On the decline of home timelines in social media

The "home timeline" refers to the page on a social media website (from here known as "app" for brevity) that lists the posts, made by users, which a user has followed (or subscribed, friended or whatever the app calls it). It may also have other names such as "news feed" or have no name at all. It usually appears on the front page, at the root of the domain name on which the app lives.

Ideally, the home timeline on every app is the "digest" of all posts made by every person that you followed. You followed everyone because you wanted to know what they were doing, thinking and/or sharing. So, for the longest time, it displayed the posts by all "friends" in reverse chronological order. Consequently, those who would post more would appear more. Those who posted most recently would appear at the top. Those who didn't post at all would be "missing and presumed dead".

The algorithms

Well, the big shots at each app decided to have algorithms (or processes) created that would "improve" the "relevance" of items on this home timeline. They thought it would make the home timeline "less annoying" if someone were to spam the website. Posts by this spammer would show less frequently or get pushed down the home timeline.

Unfortunately, it would come down to the arbitrary criteria they chose, no matter how "quantitative" and "objective" their algorithms seemed. These arbitrary criteria could then be tweaked to discourage posts with certain content, or worse, from a certain demographic. As a result, some people would find that their occasional posts would get hidden on other people's home timelines.

Unfortunately, this "robo-censorship" (not really censorship, but just a cold filtering by some Boolean binary logic) would occur not necessarily through malice, but often just because of its existence. The very existence of an algorithm (or algorithms) changed what people saw on their home timelines.

The distraction of "For you" and "Following"

So, the decision making teams for many apps eventually decided to have two tabs on home timelines:

• one that displayed a robo-curated "For you" tab
• the other that displayed a so-called chronological "Following" tab

The former one often sucked with content from all walks of life and bots, while the latter seemed more benign. Eventually, some people even found that the latter one would hide posts via the algorithm.

Apps also had the "For you" tab as a default, so many less-exploratory users would stay on the "For you" tab filled with completely distracting content. They would almost no longer see the content made by who they subscribed or followed.

The other distractions

The apps also gradually had more features to distract users from the basic home timeline:

• instant messaging
• group chats
• voice chats (or "spaces")
• "discover new content"

...and so on...

The app would eventually become "multiple apps in one" to the point where the core features of an app such as the home timeline would dwindle in usage.

The nature of people

"Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom of reach!"

Yes, we know that, one way or another. One way for people to curb some person's reach is through the "mute account" feature now available on nearly any "decent" app.

The home timeline further deviates from reality because most people want to continue the semblance of "following" someone, but not want to offend them by "unfollowing", so they mute!

What should happen?

This isn't a post complaining about anything. It merely outlines what has happened to most apps. Aside from "unplugging" altogether, there is a way out of all this for those who want it. What should happen now all depends on whether if users want to

• let the algorithms decide for them what to see
• let themselves decide what to see

For more sensible users, they would avoid the home timeline altogether and focus on selecting a few people (or, better yet, topics) to "really follow". They would "manually" (via some browser bookmarking system) go to their profile pages and digest the content in that fashion.

For everyone else, let them choke on the vomit of the algorithms on the home timelines.