Quitting Twitter(blog.nindalf.com)
blog.nindalf.com
Quitting Twitter
https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/quitting-twitter/
291 comments
> Removing everyone else doesn’t take as much work as I expected, as long as you’re not hesitant to unfollow (or even block) those who distract from your desired timeline.
It's also not even necessarily them. Twitter is enthusiastic in assuming that, because you're engaging with one person, you must also be interested in what they're engaging with.
My efforts to have reasoned debate with one person in my life who was becoming more and more aggressively MAGA (prior to some rather extreme takes on... well, several different incidents) did not in any way equate to having even a remote interest in being flooded with content from Ben Shapiro or Turning Point USA, just because she happened to give it fake Internet points.
I gave up on her Twitter well before I gave up on her as a person for this exact reason.
It's also not even necessarily them. Twitter is enthusiastic in assuming that, because you're engaging with one person, you must also be interested in what they're engaging with.
My efforts to have reasoned debate with one person in my life who was becoming more and more aggressively MAGA (prior to some rather extreme takes on... well, several different incidents) did not in any way equate to having even a remote interest in being flooded with content from Ben Shapiro or Turning Point USA, just because she happened to give it fake Internet points.
I gave up on her Twitter well before I gave up on her as a person for this exact reason.
Yeah, I think the rise of "follow-of-a-follow" "engagement" content and promoted tweets were where I heavily started to lose any impression at all that I could control/curate my Twitter timeline, and started to lose a lot of interest in Twitter altogether. (Algorithmic reshuffling of the "timeline" into something that wasn't purely time-based didn't help either, but seemed a modest symptom to the other two problems.)
Twitter lists are a good way to regain control of your timeline.
Create lists and unfollow everyone. This way you only get the content you want.
Create lists and unfollow everyone. This way you only get the content you want.
I feel like I can't trust Twitter not to inject "engagement" content into the core timeline of their product, I don't see the trust in relying on a secondary feature that could be shelved or similarly injected. I'm happy scratching my "I was an early adopter Twitter user" junkie itch on Mastodon these days, where I know I'm in a lot more control than Twitter wants to give me due to business model alone.
There is a star in the upper right that lets you put the timeline back to chronological order. Note that after undoing it (I couldn't stand the constant inanity), your timeline will take some time (~ a couple of weeks) for things to return to normal.
I did that as soon as it was offered back as an option. As I said, that wasn't the problem on its own, that felt like more of a symptom of the bigger problem that Twitter decided it was all about engagement and decided they wanted to inject whatever they wanted where ever they wanted into a timeline. The last time I tried to scroll through my Twitter feed in scrolling through 25 items every (!) fifth one was a mostly toxic "engagement trolling" or clickbait Promoted tweet from someone that I would never follow.
Maybe try realtwitter.com, which is a redirect to a useful search that only includes posts from people you follow.
I find that tweets of people I like start going on my nerves based on how much I see of them. people overshare because they're posting both great content but also a lot of half-baked opinions that even they themselves are still not sure about and in the process of testing out on their audience.
on one hand it's exciting to see the thought process of another person (who often doesn't realize they're giving you an alpha-preview release of their latest brain farts). But it gets tedious quickly.
I got constantly sucked into discussions in the past simply because it's too easy to hold myself back. Now I consume twitter without an account either using nitter or directly browsing some good lists of people I used to follow.
on one hand it's exciting to see the thought process of another person (who often doesn't realize they're giving you an alpha-preview release of their latest brain farts). But it gets tedious quickly.
I got constantly sucked into discussions in the past simply because it's too easy to hold myself back. Now I consume twitter without an account either using nitter or directly browsing some good lists of people I used to follow.
I've had an idea rolling around for years to build some kind of classifier that sits in front of your Twitter timeline. I follow lots of accounts that tweet about one thing I'm interested in, and one thing I absolutely do not and will not care about, ever. Seems like it would be totally feasible to do automated filtering on this sort of thing rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater by unfollowing.
This is the right way - what you see constantly will eventually program you a certain way. If you want to be a troll-y sarcastic person, make sure you see lots of tweets like that. Want to be a person who constantly dunks on the success of others, make sure you have lots of tweets to read like that.
Don't want to be that kind of person? Better make sure you are not consuming that kind of stuff. It starts to come out unconsciously if you are not careful.
Don't want to be that kind of person? Better make sure you are not consuming that kind of stuff. It starts to come out unconsciously if you are not careful.
I did this for years and then Trump rolled around and every developer and interesting person thought it was their duty to use their feeds as some form of resistance.
I remember one case in particular where the guy was a genius at posting niche Middle Ages history and then every other tweet became political and I was so sad, because I absolutely loved his content.
As an a-political person who tried hard (but failed occasionally) at keeping my stuff a-political or othwise I’d start a new account to be political because my main one was tech stuff.
Twitters biggest failure was the lack of tagging and filtering options it provided. The History Genius could have tagged his polical tweets as #political and Twitter could have an option to follow someone except their #political ones. Just like following without retweets.
The solution is obvious to me. But clearly Twitter founders love the political stuff or something. So I just chose to avoid Twitter at all costs unless linked to it or researching a topic, with the odd time I got dragged into it.
I remember one case in particular where the guy was a genius at posting niche Middle Ages history and then every other tweet became political and I was so sad, because I absolutely loved his content.
As an a-political person who tried hard (but failed occasionally) at keeping my stuff a-political or othwise I’d start a new account to be political because my main one was tech stuff.
Twitters biggest failure was the lack of tagging and filtering options it provided. The History Genius could have tagged his polical tweets as #political and Twitter could have an option to follow someone except their #political ones. Just like following without retweets.
The solution is obvious to me. But clearly Twitter founders love the political stuff or something. So I just chose to avoid Twitter at all costs unless linked to it or researching a topic, with the odd time I got dragged into it.
I think even if Twitter made it easier to tag posts as political, the problem remains that so many people feel like their political views belong everywhere, and will actively try and break into other discussions to interject with politics. Like the Expensify guy who thought it was appropriate to email customers and tell them who to vote for. To me it comes back to the trend that people who support a cause treat it as if it has to be a top priority for everyone, and if you don't prioritize the cause in the same way you are actively working against it.
And I think this probably is a byproduct of the "attention economy" where there has been an arms race for mindshare (I'd like to find a way to put that better but hopefully it's clear)
And I think this probably is a byproduct of the "attention economy" where there has been an arms race for mindshare (I'd like to find a way to put that better but hopefully it's clear)
One problem at a time.
I think politics are work, when you're company is anything but small is nasty and taboo. And IMO a fireable offence when it gets to any level of harassing others for not sharing your opinion.
There are times and places for certain things and I strongly believe work isn't one for politics. Unless the work itself is directly political.
I've shared this opinion before on HN and had strong support, so I know I'm not alone. Especially among the introverts.
I think politics are work, when you're company is anything but small is nasty and taboo. And IMO a fireable offence when it gets to any level of harassing others for not sharing your opinion.
There are times and places for certain things and I strongly believe work isn't one for politics. Unless the work itself is directly political.
I've shared this opinion before on HN and had strong support, so I know I'm not alone. Especially among the introverts.
One of the problems is that hashtag usage evolved into a form of signaling for emphasis (#your-slogan-here) instead of a useful way to tag a topic, to the extent that it can read as obnoxious if you do it at all in a serious way.
Another is that it's another moderation headache. Anyone can insert a hashtag for any reason, so anyone will. If you don't police it, it becomes useless; if you do police it, it becomes heavy.
Another is that it's another moderation headache. Anyone can insert a hashtag for any reason, so anyone will. If you don't police it, it becomes useless; if you do police it, it becomes heavy.
Twitter loves politics: rage keeps you addicted and coming back. It keeps you on the app longer = more ads.
Twitter allows you to mute keywords: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-m...
It's not perfect, but muting key words like the names of a few popular political figures, names of political parties, and names of hotbutton issues will drastically decrease the amount of political content in your timeline.
It's not perfect, but muting key words like the names of a few popular political figures, names of political parties, and names of hotbutton issues will drastically decrease the amount of political content in your timeline.
I'd rather it be political or everything else...
I shouldn't have made it a hashtag.
I shouldn't have made it a hashtag.
> a-political
there is no such thing
there is no such thing
When browsing Twitter it certainly is. I think it's a terrible form to engage in politics.
That is demonstrably false—tweets about, say, programming language theory are pretty far from politics.
Have you seen the arguments about progamming language design here on HN?
(:
Its not apolitical, just pettier politics
(:
Its not apolitical, just pettier politics
An example given upthread was wanting to follow an account which tweeted interesting facts about medieval history, and being uninterested in seeing the same tweeter's thoughts about current US politics.
The sense in which people flame each other on HN about programming language opinions can be described as 'political', but it's also not directly related to e.g. current US politics.
The sense in which people flame each other on HN about programming language opinions can be described as 'political', but it's also not directly related to e.g. current US politics.
Exactly, my point wasn't some hashtag filter. But some new checkmark that this may be political [or controversial or start a flamewar] etc.
Sometimes people like starting one with warning, I see it all the time. I don't see how Twitter can't create a simple filter like that.
I could go through all my tweets and instantly choose which category it goes in.
Sometimes people like starting one with warning, I see it all the time. I don't see how Twitter can't create a simple filter like that.
I could go through all my tweets and instantly choose which category it goes in.
I do similarly. My Twitter feed is pleasant and very useful.
Judging from posts like these (and the other comments on this thread), most people have difficulty unfollowing others, which is a shame.
Judging from posts like these (and the other comments on this thread), most people have difficulty unfollowing others, which is a shame.
Over the course of a few months I about halved my following count on Twitter. The application definitely makes it easier to follow people than to unfollow them, but also this mentality of thinking more about the possibly of interesting content than the damage of content that's uninteresting made getting used to reducing my following count tricky.
It is kind of how when decluttering it's not only more effort to clean than to ignore the issue, but it's also easy to fall into the mindset of "I liked/needed this thing that one time, maybe I'll like/need it again sometime in the future".
It is kind of how when decluttering it's not only more effort to clean than to ignore the issue, but it's also easy to fall into the mindset of "I liked/needed this thing that one time, maybe I'll like/need it again sometime in the future".
My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming
Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?
people who simply tweet too many times per day.
I'm with you on that one.
Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?
people who simply tweet too many times per day.
I'm with you on that one.
> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?
This was an interesting question. I have two thoughts here:
1. On unfollowing content that I don't disagree with: I got very tired of a lot of the dev content I was following on Twitter and how it was flooding away other stuff I follow. I unfollowed a TON of devs. It's not that I disagree with them, I just don't want to consume that content.
2. On unfollowing content that I disagree with: I don't think the issue with echo chambers is the echo chamber itself.
For example, I'm not religious. I can choose not to follow religious content and be in an "atheist echo chamber", and still, when encountering religious people talking about religious things, respect them. If I'm coming from a tolerant and accepting place, when I encounter them I can learn from them, hear them out, understand their point of view, but otherwise choose to live my life without constantly consuming religion.
Religion is very much in the social discourse, but this applies to other things too. I don't know much about Nepal. If I ever go to Nepal, meet a Nepalese person, or just get curious about it I'll respect their ways and be ready to learn a lot, in spite of not consuming Nepalese content.
I don't think its the "echo chamber" per-se that's the issue— it's the intolerance, and for some people the echo chamber just makes it worse.
This was an interesting question. I have two thoughts here:
1. On unfollowing content that I don't disagree with: I got very tired of a lot of the dev content I was following on Twitter and how it was flooding away other stuff I follow. I unfollowed a TON of devs. It's not that I disagree with them, I just don't want to consume that content.
2. On unfollowing content that I disagree with: I don't think the issue with echo chambers is the echo chamber itself.
For example, I'm not religious. I can choose not to follow religious content and be in an "atheist echo chamber", and still, when encountering religious people talking about religious things, respect them. If I'm coming from a tolerant and accepting place, when I encounter them I can learn from them, hear them out, understand their point of view, but otherwise choose to live my life without constantly consuming religion.
Religion is very much in the social discourse, but this applies to other things too. I don't know much about Nepal. If I ever go to Nepal, meet a Nepalese person, or just get curious about it I'll respect their ways and be ready to learn a lot, in spite of not consuming Nepalese content.
I don't think its the "echo chamber" per-se that's the issue— it's the intolerance, and for some people the echo chamber just makes it worse.
> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?
If you follow an account that tweets (reliable!) information about space rockets, you will learn a lot of new things about space rockets.
Not everything on Twitter is a manifestation of a political viewpoint. There is a huge amount of worthwhile stuff that is just informative, interesting, beautiful, or fun.
If you follow an account that tweets (reliable!) information about space rockets, you will learn a lot of new things about space rockets.
Not everything on Twitter is a manifestation of a political viewpoint. There is a huge amount of worthwhile stuff that is just informative, interesting, beautiful, or fun.
> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber
Only if you choose to. "I don't want to be consuming" doesn't need to mean that you disagree with them, just you aren't getting value from reading it.
