At this point, I'm wondering if someone at Twitter is tweaking some behind-the-scenes values to try to boost engagement, or if I'm just getting caught up in a wave that I haven't experienced before. I suggest this because I either looked at a few tweets about Black Panther 2 or responded to one over the weekend. Since that point, I've had quite a bit of Marvel-related tweets in my timeline. Now, this isn't inherently a bad thing, but a lot of it feels like low-effort opinion fluff pieces ("Best phase four movies!", etc.) rather than anything of substance. As a result, I've grown really frustrated with it cluttering my timeline... especially since the vast majority of it is from people that I am not following.
This reminds me of one of the most frustrating parts of AI in general... they always lack the human touch. It's sort of like the difference between getting directions from a native vs. Google Maps. Google Maps will tell me to take a route that I will look at and say, "The traffic lights along that route are awful. It's 'longer' to go the other way, but you'll likely save minutes." AI can maybe piece together that things get busy at certain times, but it doesn't sit in the traffic to get it. It isn't just mapping, but I find YouTube's algorithm awkward at times too. The thing is... it does serve me videos that I'd like to see, but just not at that moment. At best, I can maybe add it to watch later or use the option to give kudos for the recommendation. If I ignore the video, I may never see it again... even if I'm subscribed to the channel. It's like it doesn't understand that people may sit down and watch YouTube at times with different intentions in mind (e.g., a quick video during lunch).