusk are so powerful, that they made NYT suck at social media on Bluesky and Threads too?🤣 [image]

• @sailaunderscore Saila on x

  All of these accounts have 53mm followers because old Twitter put them on recommended follow lists for new accounts and forced you to follow some minimum amount while setting up your account. Of those 53mm followers, how many are active on X? How many engagements?

• @alanmcole Alan Cole on x

  Dumb. The value of the link is in backing up the claim. The claim can often be backed up from a NYT/WSJ/Bloomberg headline alone. But it's also a signal you're willing to let the many power users who do have subscriptions investigate the story further. Dumb dumb dumb.

• @nkulw Noah Kulwin on x

  When I'm winning an argument

• @haroon @haroon on x

  Cmon @nikitabier you should know better than this. The people who FOLLOW the @nytimes account are far more likely to have a subscription and be able to read past the paywall. Also people can read a certain number of articles for free. The .1% number you are citing is nonsense.

• @catturd2 @catturd2 on x

  “Hey Nate Silver. If you've got a problem with Wiggles and Monkey, you've got a problem with me.” - Pedro [image]

• @crazy_stephen_i @crazy_stephen_i on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 CAN YOU STOP USING MY PRODUCT ACCORDING TO THE WAY ITS DESIGNED IT BREEDS DISHONESTY

• @buccocapital @buccocapital on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 The algorithm destroyed the reach of replies, so why would he respond to you that way? Can't be mad at people responding to the incentives of the system

• @mikeisaac Rat King on x

  even if i werent a journalist who worked at the outlet he's referring to, this is such a reductive way to look at the internet and news if you choke out the sources that produce new information, over time that goes away and the void is filled with crap (pushed by paid accts)

• @katiemiller Katie Miller on x

  Nate has a long history of being intellectually dishonest. [image]

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 Nate is posting bullshit

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  Longer analysis here, with some context about the last decade or so in the media business. https://www.natesilver.net/...

• @raharrisonpa Richard A Harrison on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 I'll never understand the media tweeting articles behind a paywall. Has anyone in the history of X ever clicked to read an article, hit the paywall, and then said “Oh yes, let me subscribe immediately to this media that I'm not subscribed to”? @nikitabi…

• @phl43 Philippe Lemoine on x

  This was such a dishonest post. Bier was pretending that, if tweets containing a link tended to get lower reach, it was because of some UI problem, but to the extent that this problem was real it had always existed and tweets with links only started getting less reach after the

• @david_ingram David Ingram on x

  @nikitabier @MikeIsaac I wonder if there are any reasons why the NYT-X relationship isn't stronger... Oh, that's right https://x.com/...

• @asymmetricinfo Megan McArdle on x

  Rarely happens the first time, but over time, yes, if people keep clicking on links they want to read, and can't because it's paywalled, eventually some number of them decide to subscribe.

• @jonatanpallesen Jonatan Pallesen on x

  Nate Silver literally just made a normal quote tweet. The site features are so badly designed that when the X management interacts with normal use of them, they see this use as dishonest. X could easily design quote posts so that they have two posts in them, giving us more

• @aricohn Ari Cohn on x

  Imagine working for Elon Musk and having the unmitigated chutzpah to lecture anyone else on intellectual dishonesty.

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  @yacineMTB This genius predicted a 70% chance that Hilary would win lmao

• @richardhanania Richard Hanania on x

  The problem with Twitter isn't a lack of “viewpoint diversity.” We have plenty! Nazis and Jackson Hinkle and Tucker have differences between them. The problem is that the new X is dominated by trash. What a bizarre blind spot to not see lack of quality as the problem.

• @tha_muser @tha_muser on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 I would get more value from seeing just a New York Times headline even without a subscription, than from seeing another low effort ragebait take from a MAGA engagement farmer.

• @jamessurowiecki James Surowiecki on x

  @nikitabier @NateSilver538 Come on. How does an account have 53 million followers, post a tweet about the biggest news story of the day, and get only 33 retweets?