Further to your point: It's one of those paradoxes that while the marginal utility of listening to some people you disagree with is obviously high, the marginal utility of listening to any particular person you often disagree with is likely quite low. Most people are not particularly thoughtful or particularly articulate, but your best bang-for-buck will be to try and find some who are both.
Only if you choose to. "I don't want to be consuming" doesn't need to mean that you disagree with them, just you aren't getting value from reading it.
Further to your point: It's one of those paradoxes that while the marginal utility of listening to some people you disagree with is obviously high, the marginal utility of listening to any particular person you often disagree with is likely quite low. Most people are not particularly thoughtful or particularly articulate, but your best bang-for-buck will be to try and find some who are both.
Some bubbles aren't echo chambers. If you only follow people who agree with you that math is cool, or that the majestic octopus is the best animal, maybe that's a bubble where you'll learn tons of new stuff.
Maybe google+ was right all along. Publish this to the octopus circle, publish that to the math circle, and this other thing to the politics circle.
Maybe google+ was right all along. Publish this to the octopus circle, publish that to the math circle, and this other thing to the politics circle.
> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?
Only if the GP does not want to consume expressions of opposing viewpoints.
Only if the GP does not want to consume expressions of opposing viewpoints.
> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?
The idea isn't to unfollow people you disagree with. The point is to curate your follow list to contain the type of content you want to see.
I enjoy reading different viewpoints, as long as they're presented in good faith and with a willingness to discuss them openly. I still follow a lot of people I disagree with.
I've also followed a lot of people with whom I agree, but I don't want to consume their endless Twitter dogma about the subject.
Shape the feed to the content you want to consume. If you want to consume healthy debate and alternate viewpoints, curate accordingly. The idea that the only way to break an information bubble is to let low-quality arguments from the other side flood your timeline is not true.
The idea isn't to unfollow people you disagree with. The point is to curate your follow list to contain the type of content you want to see.
I enjoy reading different viewpoints, as long as they're presented in good faith and with a willingness to discuss them openly. I still follow a lot of people I disagree with.
I've also followed a lot of people with whom I agree, but I don't want to consume their endless Twitter dogma about the subject.
Shape the feed to the content you want to consume. If you want to consume healthy debate and alternate viewpoints, curate accordingly. The idea that the only way to break an information bubble is to let low-quality arguments from the other side flood your timeline is not true.
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yeah, me too. I follow a lot of authors or musicians I enjoy, plus a cadre of local and far-flung friends. I am pretty politically engaged but political twitter is just gamesmanship, so I have no time for it AT ALL.
I also use a 3rd party client, so I'm not subjected to algorithmic chicanery in my feed. I mute widely. And I read it at most 2 or 3 times a day.
In general, I find it WAY more pleasant than FB. (I'd love to ditch FB, but for a number of logistical/community reasons that's just not feasible for me, so I try to minimize my interaction with it.)
(What I REALLY want is the old GEnie SFRT back.)
I also use a 3rd party client, so I'm not subjected to algorithmic chicanery in my feed. I mute widely. And I read it at most 2 or 3 times a day.
In general, I find it WAY more pleasant than FB. (I'd love to ditch FB, but for a number of logistical/community reasons that's just not feasible for me, so I try to minimize my interaction with it.)
(What I REALLY want is the old GEnie SFRT back.)
My problem with Twitter is that a lot of researchers I follow make a lot of noise (e.g.: giving their opinions on things 10 times a day, tweeting random "facts" about life, etc...) but once in a while they tweet very informative stuff.
I feel kind of trapped following them :/
I tried using the "this tweet is not relevant" thingie but it doesn't do anything. I mean, this is a thing for which I would gladly have an AI-powered smart filter.
I feel kind of trapped following them :/
I tried using the "this tweet is not relevant" thingie but it doesn't do anything. I mean, this is a thing for which I would gladly have an AI-powered smart filter.
>My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming. That ranges from constantly dunking on every opportunity to people who simply tweet too many times per day.
I tried this. You end up shedding a ton of follows and mostly end up with people who say nothing. Then a week later you like something that person says and refollow, then they say something again and get unfollowed.
I think fundamentally it's like the article says. twitter is just full of anger and paranoia. I can't say if it's twitter that creates this, but it certainly enhances. Twitter is the problem and quitting is your only option.
I tried this. You end up shedding a ton of follows and mostly end up with people who say nothing. Then a week later you like something that person says and refollow, then they say something again and get unfollowed.
I think fundamentally it's like the article says. twitter is just full of anger and paranoia. I can't say if it's twitter that creates this, but it certainly enhances. Twitter is the problem and quitting is your only option.
My approach is similar but different: I unfolllowed everyone and now use lists exclusively.
I have a politics list, a tech list and a couple more. If I want to catch up what’s going on in politics, I just check my politics list.
> The mute function is also highly useful.
This feature didn’t do anything for me. It still shows you tweets but muted (you have to click to see them). The FOMO in me makes me always want to click on them to see what I’m missing out on. I wish they would just completely hide them.
I have a politics list, a tech list and a couple more. If I want to catch up what’s going on in politics, I just check my politics list.
> The mute function is also highly useful.
This feature didn’t do anything for me. It still shows you tweets but muted (you have to click to see them). The FOMO in me makes me always want to click on them to see what I’m missing out on. I wish they would just completely hide them.
I have the same approach. I'll add that the "desactivate retweets" function is also very useful.
Doesn’t this by definition mean that you’re in a social media bubble with those who agree with you?
None of OP's criteria for unfollowing/muting people was them saying things they disagree with.
It's the difference between not watching NBA games because you're not interested in basketball, and refusing to watch the local news because "they have a (left|right) bias".
There is more content out there competing for your attention than you have time in your life to consume it. Rather than letting twitter's default algorithm feed you the most "engaging", OP is saying a more mindful approach works for them.
It's the difference between not watching NBA games because you're not interested in basketball, and refusing to watch the local news because "they have a (left|right) bias".
There is more content out there competing for your attention than you have time in your life to consume it. Rather than letting twitter's default algorithm feed you the most "engaging", OP is saying a more mindful approach works for them.
I've started to wonder if "bubbles" are a good thing. Others beliefs shouldn't be foisted on me at any given moment of my day, and if I don't care to hear them there isn't anything wrong with that.
Moreover, communication seems less hostile and more nuanced when we aren't forced to discuss everything with everyone at once. That is why more focused communities like this one seem to be more enjoyable to use.
Moreover, communication seems less hostile and more nuanced when we aren't forced to discuss everything with everyone at once. That is why more focused communities like this one seem to be more enjoyable to use.
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That’s an interesting take. What is the difference between building a social media bubble and hanging out with friends because of shared interests? It’s almost as if social media comes with this intent that you’re supposed to confront yourself with the world or you are becoming blind, while this can often be a very alien concept in the real world that few intentionally do.
Following that logic, you are in a bubble in any situation except where you have a feed of every single person's tweets. I don't think that is a very sustainable view.
Only if you get distracted by political bullshit.
I follow on twitter:
- A group of museums and people who work on Roman ruins in the UK and post a lot of ancient history content
- Local news reporters in beats I care about
- A few tech journalists and “celebrities” or podcasters
- Cat and dog video accounts
- Some money people
- Baseball related stuff
I do not follow people I know on Twitter and haven’t logged into Facebook for years. The magic of Twitter is that you can purge content you don’t want to read very easily. I actually have family involved in politics... they never ever want to talk shop, ever. There is nothing more vapid and boring than yakking about political bullshit.
If you think you are in a bubble about politics because of your social media friends, seriously get new friends or mute anyone who talks about how great their guy is. It will measurably improve your life.
I follow on twitter:
- A group of museums and people who work on Roman ruins in the UK and post a lot of ancient history content
- Local news reporters in beats I care about
- A few tech journalists and “celebrities” or podcasters
- Cat and dog video accounts
- Some money people
- Baseball related stuff
I do not follow people I know on Twitter and haven’t logged into Facebook for years. The magic of Twitter is that you can purge content you don’t want to read very easily. I actually have family involved in politics... they never ever want to talk shop, ever. There is nothing more vapid and boring than yakking about political bullshit.
If you think you are in a bubble about politics because of your social media friends, seriously get new friends or mute anyone who talks about how great their guy is. It will measurably improve your life.
I challenge you to explain why this matters.
Sure, but I use Twitter to relax and enjoy specific types of content. It doesn't need to be your source of knowledge.
Sure but it's a bubble of comic book artists, people that like video games, comedians cracking jokes, etc.
That would depend on the person. Lots of people are very interested by people who disagree with them in certain ways.
I'm aware of the bad takes anyway, since they're pretty much unavoidable.
only if what you want to see is just people who agree with you, in which case you'll live in a sad bubble in any case ..
Paul Graham tweets agressively, but I doubt you will block him though, not everyone who tweets agressively is toxic.
and you just perfectly highlighted the toxicity of twitter in that sentence. Just because someone is popular doesn't mean everyone should like/listen to them if they do not find the person's content aligns with them.
I did. I wouldn't unblock.
> not everyone who tweets agressively is toxic.
This doesn't matter.
It's about controlling what kind of energy you let into your life.
Negative energy needs to go.
> not everyone who tweets agressively is toxic.
This doesn't matter.
It's about controlling what kind of energy you let into your life.
Negative energy needs to go.
Time and attention. In my mind/book it's where you give your time and attention. I really enjoy a couple of radio shows, where I need to download the mp3 from their websites (they host/share a coupld of hours after their shows), and SecurityNow podcast.
The good thing about it, is that I only listen when I want to listen, and IF I want to listen.
Social media, slow and steady, absorb you into giving, increasingly, more time to them. Either by creating an echo chamber, or creating passions, promoting things you love/hate. Anything to get you hooked more.
Majority of the people do not filter/reduce the alerts on their phones. Good luck working on a project when you get 10 beeps per hour from Twitter, CNN, BBC, FB, IG, YT.
Time and Attention.
The good thing about it, is that I only listen when I want to listen, and IF I want to listen.
Social media, slow and steady, absorb you into giving, increasingly, more time to them. Either by creating an echo chamber, or creating passions, promoting things you love/hate. Anything to get you hooked more.
Majority of the people do not filter/reduce the alerts on their phones. Good luck working on a project when you get 10 beeps per hour from Twitter, CNN, BBC, FB, IG, YT.
Time and Attention.
Paul who?
For a post called "Quitting Twitter", I think this piece actually does a great job summarizing the really cool things about Twitter. I think there's something a little magical about finding someone you really respect in your field, responding to one of their tweets, and getting a thoughtful response six minutes later!
The toxicity is rough, though. It exhausts me on big subreddits, too -- it's impossible to have conversations with anyone because the focus is on "dunking" people for the benefit of other readers. Like anything else reddit, it gets better the smaller you go.
I find this is actually true on Twitter, too. I've had some positive interactions in the replies under a @patio11 tweet with 120 likes. But any moderately popular tweet is just a shitshow.
Twitter (and Reddit, and HN, etc.) are sort of pretending to be conversation-software, when really, they're tiny blogs; by and large, you don't write replies for the benefit of the person to whom you're responding, you write them for all the people who you know are going to see your reply. That's the source of so much of the toxic feeling, IMO, but it's also the entire value propositon: come see the interesting (or funny, or infuriating, or horrifying) back-and-forth of internet strangers!
Maybe the toxicity can be eliminated or mitigated somehow, but I really think it's part-and-parcel with the format of "public conversation."
God knows I'm part of the problem; I write between 1 and 10 HN/reddit comments every day. It's an addiction! External validation feels very, very good. I try not to "dunk" people, but if there's one thing the internet has, it's no shortage of idiotic comments, and it's hard for me not to take a condescending tone when someone's talking about how women don't deserve to play videogames or how Joe Biden wants to eat babies or whatever.
I guess the best you can hope for is a community spirit that encourages thoughtful conversation and discourages shit-talking. And I think that's where Twitter, by and large, really fails. Twitter culture at large is so, so based around "look at this dumb shit this idiot said! aren't they stupid?" It sucks, and it absolutely warps people like the author says.
The toxicity is rough, though. It exhausts me on big subreddits, too -- it's impossible to have conversations with anyone because the focus is on "dunking" people for the benefit of other readers. Like anything else reddit, it gets better the smaller you go.
I find this is actually true on Twitter, too. I've had some positive interactions in the replies under a @patio11 tweet with 120 likes. But any moderately popular tweet is just a shitshow.
Twitter (and Reddit, and HN, etc.) are sort of pretending to be conversation-software, when really, they're tiny blogs; by and large, you don't write replies for the benefit of the person to whom you're responding, you write them for all the people who you know are going to see your reply. That's the source of so much of the toxic feeling, IMO, but it's also the entire value propositon: come see the interesting (or funny, or infuriating, or horrifying) back-and-forth of internet strangers!
Maybe the toxicity can be eliminated or mitigated somehow, but I really think it's part-and-parcel with the format of "public conversation."
God knows I'm part of the problem; I write between 1 and 10 HN/reddit comments every day. It's an addiction! External validation feels very, very good. I try not to "dunk" people, but if there's one thing the internet has, it's no shortage of idiotic comments, and it's hard for me not to take a condescending tone when someone's talking about how women don't deserve to play videogames or how Joe Biden wants to eat babies or whatever.
