Really interesting. For me this confirms a lot of what I've been banging on about for years. Algorithms do not see sentiment - they only see popularity. When you angrily quote-tweet a political controversialist, you're doing real-world marketing for them.

https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1451298356538576916

The political right has historically weaponized simple answers regardless of truth. By coincidence this is exactly the behaviour algorithms reward. It makes social media fertile ground for anyone willing to "say the unsayable" regardless of whether it's true or bullshit.

Football clubs (esp non-league): writing a score at the end of your tweets during games is pointless without team names. "0-2" means nothing as I don't know if you're listing your club first or home team first. I may not know which team is at home anyway. Write the team names. I say non-league clubs as they seem to do this more, and (being polite and respectful here) the people writing those tweets are less likely to do it as a professional job. So I hope this is useful. But also those clubs more likely to have casual followers. Don't assume knowledge.

The people saying that the election result proves social media is not reflective of the nation do not understand social media.

Short thread.

#GE19 They think it's a smart point to make - loads of people on Twitter liked Labour and Labour were thrashed which means social media was wrong and did not reflect some mythical "real" UK.

Literally everything about VAR needs to be reframed. If you think the Iran pen wasn't a pen, the ref got it wrong not VAR. He had a chance to review and called it that way. If you think it was a pen (not many do), VAR helped the ref get it right. Not a "VAR assisted goal", FFS. It ⚽️ is ⚽️ just ⚽️ a ⚽️ video ⚽️ replay. Not "technology". A replay. Like your Mum and Dad had on Betamax in the 1980s. He watched it then made a call and got it right or wrong depending on your view. Like refs have always made calls, and got them right or wrong.