I want to talk a little about attention-seeking behaviors on social networks like Twitter.
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Before becoming the owner, Elon Musk promised to open source Twitter's trending algorithm. Eventually, Musk overpaid for Twitter and made good on that promise. Upon disclosing the algorithm's source code, we learned that the algorithm heavily favors the reply count for choosing which Tweets to boost.
Attention is the currency of social media. Twitter is filled with people seeking attention. The behavior of these people could be described as "attention seeking" or "engagement farming."
What do you do if you are seeking attention and know that the attention algorithm favors the reply count? You try to get as many replies as possible.
One of the common tactics to get a bunch of replies is to ask a dumb question. Such as "If Twitter disappeared tomorrow, what platform would you focus on?". Of course, everyone wants to give their opinion, and they happily jump in to add comments. Those replies help the algorithm show the tweet to more people, some of whom jump in to reply, etc. Creating a positive feedback loop.
When you reply to one of these threads on Twitter, you are feeding the algo and giving the attention-seeker exactly what they want. Most of these attention-seeking people don't care about the replies and won't bother to acknowledge you.
Sure, there is a chance that someone else scrolling the replies sees your message and takes action based on it. I think that chance is pretty slim, especially if you are not paying for a Verified profile. Your contribution of time and energy helps the OP more than it helps you.
It's tough to find the right balance. If the room is crowded with people shouting about which blockchain or which dapp to use, maybe don't feed the beast. If the room is occupied by a handful of insightful, open-minded folks, then go ahead and add your opinion.
I hope this helps. Thanks for helping spread the word about Hive. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