I guess the best you can hope for is a community spirit that encourages thoughtful conversation and discourages shit-talking. And I think that's where Twitter, by and large, really fails. Twitter culture at large is so, so based around "look at this dumb shit this idiot said! aren't they stupid?" It sucks, and it absolutely warps people like the author says.
This was possible before Twitter. I remember back in the phpBB days, I was in a group where people were discussing the work of the philosopher Daniel Dennett and I had just read his book and didn't think people were reading him correctly. Instead of immediately taking to the "submit" button to tell them what I thought, I just emailed Daniel Dennett and asked him. He was head of the Tufts University Cognitive Science center and his email was publicly listed. He answered pretty quickly.
I wonder if he still would or if the amount of spam hitting public figures from every direction is so overwhelming that they can't possibly respond to it all. And I wonder how much of the "responses" you get from blue checks on Twitter is really them and how much is a hired social media manager running their account.
I wonder if he still would or if the amount of spam hitting public figures from every direction is so overwhelming that they can't possibly respond to it all. And I wonder how much of the "responses" you get from blue checks on Twitter is really them and how much is a hired social media manager running their account.
Toxicity on twitter is huge but once you unfollow toxic users (or any user who tweets nonsense too often) things look much better. Tbh I don't use twitter to engage in conversations. I use it mostly to consume interesting content.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who behave really well and have really interesting things to say about tech, but for anything political, they just vent really hateful, angry things (or retweet the same). The Go community has a fair amount of this, sadly. It sucks to have to choose, but more importantly I think Twitter actually radicalizes people toward hate and divisiveness. I don't think these people were so hateful or angry ~7 years ago. When I look at the curated news section, it seems purpose-built to make me mad, with the dumbest, most toxic comments at the top.
I honestly think Twitter has managed to rewire our brains, with people being shocked/offended by things that 7 years ago wouldn't have turned heads. Twitter has recognised this, and feeds this effect to increase engagement. Also see Facebook.
I'm not sure where this leads but it can't be good.
I'm not sure where this leads but it can't be good.
Something about all your expressions, questions, and silences being visible to everyone else, all the time.
You can see everyone else is constantly tweeting about how awful the Capulets are - your friends mostly aren't, but they're retweeting people who are. You remember one time you expressed some doubts about something the Montagues did and people you don't know turned up to tell you off. You think the Capulets might actually be right about something this one time, but you don't dare say it.
Private conversations give you more room to be wrong, to be uncertain, to be curious, to be uninterested. On Twitter you always have an audience.
You can see everyone else is constantly tweeting about how awful the Capulets are - your friends mostly aren't, but they're retweeting people who are. You remember one time you expressed some doubts about something the Montagues did and people you don't know turned up to tell you off. You think the Capulets might actually be right about something this one time, but you don't dare say it.
Private conversations give you more room to be wrong, to be uncertain, to be curious, to be uninterested. On Twitter you always have an audience.
Agreed. I can't help but think that outrage is an addictive substance that would make Phillip Morris green with envy.
This is what finally pushed me off of Twitter. I just wish I had the ability to filter posts based on whether the user is qualified to have an opinion on the topic. I don't want opinions on technology from members of congress, and I don't want political rants from tech experts.
I think its inherent to the setup of the ecosphere and has similarities to high school politics of everyone desperately trying to get noticed that can lead to bullying.
To get noticed everything has to be larger than life and this tends towards hostility and partisanship.
To get noticed everything has to be larger than life and this tends towards hostility and partisanship.
Same here. My overall Twitter experience is great! Every time I had a bad experience, it was something I could have easily avoided by just not joining a conversation that I kind of knew was going to be a flame war.
Similar. Recently I’ve also started using twitter only on weekends, to minimise distraction and ensure it’s more consumption based (who in twitter has the patience to wait 5 days for a reply?!).
Observations: I know longer expend energy thinking about the terrible state of discourse on twitter, the sanctimony, bad faith, etc. Also, my thought patterns seem to be changing, my brain feels like it has “spare capacity” and I find myself starting new hobbies. Just anecdata, but I am certain I am calmer and less worried about twitter destroying humanity!
Observations: I know longer expend energy thinking about the terrible state of discourse on twitter, the sanctimony, bad faith, etc. Also, my thought patterns seem to be changing, my brain feels like it has “spare capacity” and I find myself starting new hobbies. Just anecdata, but I am certain I am calmer and less worried about twitter destroying humanity!
Yeah if you aggressively block, unfollow, and curate Twitter can be really great.
I think it's super cool to be able to interact with different people doing interesting things (a little like HN, but it's easier to remember who the people are where as on HN I never remember 99% of the usernames in threads).
I think it's super cool to be able to interact with different people doing interesting things (a little like HN, but it's easier to remember who the people are where as on HN I never remember 99% of the usernames in threads).
The problem I found with blocking and muting people is that twitter continues to show tweets from people I don’t follow - entirely in the hope of engaging me of course, which most of the time means trying to pull me into an argument.
Sometimes it introduces you to new people though that are interesting to follow (usually because people in your network liked their post or something). I find this generally valuable.
If you want to be extreme about it, you can put everyone in lists and then this won't happen. You can also use a third party client that doesn't do this.
My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck. I'd much rather have Twitter premium that removes the ads.
If you want to be extreme about it, you can put everyone in lists and then this won't happen. You can also use a third party client that doesn't do this.
My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck. I'd much rather have Twitter premium that removes the ads.
That's quite surprising; I've found the ads to be fairly unobtrusive compared to almost any other website. I would prefer there to be a text only mode though - every so often, the ad repaint will cause the UI to "jump".
> My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck.
There are no ads in third party clients such as Tweetbot.
There are no ads in third party clients such as Tweetbot.
When I was on Twitter I found the ads so distracting that I used the web version on my phone with Firefox and ublock origin. This did the job, just about if you can cope with the web client clumsiness and lag.
I tried to use tweet bot for a while, but I couldn't stick with it.
> twitter continues to show tweets from people I don’t follow
Are you using the reverse chronological timeline? That's the only way to fly.
Are you using the reverse chronological timeline? That's the only way to fly.
I am, and it shows me tweets from people I don't follow. It cleverly uses the mechanism of "retweets" to show me them. It's only when you realise that _twitter only shows you selected retweets_ that you see the notion of retweeting is an excuse to show you tweets from people you don't follow.
reverse chronological?
Using twitter lists might solve that?
You're still supporting a platform where avoiding toxic content is active mental work.
Twitter's algorithm has a way of showing most toxic or controversial posts and comments first.
There are people that are very good friends of mine in Real Life, but their Twitter profiles show a completely toxic persona. This doesn't happen with their other social media profiles.
TikTok on the other hand shows up higher more "feel-good" content which is why it's the only social media app I have installed on my phone.
There are people that are very good friends of mine in Real Life, but their Twitter profiles show a completely toxic persona. This doesn't happen with their other social media profiles.
TikTok on the other hand shows up higher more "feel-good" content which is why it's the only social media app I have installed on my phone.
I wouldn't be able to replicate your experience. My friends on twitter are either sidelining toxicity (by simply ignoring the usual in/outgroup messaging) or by just posting their (non-political, non-controversial, technical) stuff.
I don't know toxic people on twitter behaving the same on other social networks.
I don't know toxic people on twitter behaving the same on other social networks.
Life is a platform that requires active work to avoid toxic content.
Life happens to be so because of external factors nobody is benefiting from, and you can't avoid it.
Twitter is so because it is designed to encourage arguments (to generate "engagement") and you can avoid it.
Twitter is so because it is designed to encourage arguments (to generate "engagement") and you can avoid it.
Twitter could be doing so much more to fix this problem. It's abundantly clear that "hands off" moderation doesn't work. It doesn't work for Twitter, it doesn't work for Facebook, it doesn't work for any shared social space online or offline.
Twitter actively encourages the outrage machine. They aren't an organization that just needs to work a bit harder.
They tell you when your tweets are reported even if no action is taken, just to make you mad that people are reporting you.
They tell you when someone blocks you and you can't visit their twitter anymore even though you can if you log out.
Who would build a system like this unless they wanted to fuel drama?
They tell you when your tweets are reported even if no action is taken, just to make you mad that people are reporting you.
They tell you when someone blocks you and you can't visit their twitter anymore even though you can if you log out.
Who would build a system like this unless they wanted to fuel drama?
While I absolutely agree with this, and think Twitter does things that make it worse: no automated (or human-driven in bulk) abuse-detector will ever work perfectly. People are creative. Some amount of manual blocking is a reasonable expectation... just not as much as is necessary now :)
I'm not asking for perfect, I'm asking for anything more than the literally zero effort they're putting forth now.
Apparently this comment is wrong according to votes. Logically, I'm wrong by either:
* assuming that Twitter is mostly toxic
* or that avoiding toxicity isn't mental work
What is it where I'm wrong, and if so, why?
* assuming that Twitter is mostly toxic
* or that avoiding toxicity isn't mental work
What is it where I'm wrong, and if so, why?
One of the cooler exp in my career was Theodore Ts'o responding to a (in retrospect dumb) query about some latency issues we were witnessing with fsync. I feel like twitter enables more of those interactions
Somehow I managed to swim only good parts of twitter. It was full of smart creative people doing only peaceful things. A few thin feud here and there but nothing crazy.
Not to pick on it but compared to curated reddit / twitter, I found it very hard to find anything interesting on discord I kept jumping from server to server.
Not to pick on it but compared to curated reddit / twitter, I found it very hard to find anything interesting on discord I kept jumping from server to server.
I pretty much entirely agree with the author. I've never derived value from Twitter, try as I might. I think some personalities are better suited to the decentralized, broadcast-and-hope, follow-the-experts, ratings-driven content.
I get a lot more value out of forums about a topic, or HN, or groups of friends I already know. Facebook groups on my hobbies, etc. Joining/participating in "private" (but open to anyone) groups rather than broadcasting outwards to all and getting engagement through shock/clickbait type content.
That doesn't mean what works for me has to work for you, though, and of course it's without getting into how problematic one platform's LEADERSHIP might be versus another.
I get a lot more value out of forums about a topic, or HN, or groups of friends I already know. Facebook groups on my hobbies, etc. Joining/participating in "private" (but open to anyone) groups rather than broadcasting outwards to all and getting engagement through shock/clickbait type content.
That doesn't mean what works for me has to work for you, though, and of course it's without getting into how problematic one platform's LEADERSHIP might be versus another.
This SMBC was written in 2013, and I still think it's the most accurate simplified explanation of how social media on the internet tends to work I've come across:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939
I don't have a solution. But it's a real problem.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939
I don't have a solution. But it's a real problem.
Aren't we now seeing a reaction to this with the cancel culture? Getting rid of the assholes as vehemently as possible?
Even though cancel culture is probably overreacting, I'm not sure if there is another way than to get rid of the toxic loud minority.
I'm a mod in a subreddit that has a very toxic circle jerk sister subreddit. Like "jokes about the recently died father of one of the persons the main subreddit is about" bad. Some people frequent both subreddits and while they are just behaved enough to not be straight banned in the main subreddit, their behavior in the circle jerk would well justify a perma bann.
In my experience there is no reasoning with certain persons. Even if they seem reasonable 80% of the time, the 20% completely destroy any basis for normal discussions. There's a latent sentiment that creeps into every discussion if you don't remove these persons. Even if they haven't shown their bad side in the main subreddit.
Even though cancel culture is probably overreacting, I'm not sure if there is another way than to get rid of the toxic loud minority.
I'm a mod in a subreddit that has a very toxic circle jerk sister subreddit. Like "jokes about the recently died father of one of the persons the main subreddit is about" bad. Some people frequent both subreddits and while they are just behaved enough to not be straight banned in the main subreddit, their behavior in the circle jerk would well justify a perma bann.
In my experience there is no reasoning with certain persons. Even if they seem reasonable 80% of the time, the 20% completely destroy any basis for normal discussions. There's a latent sentiment that creeps into every discussion if you don't remove these persons. Even if they haven't shown their bad side in the main subreddit.
The problem with mass banning on a large scale driven by whoever is loudest is that it very, very quickly devolves into witch hunts. Nobody wins.
I used to run my own BBS back in the dialup days. Even then, the problems would be recognisable to a modern forum mod.
The only workable solutions I've found are that the more focused a board on a select number of topics, the easier it is to effectively moderate in a humane manner, and that it is impossible to rules-lawyer your way to success. In the end, you have to spend significant brain-time evaluating behavior on a case-by-base basis, and be willing to ban, listen, and revise in equal measures. It's hard work, and generally unappreciated.
I used to run my own BBS back in the dialup days. Even then, the problems would be recognisable to a modern forum mod.
The only workable solutions I've found are that the more focused a board on a select number of topics, the easier it is to effectively moderate in a humane manner, and that it is impossible to rules-lawyer your way to success. In the end, you have to spend significant brain-time evaluating behavior on a case-by-base basis, and be willing to ban, listen, and revise in equal measures. It's hard work, and generally unappreciated.