• @christopherrufo Christopher F. Rufo on x

  The quality of the X feed will improve if it rewards sharing and discussion of substantive articles, rather than copied-and-pasted short-form video, which, to be fair, will require sacrificing some on-timeline user minutes, in favor of X's long-term value as a public forum.

• @natesilver538 Nate Silver on x

  These are the Twitter/X accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026. I suppose I had some intuition for how bad it was, but jeez, this is what you get when the ecosystem is broken. [image]

• @modeledbehavior Adam Ozimek on x

  This is what @elonmusk said before he bought twitter. Actually doing this would help clarify this debate. [image]

• @noupside Renee DiResta on x

  “Show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome”

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on bluesky

  Nate Silver pens an essay about how social media is dead as a way to build an audience because Twitter is now a right wing cesspool where Catturd gets more engagement than the New York Times.  —  Weird that it never occurs to him that Twitter is the problem and there's more to so…

• r/fivethirtyeight r on reddit

  Social media has become a freak show

• @devahaz Deva Hazarika on x

  Everyone is focusing too much on the rightward lean of X. That's not because big left posters left, it's because the center of gravity here is Elon and content he engages with. But that bias isn't the real problem, it's how many of the biggest posters are pure garbage content.

• @timcast Tim Pool on x

  Nate Silver enjoying his first time on the internet apparently

• @davidu David Ulevitch on x

  Some of the recipes are okay, and wordle is cool, but their Middle East coverage is an absolute dumpster fire. Maybe @x knows more than Nate.

• @paulnovosad Paul Novosad on x

  it is just the algorithm, but it does show clearly the algorithm is designed to reward friends and punish enemies like the legacy media. 53m followers, obviously people want nyt in their feed.

• @jason_kint Jason Kint on x

  Welcome to this discussion, Nate. You could do a lot of good breaking down the velocity and reach suppression. Note, your inclusion of a handle in your post should also result in less visibility for your own post. Intentional design changes post-Elon.

• @ddiamond Dan Diamond on x

  X can still be useful during breaking news. But the changes to the algorithm, the throttling of links, the sale of blue checkmarks have all made it much less valuable and cluttered with bad info. 1K+ retweets and 2M+ views on a claim that's easily debunked.

• @jason_kint Jason Kint on x

  This is all bad, if it's not filtered beyond engagement. Yes, a whole lot of toxic sludge surfaces from those big red bubbles in the middle but many of those smaller bubbles both red and blue spend their time focused on velocity and reach over accuracy.

• @zerohedge @zerohedge on x

  Wait till you see what engagement the Economist, WaPo, Time and others who bought “millions of followers” get

• @kasparov63 Garry Kasparov on x

  MAGA & conspiracy crap. The monster is a reflection of its creator, or, in this case, its buyer and owner. I hope no one was so foolish as to think Musk bought Twitter for any reason other than to make it over in his image and pursue his political and commercial goals.

• @blueboxdave David Marcus on x

  I don't think it's the front page, we still compose that, X reacts to it. But it was the water cooler, or maybe the watering hole where all the animals of the media agreed to meet in peace. It's not that anymore.

• @christopherrufo Christopher F. Rufo on x

  This is correct. Twitter's long-term value is the perception, and, ultimately, the reality, that this is the front page of the news writ large. It should be the place where writers, editors, producers, bookers, policymakers, and artists *have to be* to remain in the discourse.

• @stefanfschubert Stefan Schubert on x

  This is a great point. Revealed preferences show that people trust MSM more than much of the discourse suggests. There's a reason people don't use “per catturd” in the same way.

• @notjessewalker Jesse Walker on x

  “Portal to the rest of the Internet” is key. For years, this site was the front page of a morning paper whose articles were spread all over the web. That isn't *gone*, but management now tries to suppress it & replace it with..."Gunther Eagleman"? “Wall Street Apes”? Come on.