> The only workable solutions I've found are that the more focused a board on a select number of topics, the easier it is to effectively moderate in a humane manner,
In my special case, we have a very heterogeneous audience because we are not mono thematical. It is quite problematic if you have people coming together who have widely different expectations.
> and that it is impossible to rules-lawyer your way to success.
I agree. Never do this. The rules will always be used against you, regardless of how detailed they are. And discussions about rules take up so much time. Keep them short and concise but also make clear that they are not set in stone. You will need leeway anyway.
> In the end, you have to spend significant brain-time evaluating behavior on a case-by-base basis, and be willing to ban, listen, and revise in equal measures. It's hard work, and generally unappreciated.
The "significant brain-time" is a problem. You are outnumbered and then fighthing and debunking bullshit takes much more time than producing it (the Trump tactic).
For my case, I came to the conclusion that being nice 80% of the time is good enough. Save the 20% evilness for the notorious cases and you can cut down a lot of mod time. Educating newbies is a different matter but for regulars, I started to warn them one time and afterwards I start temporarily banning in a fibonacci like manner for every subsequent temporary bann. Most get it then or even leave before I have to perma-bann them.
In my special case, we have a very heterogeneous audience because we are not mono thematical. It is quite problematic if you have people coming together who have widely different expectations.
> and that it is impossible to rules-lawyer your way to success.
I agree. Never do this. The rules will always be used against you, regardless of how detailed they are. And discussions about rules take up so much time. Keep them short and concise but also make clear that they are not set in stone. You will need leeway anyway.
> In the end, you have to spend significant brain-time evaluating behavior on a case-by-base basis, and be willing to ban, listen, and revise in equal measures. It's hard work, and generally unappreciated.
The "significant brain-time" is a problem. You are outnumbered and then fighthing and debunking bullshit takes much more time than producing it (the Trump tactic).
For my case, I came to the conclusion that being nice 80% of the time is good enough. Save the 20% evilness for the notorious cases and you can cut down a lot of mod time. Educating newbies is a different matter but for regulars, I started to warn them one time and afterwards I start temporarily banning in a fibonacci like manner for every subsequent temporary bann. Most get it then or even leave before I have to perma-bann them.
Yep. Related is what SlateStarCodex called the "weak man" argument.
Basically, you make a strawman argument: rather than arguing whatever point your opponent was claiming, you make something up and argue against that instead.
But since you're arguing on the internet, you can always find some dipshit somewhere who actually supports the insane thing you made up. So you turn to your opponent and say "look at what your side believes!"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
Basically, you make a strawman argument: rather than arguing whatever point your opponent was claiming, you make something up and argue against that instead.
But since you're arguing on the internet, you can always find some dipshit somewhere who actually supports the insane thing you made up. So you turn to your opponent and say "look at what your side believes!"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
Thanks for that. Awareness and introspection as you just demonstrated are key for a toxic free life.
I quit Twitter about 6 months ago. It was eerily similar to quitting smoking (which I did a couple years ago). Honestly, that scared me straight. The fact that an app on my phone had similar addictive qualities to tobacco was alarming enough to keep me off. I still get the urge to log back in sometimes, but luckily I perma-nuked the account so I’d be starting from scratch, which is a large enough barrier to keep me from trying (for now).
Slight non sequitur here but what you said about addictive qualities reminds me of a similar experience I had with a game a few years ago.
I've never been hooked on nicotine or similar, but toward the end of 2017 a game (Simcity Buildit) dug deeeeeeeeep into my soul and for the first time in my life I had to aggressively quit something like that cold turkey.
First I should say: It's a great game and really fun! (HA - I know I sound like a pusher...) I didn't spend any money on it. But man did I spend brain cycles and time on it. A few specific game dynamics really get their hooks into you - this concept of mini game-within-a-game "tournaments" which require your attention over a specific period of time (ahem weekends).
My "rock bottom" was two things: I was on a long drive from LA to SF and I had my girlfriend open up the app to complete a few time-sensitive tasks for me while I was driving. There I was explaining "ok now swipe this. Drag it there. Great. Now do the same on this other thing. Ok thanks love!".
The second was that a common strategy in the game where you start a second instance on a different device to mine certain resources (it was called a "feeder city"). So there I was on any given Friday night sitting on the couch with my iPhone AND iPad open, swiping away.
One day it struck me that there was no end to this cycle. There was no winning. There was just more building and more swiping and more hours to go down the drain, and I just realized I had to quit. So I hard-deleted the game from my phone and iPad right in the middle of a weekend mini-tournament and never looked back.
In the days following, I had very regular twitches and urges to go back. "Just one more"....I realized this was real addiction. Luckily it passed after a few days. But wow - what an eye-opener for me.
I've never been hooked on nicotine or similar, but toward the end of 2017 a game (Simcity Buildit) dug deeeeeeeeep into my soul and for the first time in my life I had to aggressively quit something like that cold turkey.
First I should say: It's a great game and really fun! (HA - I know I sound like a pusher...) I didn't spend any money on it. But man did I spend brain cycles and time on it. A few specific game dynamics really get their hooks into you - this concept of mini game-within-a-game "tournaments" which require your attention over a specific period of time (ahem weekends).
My "rock bottom" was two things: I was on a long drive from LA to SF and I had my girlfriend open up the app to complete a few time-sensitive tasks for me while I was driving. There I was explaining "ok now swipe this. Drag it there. Great. Now do the same on this other thing. Ok thanks love!".
The second was that a common strategy in the game where you start a second instance on a different device to mine certain resources (it was called a "feeder city"). So there I was on any given Friday night sitting on the couch with my iPhone AND iPad open, swiping away.
One day it struck me that there was no end to this cycle. There was no winning. There was just more building and more swiping and more hours to go down the drain, and I just realized I had to quit. So I hard-deleted the game from my phone and iPad right in the middle of a weekend mini-tournament and never looked back.
In the days following, I had very regular twitches and urges to go back. "Just one more"....I realized this was real addiction. Luckily it passed after a few days. But wow - what an eye-opener for me.
I'm a bit surprised a city builder is highly playable on mobile. I've played Cities Skylines on desktop (and versions of SimCity in the past). I can't imagine trying to build anything of scale on mobile in a city builder though. Is it primarily the mechanics, feedback systems, that are enjoyable, rather than the visual construction aspect?
I got hooked on this in December after getting an iPad. Trying to moderate my usage. It helps to realize that 1) it's supposed to be fun and 2) I'll never be the best. I'd imagine I'll get off it a bit more once the weather warms up.
It's really well-made. My biggest knock on it is that it's a typical "milk as much money as possible out of the user" game, so you never know which mechanics are truly random or which ones are set up to hack your psychology. Some of the nags/alerts wear on you. I also wish it was a bit more optimized for aesthetics (no diagonal roads!).
But the UX is extremely good. The visuals are nice. The contests and general gameplay goals are engaging and fun. It's 4X-like, with that "one more turn" vibe and the need to balance multiple goals.
It's really well-made. My biggest knock on it is that it's a typical "milk as much money as possible out of the user" game, so you never know which mechanics are truly random or which ones are set up to hack your psychology. Some of the nags/alerts wear on you. I also wish it was a bit more optimized for aesthetics (no diagonal roads!).
But the UX is extremely good. The visuals are nice. The contests and general gameplay goals are engaging and fun. It's 4X-like, with that "one more turn" vibe and the need to balance multiple goals.
I think the calculated dynamics bit got to me as well - I’m almost certain (esp. from reading others’ experiences) that items that you need show up less frequently in the marketplace when you need them. So those nails that were so easy to find 10 minutes ago are suddenly super scarce when you’ve got some buildings that actually need them.
So you think “oh I just saw those!” And keep spinning the slot machine wheels of the marketplace. And then when they DO finally appear, that little dopamine hit is all the sweeter :)
So you think “oh I just saw those!” And keep spinning the slot machine wheels of the marketplace. And then when they DO finally appear, that little dopamine hit is all the sweeter :)
> show up less frequently in the marketplace when you need them
I see this alleged all the time, but a part of me is convinced that it's a trick of the mind. But I don't know, and that's what's frustrating. Even if they don't pull the rug out from you, they could do so at any time and I'd never know it. Not great!
I see this alleged all the time, but a part of me is convinced that it's a trick of the mind. But I don't know, and that's what's frustrating. Even if they don't pull the rug out from you, they could do so at any time and I'd never know it. Not great!
I could've written your same comment. As a (current) smoker, my experience of having quit twitter is exactly the same.
I recently blogged about that [1]. It's in spanish, but Google translate does an acceptable job with it.
[1] https://blog.jazzido.com/uncategorized/2021/02/12/mejore-su-...
I recently blogged about that [1]. It's in spanish, but Google translate does an acceptable job with it.
[1] https://blog.jazzido.com/uncategorized/2021/02/12/mejore-su-...
Is Twitter more addictive than say HN?
For me, yes. My addiction on Twitter was centered around real-time news/events. HN doesn’t have that focus, so for me, it’s a lot easier to moderate time on HN. I love HN, and probably do spend too much time here, but at least I’m not pulling to refresh sorted by latest tweets for hours on end every time there’s a plane crash (literal or figurative).
I much rather prefer discussion on HN for the simple fact that it's anonymized. That makes it much easier for users to up/down vote comments and it just works better. It shows you what people really think. It also makes everything more equal because it doesn't matter who you are or how many followers you have.
[deleted]
From my perspective, twitter is toxic as hell, focused on out-group shaming, blaming and finally hating.
HN is open discourse, focusing on respect. At least to me.
HN is open discourse, focusing on respect. At least to me.
Beware. One thing that happens to people in a homogeneous community is that the out-group shaming becomes invisible. So everyone in every little community thinks that their community is respectful, but the other communities are about hating.
Hacker News aggressively moderates to remove the most abrasive types of shaming, but you can still shame out-groups here, provided you do it civilly. See any thread about managing developers: At least one person will go on a rant about how managers are empty suits who do nothing useful and just get in the way while extracting rents in the form of cushy compensation packages.
That kind of generalization is also out-group shaming, it just doesn't look like a bunch of misogynists complaining that there are too many women in tech demanding equity.
(I'm in no way saying that just because Twitter has shaming, and so does HN, that the two are equivalent. They aren't even close to equivalent, because these things are not binary. But I am trying to point out how toxicity can be hard to judge from within a community.)
Hacker News aggressively moderates to remove the most abrasive types of shaming, but you can still shame out-groups here, provided you do it civilly. See any thread about managing developers: At least one person will go on a rant about how managers are empty suits who do nothing useful and just get in the way while extracting rents in the form of cushy compensation packages.
That kind of generalization is also out-group shaming, it just doesn't look like a bunch of misogynists complaining that there are too many women in tech demanding equity.
(I'm in no way saying that just because Twitter has shaming, and so does HN, that the two are equivalent. They aren't even close to equivalent, because these things are not binary. But I am trying to point out how toxicity can be hard to judge from within a community.)
My wife is a developer in the same company as mine (albeit in a totally different sub-orga). This is maybe the cause I don't share your experience (at all).
She's the best paid person in her sub-orga. We're definitely lucky, but also the woman-vs-man topic isn't relevant at all here. We (as a company) are just looking at skill in all aspects, and she's good in most of them, as am I in a different subset.
She also has a twin-sister. She works in a different company, different federal state, and she earns a bit more than my wife - and she also doesn't care at all about the shenanigans happening, she's just doing what she likes and is good at. If you don't believe me I'll create an email alias you can mail me at and we'll get into touch.
Yes both of them have been humiliated, and this is what we should work against. But they have proven theirselves, and they have had support from co-workers, and instead of always putting blame on whatever, we should put focus on supporting good people, regardless of gender. This is so much lost.
She's the best paid person in her sub-orga. We're definitely lucky, but also the woman-vs-man topic isn't relevant at all here. We (as a company) are just looking at skill in all aspects, and she's good in most of them, as am I in a different subset.
She also has a twin-sister. She works in a different company, different federal state, and she earns a bit more than my wife - and she also doesn't care at all about the shenanigans happening, she's just doing what she likes and is good at. If you don't believe me I'll create an email alias you can mail me at and we'll get into touch.
Yes both of them have been humiliated, and this is what we should work against. But they have proven theirselves, and they have had support from co-workers, and instead of always putting blame on whatever, we should put focus on supporting good people, regardless of gender. This is so much lost.
I quit about six months ago. The majority of people I followed, I felt obligated to follow, in order to keep ahead of social issues. But the toll of "doom scrolling" constant negative/angry/depressed posts really hammered my own mental health. I also developed a habit of refreshing the feed on my phone every five minutes.
I quit, and I found myself lost when I picked up my phone, like a lingering habit (I see someone mentioned it being similar to quitting smoking).
On reflection, I think the reason I felt an obligation to keep up with social issues etc, was because I was using my real name (ironic that this HN account is also my real name!). I felt like I had to show I was caring and keeping track of it. I do wonder, if I create an account without my real name, I can just use it how I like, and maybe it will be a different experience.
I quit, and I found myself lost when I picked up my phone, like a lingering habit (I see someone mentioned it being similar to quitting smoking).
On reflection, I think the reason I felt an obligation to keep up with social issues etc, was because I was using my real name (ironic that this HN account is also my real name!). I felt like I had to show I was caring and keeping track of it. I do wonder, if I create an account without my real name, I can just use it how I like, and maybe it will be a different experience.
> I felt like I had to show I was caring and keeping track of it.
I don't think this is necessary. A lot of people tweet about purely "professional" subjects and never tweet about social issues. If you stick to that, your followers will know what (and what not) to expect.
I don't think this is necessary. A lot of people tweet about purely "professional" subjects and never tweet about social issues. If you stick to that, your followers will know what (and what not) to expect.
The best advice my father gave me about the internet: assume everyone is a rapist who will stalk you and put you in a van if you say anything that can be traced back to you.
Ironically enough I use uber under my real name and I'm fine, but everyone I know how uses their real name in social media has had problems.
Ironically enough I use uber under my real name and I'm fine, but everyone I know how uses their real name in social media has had problems.
I check Twitter to learn what I should be outraged about. I literally say to myself "I wonder what I should be outraged about today?" and then lo and behold, Twitter tells me. I don't know where else to get that information. I wish I did, since Twitter is very inefficient with too many people retweeting the same tidbit so they can try their hand at a witty rejoinder. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the rejoinders, but they're also exhausting and lower the signal to noise ratio a lot.
Why do you want to be outraged?
There's a lot of stuff I want to know about that I don't know where else to find out about it, and much of this is outraging. For example, a lot of my Twitter feed is people pointing out how the Canadian media misrepresents events with a pro-conservative bias. Perhaps ignorance would be bliss, but I opt for a daily dose of poison to keep my tolerance up.
Have you ever thought that you think your perception of Canadian media is that way because Twitter is full of outraged leftists who think everything right of Marx is "far right propoganda"? Because as a Canadian that stays off of twitter because I find it toxic and not useful, I have to say when you wrote that Canadian media is pro-conservative I kinda laughed out loud a little.
Don't forget the moderate/centrist outrage with both the leftists and rightists.
You could try just...not being outraged?
It's possible to unfollow everyone who posts outrage tweets, give it a try. It will become eerily quiet, and hopefully only occasional once-a-day quality tweet will remain.
> I don't know where else to get that information.
The Daily Mail is a fairly good source of 'fury' (a term they use a lot in their headlines).
The Daily Mail is a fairly good source of 'fury' (a term they use a lot in their headlines).
These problems with Twitter don't just "happen". Twitter, like other social media companies, have unparalleled access to some of the best talent out there. Then they target that talent at maximizing comically reductive metrics like "engagement" and call it a day.
Twitter's design is extremely naive, that design leads to rampant toxicity and misinformation, and then they surprised_pikachu.jpg. For example: no matter how you interact with a post, you will boost it. So if you say something horribly toxic that incites outrage and reactions, Twitters dumb blind algorithm goes "NICE! Engagement!" and goes off to show that tweet to more people. Facebook does the same thing; every news article posted on Facebook has the most toxic comments right at the top.
These sites have designs that are not expressive enough, but they think they can get away with throwing ML algorithms at them; it does not work, and we end up with toxic cesspools.
Twitter's design is extremely naive, that design leads to rampant toxicity and misinformation, and then they surprised_pikachu.jpg. For example: no matter how you interact with a post, you will boost it. So if you say something horribly toxic that incites outrage and reactions, Twitters dumb blind algorithm goes "NICE! Engagement!" and goes off to show that tweet to more people. Facebook does the same thing; every news article posted on Facebook has the most toxic comments right at the top.
These sites have designs that are not expressive enough, but they think they can get away with throwing ML algorithms at them; it does not work, and we end up with toxic cesspools.
As a former user of the Fediverse, I disagree. Every problem he describes are present there too. It goes deeper than the algorithms: it's because of the fundamental design choices. Default visibility: public. Follow instead of friend. Mentions, hashtags, quote tweets, retweets, likes.
But these features are also why it's so popular with celebrities, which is Twitter's unique selling point, so it's not like they can just change it up either.
But these features are also why it's so popular with celebrities, which is Twitter's unique selling point, so it's not like they can just change it up either.
A thousand times yes, this is exactly what I am talking about! I don't mean just ML algorithms, I mean everything.
This post resonated me so well...
It's been more than a year since I quit Twitter and the likes. I can't stress enough how good it feels to not have constant stream of mental hazard. I decided to rely on my whim to collect information using my own filter bubble (something I like to term as "information mindfulness"). I feel: as digital platforms are growing and evolving, with everyone inside the echo chambers [0], it's better to practice this "information mindfulness".
I am sure it depends on your own usecase for social media like Twitter; how you're going to sink in the platform. For me it didn't work. I hit my mental limit (finally after a long time).
[0] - At this stage, almost everything feels like an echo chamber.
It's been more than a year since I quit Twitter and the likes. I can't stress enough how good it feels to not have constant stream of mental hazard. I decided to rely on my whim to collect information using my own filter bubble (something I like to term as "information mindfulness"). I feel: as digital platforms are growing and evolving, with everyone inside the echo chambers [0], it's better to practice this "information mindfulness".
I am sure it depends on your own usecase for social media like Twitter; how you're going to sink in the platform. For me it didn't work. I hit my mental limit (finally after a long time).
[0] - At this stage, almost everything feels like an echo chamber.
I agree with most of what the author wrote. I also don’t like how I can follow something who has good thoughts on Python but get their thoughts on politics. Then Twitter turned “like” into “maybe retweet” (you see what people you follow liked) so even if they don’t tweet about politics I see the political tweets they liked. I like the focus of subreddits in comparison.
I still use Twitter mostly as a write-only thing if I want to drop off a blog post, another place to reach me, and occasionally check my timeline. Lists are also a recommended feature.
With that said, I think Twitter has a bright future. Why? Because it’s always been a good way for celebrities to reach people. And in a world of Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Tiktok etc there are more mini-celebrities than ever and they all use Twitter for any quick thought blurbs. So they’ve really benefited by the expansion of what constitutes a celebrity.
My mom also uses Twitter, never tweets, but just follows news outlets. And it’s the only social media she has as a privacy-oriented person which is interesting.
Like most social media apps, if you don’t use it compulsively and control how you use it, there’s usually at least some value in having a presence.
I still use Twitter mostly as a write-only thing if I want to drop off a blog post, another place to reach me, and occasionally check my timeline. Lists are also a recommended feature.
With that said, I think Twitter has a bright future. Why? Because it’s always been a good way for celebrities to reach people. And in a world of Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Tiktok etc there are more mini-celebrities than ever and they all use Twitter for any quick thought blurbs. So they’ve really benefited by the expansion of what constitutes a celebrity.
My mom also uses Twitter, never tweets, but just follows news outlets. And it’s the only social media she has as a privacy-oriented person which is interesting.
Like most social media apps, if you don’t use it compulsively and control how you use it, there’s usually at least some value in having a presence.
I've used Twitter for more than a decade. I check it maybe once a day, and when I do, I read maybe 10% of my timeline and move on to something more productive.
The biggest problem is viral misinformation combined with a focus on people that are "good with Twitter". Someone with a bunch of followers tweets something like "the sun rose in the north this morning" and if you respond "that didn't happen and it couldn't have happened because science" you'll either be ignored, they'll be offended and block you, or they'll start cursing at you and all their tweets will be liked and retweeted.
The reason I used Twitter back in the day was to find out what was happening in the world and to interact with others. These days there are too many that think a big follower count means they can tweet stuff that's wrong.
Then there's the other stuff where you have to see someone called out for calling women brilliant (yep, happened today).
Try as I might, I can't return my timeline to what it was, and I can now go a week without looking at it and I don't miss anything.
The biggest problem is viral misinformation combined with a focus on people that are "good with Twitter". Someone with a bunch of followers tweets something like "the sun rose in the north this morning" and if you respond "that didn't happen and it couldn't have happened because science" you'll either be ignored, they'll be offended and block you, or they'll start cursing at you and all their tweets will be liked and retweeted.
The reason I used Twitter back in the day was to find out what was happening in the world and to interact with others. These days there are too many that think a big follower count means they can tweet stuff that's wrong.
Then there's the other stuff where you have to see someone called out for calling women brilliant (yep, happened today).
Try as I might, I can't return my timeline to what it was, and I can now go a week without looking at it and I don't miss anything.
>they'll be offended and block you
To them, their timeline is "curated" to remove "toxic" elements, which makes their filter bubble more pleasant. Then they blame you, even in this very thread, for finding these interactions useless. That isn't misinformation, that is a point of view.
The biggest problem is that Twitter- and Mastodon-style blocking make it impossible to engage with people who need to be engaged with, regardless of why (whether informational or emotional).
To them, their timeline is "curated" to remove "toxic" elements, which makes their filter bubble more pleasant. Then they blame you, even in this very thread, for finding these interactions useless. That isn't misinformation, that is a point of view.
The biggest problem is that Twitter- and Mastodon-style blocking make it impossible to engage with people who need to be engaged with, regardless of why (whether informational or emotional).
> people who need to be engaged
Who needs to be engaged with? On Twitter, you choose who to follow. Why in the world would you have an obligation to listen to random strangers who want to argue with you? Imagine if you were in a restaurant talking with your friends, some stranger sitting at another table overheard you, and then decided to come over and butt into the conversation? And when the stranger is told to go away, they complain "You're talking in a public place where people can hear you, what did you expect?" And somehow the stranger feels that they're wronged by that.
Who needs to be engaged with? On Twitter, you choose who to follow. Why in the world would you have an obligation to listen to random strangers who want to argue with you? Imagine if you were in a restaurant talking with your friends, some stranger sitting at another table overheard you, and then decided to come over and butt into the conversation? And when the stranger is told to go away, they complain "You're talking in a public place where people can hear you, what did you expect?" And somehow the stranger feels that they're wronged by that.
One man's need is not your obligation, and Twitter is a public place. I don't understand your analogy.
> One man's need is not your obligation
I don't understand your reply.
> Twitter is a public place. I don't understand your analogy.
The point is that in order to meet other people, you have to go out into the public. But that doesn't mean you want to meet with and talk with anyone and everyone out in the public. It's a terrible tradeoff if the only way you can get pleasant social interaction with others is to also suffer unpleasant social interaction with strangers who want to argue with you.
None of us designed Twitter. We have to take it as it is. Twitter is public, yes, but that's not an excuse for you personally to debate with every stranger you happen to disagree with. That's not on Twitter, that's on you.
I don't understand your reply.
> Twitter is a public place. I don't understand your analogy.
The point is that in order to meet other people, you have to go out into the public. But that doesn't mean you want to meet with and talk with anyone and everyone out in the public. It's a terrible tradeoff if the only way you can get pleasant social interaction with others is to also suffer unpleasant social interaction with strangers who want to argue with you.
None of us designed Twitter. We have to take it as it is. Twitter is public, yes, but that's not an excuse for you personally to debate with every stranger you happen to disagree with. That's not on Twitter, that's on you.
You personally debating every stranger is not the same thing as not blocking anybody who gets a rise out of you. Maybe that clears the confusion.
> if you respond "that didn't happen and it couldn't have happened because science" you'll either be ignored, they'll be offended and block you, or they'll start cursing at you
Have you considered that the problem might be you, and "Someone is wrong on the internet" repliers are super tedious?
Have you considered that the problem might be you, and "Someone is wrong on the internet" repliers are super tedious?
Yes, and that's not the problem at all.
But I do want to thank you for a perfect demonstration of how misinformation spreads. Folks like you don't even care that the content of a tweet is factually incorrect, and in most cases, it's made up so they can get likes and retweets. The post-truth world is alive and well. And, unfortunately, profitable for some.
But I do want to thank you for a perfect demonstration of how misinformation spreads. Folks like you don't even care that the content of a tweet is factually incorrect, and in most cases, it's made up so they can get likes and retweets. The post-truth world is alive and well. And, unfortunately, profitable for some.
> a perfect demonstration of how misinformation spreads
Which misinformation did I spread?
> Folks like you don't even care that the content of a tweet is factually incorrect
That's quite an interference.
Which misinformation did I spread?
> Folks like you don't even care that the content of a tweet is factually incorrect
That's quite an interference.
> How does a reasonable, good person end up warped like this, where they assume that every person out there is a bad faith actor? Where there’s absolutely no scope for disagreement? My theory is that Twitter warps people in this way, by simply removing any scope for reasoned discussion. When you only meet trolls, and never have any friendly discussion with different viewpoints, you assume that a person disagreeing with you is a troll.
Also, nothing sells like negativity and sadness. It's highly engaging material. In my opinion they're just selling the same old goods. The only difference is that the cost of goods is now you.
Also, nothing sells like negativity and sadness. It's highly engaging material. In my opinion they're just selling the same old goods. The only difference is that the cost of goods is now you.
I recently "quit" Twitter myself. I say "quit" because if you actually delete/remove/whatever your account, your handle may then become available for others to use. To avoid that, I used a combo of scripts/services to remove all of my Twitter data (tweets, likes, follows, etc.) and scrubbed my bio, profile pics, etc. I also set a reminder to log in every 6 months to avoid being purged and have my handle become available that way.
I'm using https://fraidyc.at/ in Firefox to follow any Twitter accounts I still care about and it works great, even better than Twitter honestly as all tweets are now chronological and I can segment accounts based on how often I care to view their updates, tag them to organize them, etc. Next, I need to move all my YouTube subscriptions to Fraidycat or similar, but, other than that, I'm done with modern social media (deleted Facebook in 2016). YMMV, but the less I use modern social media the more my quality of life and mental well-being have improved.
I say "modern" since social media has really been around since email and it's really only the more recent incarnations that have gotten so toxic. Communities like HN and some sub-Reddits are actually still quite enjoyable.
I'm using https://fraidyc.at/ in Firefox to follow any Twitter accounts I still care about and it works great, even better than Twitter honestly as all tweets are now chronological and I can segment accounts based on how often I care to view their updates, tag them to organize them, etc. Next, I need to move all my YouTube subscriptions to Fraidycat or similar, but, other than that, I'm done with modern social media (deleted Facebook in 2016). YMMV, but the less I use modern social media the more my quality of life and mental well-being have improved.
I say "modern" since social media has really been around since email and it's really only the more recent incarnations that have gotten so toxic. Communities like HN and some sub-Reddits are actually still quite enjoyable.
Thank you for that. I am going to investigate this further. I didn’t think there was a functioning way of doing this.
I’d really like to find something similar for Instagram. I want to consume that without creating an account, but haven’t figure out how.
I’d really like to find something similar for Instagram. I want to consume that without creating an account, but haven’t figure out how.
You bet :)
And FYI, per its website, Fraidycat says it does support Instagram, although I can't vouch for the experience as it's not a platform I use.
And FYI, per its website, Fraidycat says it does support Instagram, although I can't vouch for the experience as it's not a platform I use.
fyi they never actually implemented that "purge inactive accounts" thing. I remember people bringing up the issue of dead people's accounts being deleted/taken over, but idk if that was why they shelved it.
That was something different. Deactivated accounts do get deleted and their names made available after 30 days just like it warns you when you deactivate.
That's good to know, thanks. Although, I will probably still log in periodically, just in case they ever do decide to implement that policy.
I've more or less removed Twitter from my life. From my perspective, Twitter turns people into the worst versions of themselves and in some ways has gamified social interaction to the point of making toxic behaviour and witch hunts the default simply because it's the best way to "win points".
To quote WarGames, "the only winning move is not to play."
For the odd occasion when I do log on to Twitter, my rule is simple - if I see a tweet that annoys me or I just don't like, then I block them. I have no wish to spend any time or energy even allowing that stuff around me.
To quote WarGames, "the only winning move is not to play."
For the odd occasion when I do log on to Twitter, my rule is simple - if I see a tweet that annoys me or I just don't like, then I block them. I have no wish to spend any time or energy even allowing that stuff around me.
Twitter is the best place to reach some of the top people in tech (in the big data niche at least). It's a great place to market projects, get a following, and find open source collaborators.
It can also be a toxic place that puts you in a bad head space and wastes time. A ticking time bomb that can blow up your productivity at any moment.
I recommend aggressively muting / unfollowing to keep your feed clean. Anything offensive / negative deserves an unfollow. Irrelevant stuff deserves a mute.
For me, ratio of programming posts / other posts should be 10:1. Also mute people that retweet too much.
Having a follower strategy is also important. For me, Twitter is a part time job, similar to open source work. It's not "fun".
It can also be a toxic place that puts you in a bad head space and wastes time. A ticking time bomb that can blow up your productivity at any moment.
I recommend aggressively muting / unfollowing to keep your feed clean. Anything offensive / negative deserves an unfollow. Irrelevant stuff deserves a mute.
For me, ratio of programming posts / other posts should be 10:1. Also mute people that retweet too much.
Having a follower strategy is also important. For me, Twitter is a part time job, similar to open source work. It's not "fun".
Twitter (and FB) would be 2x better if they just removed the retweet.
yeah, sure, it can be gotten around, but
misinformation or sensationionalist crap shared so easily, so cheaply, has a lot of unintended consequences.
yeah, sure, it can be gotten around, but
misinformation or sensationionalist crap shared so easily, so cheaply, has a lot of unintended consequences.
Twitter has anti-social behavior built into the UI. Everybody understands why it would be rude if I were talking to you at a party and mid-sentence I turned my head to somebody else and said, "can you believe what this idiot is saying to me?"
Well, that's a quote tweet.
And, crucially, while it feels nearly as bad when this happens to you on twitter as when it happens in real life [0], it doesn't feel as bad to the perpetrator as it does in real life.
It's baked right into the UI.
[0] In fact, it actually feels worse, often, because if an account with a lot of followers does this to you, then the website will be unusable for you for at least a day, as hordes of people fill up your mentions with vitriol.
Well, that's a quote tweet.
And, crucially, while it feels nearly as bad when this happens to you on twitter as when it happens in real life [0], it doesn't feel as bad to the perpetrator as it does in real life.
It's baked right into the UI.
[0] In fact, it actually feels worse, often, because if an account with a lot of followers does this to you, then the website will be unusable for you for at least a day, as hordes of people fill up your mentions with vitriol.
90% of Twitter:
"Someone I don't like did something I don't like and I'm so angry and you need to know about my anger because that will make a big difference to absolutely no one."
I've kept my profile/account up, but I've stopped participating and nuked all but a handful of tweets that I thought may be a reference for folks, and didn't want to turn them into dead ends. It's too hard (or requires too much effort) to avoid the toxic stuff that makes Twitter a hellscape. I'd like to go back to the days when people didn't think everyone else was interested in them airing their bullshit to the world.
"Someone I don't like did something I don't like and I'm so angry and you need to know about my anger because that will make a big difference to absolutely no one."
I've kept my profile/account up, but I've stopped participating and nuked all but a handful of tweets that I thought may be a reference for folks, and didn't want to turn them into dead ends. It's too hard (or requires too much effort) to avoid the toxic stuff that makes Twitter a hellscape. I'd like to go back to the days when people didn't think everyone else was interested in them airing their bullshit to the world.
quitting Twitter will improve your life, but here's the problem:
it leaves it to the most radical.
and why is that a problem?
because there is a pipeline from Twitter into the real world, especially via journalists and politicians who live on there.
what's the answer?
I'd love to hear ideas! but I think either we need many, many more reasonable voices on Twitter (an uphill battle, given the platform rewards and optimizes for outrage) or the pipeline needs to be severed or replaced. the latter is probably the way to go, but how?
it leaves it to the most radical.
and why is that a problem?
because there is a pipeline from Twitter into the real world, especially via journalists and politicians who live on there.
what's the answer?
I'd love to hear ideas! but I think either we need many, many more reasonable voices on Twitter (an uphill battle, given the platform rewards and optimizes for outrage) or the pipeline needs to be severed or replaced. the latter is probably the way to go, but how?
I often remind journalists "real people don't use Twitter". It's not entirely true, of course, but it's largely bots, people pretending to be bots, celebrities, people pretending to be celebrities, and journalists. It's performative.
Journalists outsourcing their job to squeeky wheels volunteering outrage is a problem with the journalists' superiors, customers, and sense of duty, not with the channels of communication available to us by technology and law.
But instead, we will suffer through algorithmic and legislative harrassment because the user is always the problem, not the corporate marketeers.
But instead, we will suffer through algorithmic and legislative harrassment because the user is always the problem, not the corporate marketeers.
Reasonable voices get downvoted. Social media rewards extremes.
To begin with: we’re a tech community. Building a better twitter is possible, so build it. Even if you don’t build a winning app, you could demonstrate ideas or designs for alternatives. It could even be mock ups or prototypes. Contribute ideas to making a better world.
One approach is to leave twitter to the addicts manipulated into rage and just waiting. Either people will “develop antibodies” to twitter (PG) or it will destroy itself.
As others have pointed out, the real world institutions can solve the problem by breaking the connection between ML-induced outrage and their policy decisions. You shouldn’t feel like you have to take that on yourself, but I guess if you liked that idea then you could campaign for it.
If you stay on twitter you might improve the average level of discourse, but don’t overestimate your ability to resist the feedback loop that will constantly be trying to find new ways to trick you into engagement (and most of the time, enragement). You’re only human and it’s relentless. It doesn’t seem very sophisticated but even a random search algorithm will work given enough tries. You’ll also be legitimising twitter, which is questionable because they are knowingly creating this problem (disclaimer: I’m on twitter).
Regulation of social networks is on the way, twitter probably peaked with Trump, and I think you also have to think about opportunity cost, eg arguing on twitter vs building something that improves the world.
One approach is to leave twitter to the addicts manipulated into rage and just waiting. Either people will “develop antibodies” to twitter (PG) or it will destroy itself.
As others have pointed out, the real world institutions can solve the problem by breaking the connection between ML-induced outrage and their policy decisions. You shouldn’t feel like you have to take that on yourself, but I guess if you liked that idea then you could campaign for it.
If you stay on twitter you might improve the average level of discourse, but don’t overestimate your ability to resist the feedback loop that will constantly be trying to find new ways to trick you into engagement (and most of the time, enragement). You’re only human and it’s relentless. It doesn’t seem very sophisticated but even a random search algorithm will work given enough tries. You’ll also be legitimising twitter, which is questionable because they are knowingly creating this problem (disclaimer: I’m on twitter).
Regulation of social networks is on the way, twitter probably peaked with Trump, and I think you also have to think about opportunity cost, eg arguing on twitter vs building something that improves the world.
> Building a better twitter is possible, so build it.
It's been done. For example, app.net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net I deleted my Twitter account and joined ADN. But not many followed that example. Most people stuck with Twitter, ADN never reached "critical mass", and it eventually shut down.
I don't think this is a technological problem. You could say it's a marketing problem. The critical mass is essential to a social network. ADN didn't get it. Mastodon hasn't got it. Twitter has it, Facebook has it, and it's just hard to compete with that.
It's been done. For example, app.net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net I deleted my Twitter account and joined ADN. But not many followed that example. Most people stuck with Twitter, ADN never reached "critical mass", and it eventually shut down.
I don't think this is a technological problem. You could say it's a marketing problem. The critical mass is essential to a social network. ADN didn't get it. Mastodon hasn't got it. Twitter has it, Facebook has it, and it's just hard to compete with that.
> I don't think this is a technological problem. You could say it's a marketing problem.
Yes I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. Perhaps App.net really was better, that's great - it means we know how to solve the problems of twitter (given I haven't heard exactly how it was better, that makes me sceptical).
But I think what you mean is _replace_ twitter, which is not what I was getting at. That is not just a tech or marketing problem but a business problem. I believe that's possible too. But the skillset required is probably outside of the average HN member, so I was tailoring my comment for a tech person.
Another way tech people can contribute is making chrome add-ons that improve twitter, demonstrating how it can be better.
Again, that's separate from launching a company.
Yes I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. Perhaps App.net really was better, that's great - it means we know how to solve the problems of twitter (given I haven't heard exactly how it was better, that makes me sceptical).
But I think what you mean is _replace_ twitter, which is not what I was getting at. That is not just a tech or marketing problem but a business problem. I believe that's possible too. But the skillset required is probably outside of the average HN member, so I was tailoring my comment for a tech person.
Another way tech people can contribute is making chrome add-ons that improve twitter, demonstrating how it can be better.
Again, that's separate from launching a company.
> given I haven't heard exactly how it was better, that makes me sceptical
ADN was a subscription service. The common expression is always true: if you're not the customer, you're the product.
ADN was a subscription service. The common expression is always true: if you're not the customer, you're the product.
> ADN was a subscription service. The common expression is always true: if you're not the customer, you're the product.
There's a false implication here that ADN was better than Twitter but failed only because Twitter's business model is worse but lucrative. I think that's really not true. If you could build a product that people liked more, even if you made less money you'd still win.
There's a false implication here that ADN was better than Twitter but failed only because Twitter's business model is worse but lucrative. I think that's really not true. If you could build a product that people liked more, even if you made less money you'd still win.
Twitter could've been so much better if people could post into different channels instead of dumping everything into one feed. Humans are multi-faceted beings and their communication is multi-faceted too. Not supporting it in communication software is just poor abstraction.
I want to be able to choose which facet of a person I'm interested in, and which not. Instead, Twitter proposes the "all or nothing" approach. Either you follow everything, or nothing. No wonder we have strong social polarization and social bubbles.
I want to be able to choose which facet of a person I'm interested in, and which not. Instead, Twitter proposes the "all or nothing" approach. Either you follow everything, or nothing. No wonder we have strong social polarization and social bubbles.
Completely agree. One feed, driven by "engagement" (read: outrage).
I tried to follow experts in a field, but the content was 90% about things NOT in their field that I don't care about. The algorithm drives toxicity in a way that is ALSO true about (say) Facebook news article comments; however, my usage of Facebook is not to consume THAT content, but to consume the ACTUAL content of my ACTUAL friends. I'm not "important" enough on Twitter to get any engagement, which I don't really care about, because I'm not trying to be a personality or an influencer, or overuse hashtags for attention and clicks. But then on those rare occasions when you WOULD get value from a large circle, you don't have it.
Facebook's drive to require "real names" some years ago, for what it's worth today, has also made it more "familiar. And I'm seeing my friends' content, and, at worse, their off-color or vaguely toxic friends. Some of that stuff sucks to see, but it's far better than the algo-driven firehouse of content from random people I get on Twitter.
And on Twitter and IG, the people who I DO know that I follow, are generally a subset of IRL friends, and I'll probably see their content on FB. And anyway, half of them are using generic made-up monikers that change each week and I can't keep track of, or don't care to.
I tried to follow experts in a field, but the content was 90% about things NOT in their field that I don't care about. The algorithm drives toxicity in a way that is ALSO true about (say) Facebook news article comments; however, my usage of Facebook is not to consume THAT content, but to consume the ACTUAL content of my ACTUAL friends. I'm not "important" enough on Twitter to get any engagement, which I don't really care about, because I'm not trying to be a personality or an influencer, or overuse hashtags for attention and clicks. But then on those rare occasions when you WOULD get value from a large circle, you don't have it.
Facebook's drive to require "real names" some years ago, for what it's worth today, has also made it more "familiar. And I'm seeing my friends' content, and, at worse, their off-color or vaguely toxic friends. Some of that stuff sucks to see, but it's far better than the algo-driven firehouse of content from random people I get on Twitter.
And on Twitter and IG, the people who I DO know that I follow, are generally a subset of IRL friends, and I'll probably see their content on FB. And anyway, half of them are using generic made-up monikers that change each week and I can't keep track of, or don't care to.
> Twitter could've been so much better if people could post into different channels instead of dumping everything into one feed.
Twitter has posting tools for that which could be better, but they exist, are simple, and are widely used) with hashtags and mentions.
What it doesn't do is surface a UI that makes it convenient to set up a list of such channels to view and to set one as your default channel instead of the basic feed.
That is, as I understand, a common tool of third-party clients, though.
Twitter has posting tools for that which could be better, but they exist, are simple, and are widely used) with hashtags and mentions.
What it doesn't do is surface a UI that makes it convenient to set up a list of such channels to view and to set one as your default channel instead of the basic feed.
That is, as I understand, a common tool of third-party clients, though.
You can have multiple accounts, it's not very hard.
I tried to use Twitter for cyber security news. I followed very smart people and i hoped to see their research about new vulnerabilities etc. but what I mostly saw was shitty posts about politics, theirs kids and daily life and rare about my topic of interest
Indeed. I'll often see experts in their fields and otherwise very interesting people retweet and reply to stuff I absolutely don't care about, or have already heard enough of.
I quit Facebook the other day. I didn’t like my online persona. I’d rather friends and family knew me in person or not at all.
>I didn’t like my online persona.
I think this is one of the bigger factors when people choose to quit social networks, even if they don't realize it explicitly. There's such a "hustle culture" to get likes and favorites that it really warps what you can post. You can't really be vulnerable on a social network because it either gets ignored or interpreted as another hustle ("You got this!!!") because the surrounding content from everyone else is "Look at how great I am!". YouTube creators have to explicitly say "Please like and subscribe!" but that's implicit and pervasive on Twitter and Facebook by their very nature.
I think this is one of the bigger factors when people choose to quit social networks, even if they don't realize it explicitly. There's such a "hustle culture" to get likes and favorites that it really warps what you can post. You can't really be vulnerable on a social network because it either gets ignored or interpreted as another hustle ("You got this!!!") because the surrounding content from everyone else is "Look at how great I am!". YouTube creators have to explicitly say "Please like and subscribe!" but that's implicit and pervasive on Twitter and Facebook by their very nature.
I used facebook for promoting local events but in the last ~5 years it was less and less effective for that.
Then I used it only for meme groups and getting angry at strangers.
Hard quit last summer and never looked back.
You don't have to join meme groups? They're easier to avoid than a toxic algo. I just use groups for hobbies I actually engage in.
Even if you have followers, if your individual tweets don't engage well, Twitter won't show them to 100% of the people who explicitly follow you, thanks to their algorithms. YouTube is the same way, which is why you see channels telling users to do three clicks to actually follow: subscribe, notifications on, notifications set to "all".
They censor you from your own opt-in audience unless your content is clickbaity enough and benefits the platform's own advertising metrics. You can only ever be a sharecropper on censorship platforms, no matter how successful you become.
I had >20k followers after more than a decade on Twitter, and I deleted. Now I use an email mailing list, and 100% of the people who want to see 100% of the things I send.
Fuck censorship.
They censor you from your own opt-in audience unless your content is clickbaity enough and benefits the platform's own advertising metrics. You can only ever be a sharecropper on censorship platforms, no matter how successful you become.
I had >20k followers after more than a decade on Twitter, and I deleted. Now I use an email mailing list, and 100% of the people who want to see 100% of the things I send.
Fuck censorship.
What you describe in the first paragraph is not censorship.
There's a whole thing around censorship not applying to private platforms, but even if you argue that the word "censorship" applies to a private entity moderating the content it publishes with its own money (like Hacker News: It definitely moderates content), the thing you describe is still not that kind of "censorship."
Showing or not showing your tweets based on Twitter optimizing for engagement and advertising is not like a government deciding that nobody is allowed to criticize the Dear Leader.
It's actually like a grocery store that promises to stock your product for free, but you aren't Coca-Cola, so you get shitty shelf space and positioning, until you either pay up for shelf space, or build enough demand for your product that the store decides it can make more money giving you better positioning.
Twitter also moderates content in a way that has nothing to do with engagement and making them money. But if you give someone free content, you have to accept them deciding how they feel like monetizing that content.
If you don't like it, write a blog.
There's a whole thing around censorship not applying to private platforms, but even if you argue that the word "censorship" applies to a private entity moderating the content it publishes with its own money (like Hacker News: It definitely moderates content), the thing you describe is still not that kind of "censorship."
Showing or not showing your tweets based on Twitter optimizing for engagement and advertising is not like a government deciding that nobody is allowed to criticize the Dear Leader.
It's actually like a grocery store that promises to stock your product for free, but you aren't Coca-Cola, so you get shitty shelf space and positioning, until you either pay up for shelf space, or build enough demand for your product that the store decides it can make more money giving you better positioning.
Twitter also moderates content in a way that has nothing to do with engagement and making them money. But if you give someone free content, you have to accept them deciding how they feel like monetizing that content.
If you don't like it, write a blog.
Censorship is maybe the wrong word, but we all understood what he meant and agree that this behavior wrong.
Twitter misleads you into believing following someone will deliver you 100% of their content (and similarly, that someone who follows you will see 100% of your content) while that's not actually the case.
It might not be censorship, but it's still a terrible move, and frankly a sign of a defective product. The whole point of Twitter is to "follow" accounts you're interested in - if the tool can't do this with 100% reliability it should be considered as broken.
Twitter misleads you into believing following someone will deliver you 100% of their content (and similarly, that someone who follows you will see 100% of your content) while that's not actually the case.
It might not be censorship, but it's still a terrible move, and frankly a sign of a defective product. The whole point of Twitter is to "follow" accounts you're interested in - if the tool can't do this with 100% reliability it should be considered as broken.
We don't get to declare what Twitter is or isn't. It has evolved over time from a kind of microblogging platform into an algorithmic-timeline social network.
As a user, I don't care for it much, but in no way is it "defective." It does what it does, and if we don't like it, it's our obligation to make sure the door doesn't hit us in the ass on our way out.
The thing we have to understand is that we who want a microblogging platform aren't their market. They're not interested in people with 500-5,000 followers using Twitter to publish things that every one of their followers will see.
Likewise, they're not interested in people who want to just follow certain people and see 100% of their tweets. That's not their business model. Do I like that? No. But I'm not their customer, I'm the product they sell to their customers.
———
One thing I find very interesting about discussions like this is how closely they resemble discussions from the 1970s and 1980s about what computers were for. It seems quaint now, but people once said computers were for business, not games.
Then a younger generation came along and when all the old fogies died off or retired, gaming became a gajillion-dollar industry.
Now we get pronouncements like "That's not what Twitter's for." Obviously it is what Twitter's for, because millions of people are using it that way and are "Happy as Larry," oblivious to the fact that it used to be a microblogging platform, and if we ask 100 randomly chosen Twitter employees, exactly zero of them will say Twitter is defective and they're working hard to restore its value as a way to subscribe to everything people tweet.
I kind of feel like those of us who miss its microblogging origin are metaphorically members of an older generation than those who are happily Tweeting, TikToking, SnapChatting, &c.
As a user, I don't care for it much, but in no way is it "defective." It does what it does, and if we don't like it, it's our obligation to make sure the door doesn't hit us in the ass on our way out.
The thing we have to understand is that we who want a microblogging platform aren't their market. They're not interested in people with 500-5,000 followers using Twitter to publish things that every one of their followers will see.
Likewise, they're not interested in people who want to just follow certain people and see 100% of their tweets. That's not their business model. Do I like that? No. But I'm not their customer, I'm the product they sell to their customers.
———
One thing I find very interesting about discussions like this is how closely they resemble discussions from the 1970s and 1980s about what computers were for. It seems quaint now, but people once said computers were for business, not games.
Then a younger generation came along and when all the old fogies died off or retired, gaming became a gajillion-dollar industry.
Now we get pronouncements like "That's not what Twitter's for." Obviously it is what Twitter's for, because millions of people are using it that way and are "Happy as Larry," oblivious to the fact that it used to be a microblogging platform, and if we ask 100 randomly chosen Twitter employees, exactly zero of them will say Twitter is defective and they're working hard to restore its value as a way to subscribe to everything people tweet.
I kind of feel like those of us who miss its microblogging origin are metaphorically members of an older generation than those who are happily Tweeting, TikToking, SnapChatting, &c.
The concept of following still (at least to me) implies seeing all the content said person is posting. Twitter liberally uses the word "follow" but then doesn't deliver.
They are not being transparent about your experience being manipulated for the purposes of generating engagement either. Most non-technical people don't immediately associate "contains ads" with "will use all kinds of nasty tricks to make you spend more time looking at said ads".
---
> are "Happy as Larry,"
Are they? The amounts of arguments and toxicity on that despicable website (enough to prompt highly-upvoted posts about quitting the website every so often) suggests they aren't?
> exactly zero of them will say Twitter is defective
They profit from the fact that it's defective, so of course to them it is not a defect, just like a printer manufacturer will tell you that ink cartridge DRM is not a defect, or some smart juice press manufacturer will tell you that its online-only requirement and juice pack DRM is also not a defect.
They are not being transparent about your experience being manipulated for the purposes of generating engagement either. Most non-technical people don't immediately associate "contains ads" with "will use all kinds of nasty tricks to make you spend more time looking at said ads".
---
> are "Happy as Larry,"
Are they? The amounts of arguments and toxicity on that despicable website (enough to prompt highly-upvoted posts about quitting the website every so often) suggests they aren't?
> exactly zero of them will say Twitter is defective
They profit from the fact that it's defective, so of course to them it is not a defect, just like a printer manufacturer will tell you that ink cartridge DRM is not a defect, or some smart juice press manufacturer will tell you that its online-only requirement and juice pack DRM is also not a defect.
They are not being transparent about your experience being manipulated for the purposes of generating engagement either. Most non-technical people don't immediately associate "contains ads" with "will use all kinds of nasty tricks to make you spend more time looking at said ads".
You have something there that applies to all of social media (and just because others do it doesn't make it ok). Algorithms are black boxes. Even if you make 100% sure I read a disclaimer explaining that the timeline is curated and algorithmic, I still will never know what I'm getting and what I'm missing.
The lack of control and transparency is abhorrent to a certain type of person, and you and I are probably those kind of people. But there's a vast world out there that simply. doesn't. care. Even after we explain why they ought to care.
Compare and contrast to walled gardens like iOS. There's a certain type of HNer who talks about iOS the way we're talking about Twitter. And yet... Many, many people are happy with an opaque system deciding which apps they can install, which apps appear on the front page of the app store, &c.
It can be very frustrating, but there it is. People like Twitter, and no amount of explaining why they shouldn't like it will change their minds.
You have something there that applies to all of social media (and just because others do it doesn't make it ok). Algorithms are black boxes. Even if you make 100% sure I read a disclaimer explaining that the timeline is curated and algorithmic, I still will never know what I'm getting and what I'm missing.
The lack of control and transparency is abhorrent to a certain type of person, and you and I are probably those kind of people. But there's a vast world out there that simply. doesn't. care. Even after we explain why they ought to care.
Compare and contrast to walled gardens like iOS. There's a certain type of HNer who talks about iOS the way we're talking about Twitter. And yet... Many, many people are happy with an opaque system deciding which apps they can install, which apps appear on the front page of the app store, &c.
It can be very frustrating, but there it is. People like Twitter, and no amount of explaining why they shouldn't like it will change their minds.
The fact that some people are blind to these issues doesn't mean we shouldn't be calling out unethical, malicious, misleading or defective behavior and/or software.
100% agree. It may be futile with the vast majority of their users, but every person who actually cares about it and becomes more informed though advocacy is a modest win of some kind.
a printer manufacturer will tell you that ink cartridge DRM is not a defect, or some smart juice press manufacturer will tell you that its online-only requirement and juice pack DRM is also not a defect.
There's a phrase for this: "Defective by design." Meaning, what we the observer consider to be a harmful quality of the product is not an accident or oversight, but a deliberate choice.
I say similar things about Slack's iPad client. It's defective by design.
Likewise, web sites that choose not to be accessible are defective-by-design. If you ask their product manager, the response will be, "Accessibility is not a priority, and we can live with people who need accessible web sites doing business with someone else."
Of course, it's implicit in the phrase "defective by design" that this kind of defective is not exactly the same kind of "defective" as the product not doing the thing its creators designed it to do, or not doing the thing that their target market expect it to do.
There's a phrase for this: "Defective by design." Meaning, what we the observer consider to be a harmful quality of the product is not an accident or oversight, but a deliberate choice.
I say similar things about Slack's iPad client. It's defective by design.
Likewise, web sites that choose not to be accessible are defective-by-design. If you ask their product manager, the response will be, "Accessibility is not a priority, and we can live with people who need accessible web sites doing business with someone else."
Of course, it's implicit in the phrase "defective by design" that this kind of defective is not exactly the same kind of "defective" as the product not doing the thing its creators designed it to do, or not doing the thing that their target market expect it to do.
Are they? The amounts of arguments and toxicity on that despicable website (enough to prompt highly-upvoted posts about quitting the website every so often) suggests they aren't?
This is a very interesting point, to which I will say that people who complain or praise any product are always the vocal minority.
As I alluded to in another reply, we regularly get impassioned posts and comments about what's wrong with iOS on HN, and yet we know for a fact that many, many, MANY people are happy with their iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches.
This is a very interesting point, to which I will say that people who complain or praise any product are always the vocal minority.
As I alluded to in another reply, we regularly get impassioned posts and comments about what's wrong with iOS on HN, and yet we know for a fact that many, many, MANY people are happy with their iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches.
Most people are happy with censorship and a lack of freedom of speech, because most people have nothing to say, and a lack of such never affects them.
Most people are fine not having any privacy, because they believe that they have nothing to hide.
The danger comes from making it impossible to publish unpopular things or publish anonymously, or making privacy impossible. There is a percentage of people for whom these things are not only important but essential, and when we close off those options then we lose the important aspects of society facilitated by those people. Those aspects benefit everyone.
We should pay very close attention to the complaints of those people, even if (or perhaps especially because) they are a minority of users.
Most people are fine not having any privacy, because they believe that they have nothing to hide.
The danger comes from making it impossible to publish unpopular things or publish anonymously, or making privacy impossible. There is a percentage of people for whom these things are not only important but essential, and when we close off those options then we lose the important aspects of society facilitated by those people. Those aspects benefit everyone.
We should pay very close attention to the complaints of those people, even if (or perhaps especially because) they are a minority of users.
> If you don't like it, write a blog.
And when my blog host starts hiding my posts? What then? Will you tell me the same thing?
I did write a blog. On Twitter.
And when my blog host starts hiding my posts? What then? Will you tell me the same thing?
I did write a blog. On Twitter.
You can't promote some things to the top without simultaneously demoting other things down the page. Such is the tyranny of spacetime.
>> Now I use an email mailing list, and 100% of the people who want to see 100% of the things I send.
I totally agree that you should have a direct channel (email) to your internet friends.
I think what Twitter can offer is to let new people discover you. Email lists don't grow that way on their own (people won't really forward your email to their friends, but they retweet your tweets and so their friends find you).
I totally agree that you should have a direct channel (email) to your internet friends.
I think what Twitter can offer is to let new people discover you. Email lists don't grow that way on their own (people won't really forward your email to their friends, but they retweet your tweets and so their friends find you).
The vast majority of my email list is strangers who signed up on my website, after they got linked to something I wrote. That is to say, people don't sign up for my emails because of my emails, they sign up for my emails because of my website. I'm yet to actually send a single email, but I will probably start soon as I have some cool things to announce.
I got to 25% of my Twitter numbers (after 12 years on Twitter) within only a year or two of writing consistently on my own site. By those figures, I am discovered and followed more and faster on my own site than I ever was on Twitter.
YMMV, of course.
I got to 25% of my Twitter numbers (after 12 years on Twitter) within only a year or two of writing consistently on my own site. By those figures, I am discovered and followed more and faster on my own site than I ever was on Twitter.
YMMV, of course.
> YouTube is the same way
I had seen that claim before but I never noticed it. I subscribe to about 250 YouTube channels. They seem to appear in my subscriptions, in chronological order, as they're released. Are you referring to the homepage rather than subscriptions?
I had seen that claim before but I never noticed it. I subscribe to about 250 YouTube channels. They seem to appear in my subscriptions, in chronological order, as they're released. Are you referring to the homepage rather than subscriptions?
Yes. YouTube deserves a little bit of credit for preserving a chronological view, but this is perhaps cancelled out by their draconian restrictions on what you are allowed to publish.
I had a tiny amount of followers and quit. There's a very quiet voice in the back of my head that wonders what I would have done with something like 20k. You're the real deal.
The world would be a much better place if Twitter were used only by mouth-breathing weirdos battling one another in full-on flame wars over which is better: vi or emacs.
I'm not joking. I think the pathology that exists on Twitter has always been with us. But, years ago, there was only a "select" group of individuals who had their pathology amplified by Internet forums. Now, people who have no idea what a flame war even is — much less vi or emacs — go to war day after day. And there are millions of them, from every walk of life.
So, we've demonstrated flame wars are scalable. Hooray.
I'm not joking. I think the pathology that exists on Twitter has always been with us. But, years ago, there was only a "select" group of individuals who had their pathology amplified by Internet forums. Now, people who have no idea what a flame war even is — much less vi or emacs — go to war day after day. And there are millions of them, from every walk of life.
So, we've demonstrated flame wars are scalable. Hooray.
A slightly less drastic option than quitting is to go into a passive, readonly mode and keep a safe distance.
I use https://fraidyc.at/ Seriously, it's a thing. You can still follow public social media streams that you're interested in. It does RSS, Twitter, as well as the usual social media suspects. It's fast and perfect for avoiding getting suckered into a fight over nothing important.
If you really have to, you can fire up the real thing but this is a good way to get some of your time back.
I use https://fraidyc.at/ Seriously, it's a thing. You can still follow public social media streams that you're interested in. It does RSS, Twitter, as well as the usual social media suspects. It's fast and perfect for avoiding getting suckered into a fight over nothing important.
If you really have to, you can fire up the real thing but this is a good way to get some of your time back.
I've been on Twitter for several years now, but not posted much. I used to find it interesting because there was a lot of good technical articles and information being shared by the people I chose to follow. Then over time that mostly stopped, but it was still good because I followed people who posted the kind of dumb jokes I like.
And then I felt increasingly disconnected from everyone because of being stuck at home in a pandemic. And I started tweeting a little more, and getting pretty much nothing back. And then I had a bad interaction (nothing abusive, just confrontational), and I uninstalled the app from my phone.
I basically agree with everything in TFA. There is fun, interesting and sometimes even insightful stuff on Twitter. But people become warped. It's incredibly difficult to actually have a two-way communication on Twitter; people will misinterpret and assume the worst about everything you write.
And I was not immune to this effect either - I realised when I went back over the back-and-forth that had felt so emotionally charged at the time, that I had also been assuming the worst and replying without the open mind that might have led to a better interaction.
And then I felt increasingly disconnected from everyone because of being stuck at home in a pandemic. And I started tweeting a little more, and getting pretty much nothing back. And then I had a bad interaction (nothing abusive, just confrontational), and I uninstalled the app from my phone.
I basically agree with everything in TFA. There is fun, interesting and sometimes even insightful stuff on Twitter. But people become warped. It's incredibly difficult to actually have a two-way communication on Twitter; people will misinterpret and assume the worst about everything you write.
And I was not immune to this effect either - I realised when I went back over the back-and-forth that had felt so emotionally charged at the time, that I had also been assuming the worst and replying without the open mind that might have led to a better interaction.
I personally do not care about Problem 1. I mostly use Twitter in a passive way -- following people that are experts on the topics that I'm interested in. I assume if you want to get a reasonable following you need to put quite the effort in it.
Problem 2 appears but I've noticed that muting works well enough to avoid it.
Problem 3 does not seem to be Twitter-specific but again blocking and muting seems to work for me as well.
My personal take is that something brings value to you or not depending on how you use it. Here is a quote from (https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/) that resonates with me: "The Explore Tab on Twitter is the most important newspaper in the world. It’s littered with celebrity gossip and exaggerated political drama — both of which yield a wide reach but incentivize empty content. And yet, as the Paradox of Abundance predicts, Twitter is also one of the world’s top intellectual communities. It’s the bedrock of my social and intellectual life. It’s a place to make friends, raise your ambitions, and connect directly with people at the top of their fields. And yet, most people use Twitter to consume information with no nutritional value."
Problem 2 appears but I've noticed that muting works well enough to avoid it.
Problem 3 does not seem to be Twitter-specific but again blocking and muting seems to work for me as well.
My personal take is that something brings value to you or not depending on how you use it. Here is a quote from (https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/) that resonates with me: "The Explore Tab on Twitter is the most important newspaper in the world. It’s littered with celebrity gossip and exaggerated political drama — both of which yield a wide reach but incentivize empty content. And yet, as the Paradox of Abundance predicts, Twitter is also one of the world’s top intellectual communities. It’s the bedrock of my social and intellectual life. It’s a place to make friends, raise your ambitions, and connect directly with people at the top of their fields. And yet, most people use Twitter to consume information with no nutritional value."
When I joined twitter a few month ago to promote my scientific publications + open source software projects, I set myself a number of clear rules:
1. Don't engage with or comment on political / social issues.
2. Don't install the app, set a time limit on twitter for all devices.
3. Follow other scientists with few exceptions.
4. Flag posts as irrelevant to me that express anger or controversial political opinions (I especially don't need to know anyones take on the Corona situation).
So far it has worked pretty well, I've got invited to give talks based on initial visibility I generated on Twitter. The open source software project I'm working on came to the attention / got engagement / retweets from relevant people. I reconnected with people that I met a few years ago and it even generated a few leads for job opportunities.
It is also really useful to keep track of scientific progress in a field and seminars / workshops I might want to attend.
The algorithm basically works against you though, even if you follow a few people that post / retweet a lot, they can come to dominate your newsfeed. I also came very close to engage with social / political content, simply because popular content that gets shown to you is often the most controversial. I ended up banning a few mainstream politicians, whose tweets kept getting retweeted by people I wanted to follow and that has solved the problem for the most part.
Overall so far twitter seems to create more opportunities than issues for me, but I notice that I spend way more time there than I initially planned.
1. Don't engage with or comment on political / social issues.
2. Don't install the app, set a time limit on twitter for all devices.
3. Follow other scientists with few exceptions.
4. Flag posts as irrelevant to me that express anger or controversial political opinions (I especially don't need to know anyones take on the Corona situation).
So far it has worked pretty well, I've got invited to give talks based on initial visibility I generated on Twitter. The open source software project I'm working on came to the attention / got engagement / retweets from relevant people. I reconnected with people that I met a few years ago and it even generated a few leads for job opportunities.
It is also really useful to keep track of scientific progress in a field and seminars / workshops I might want to attend.
The algorithm basically works against you though, even if you follow a few people that post / retweet a lot, they can come to dominate your newsfeed. I also came very close to engage with social / political content, simply because popular content that gets shown to you is often the most controversial. I ended up banning a few mainstream politicians, whose tweets kept getting retweeted by people I wanted to follow and that has solved the problem for the most part.
Overall so far twitter seems to create more opportunities than issues for me, but I notice that I spend way more time there than I initially planned.
I too deleted my Twitter account. And because I too also want the upside of reading what interesting people there are saying, what I now do is simply save their profiles in a browser bookmark folder. Every morning I open each profile in a new tab and skim what they’ve shared since I last visited. The added benefit is that this friction has forced me to keep the list small, thus optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio.
I'm always confused how certain people, who I just wouldn't expect, get these followings in the 10s of thousands of followers.
The most recent head-scratcher was a SDE who has less than a year experience and nothing particularly interesting to offer the community (that I could tell) but has 16k followers and pretty high engagement (lots of comments, retweets etc...).
I'd love to know how people think about this.
The most recent head-scratcher was a SDE who has less than a year experience and nothing particularly interesting to offer the community (that I could tell) but has 16k followers and pretty high engagement (lots of comments, retweets etc...).
I'd love to know how people think about this.
Who needs twitter anyway? Right? We have hacker news :)
It's a huge difference for me though. Most of the items here are quite interesting to me and not all critics are stomped into the ground relentlessly. It looks like there is some strange level of respect.
I have written mistakes and apologized for them. It seems most of you accept that. Or maybe it's so heavily moderated i only see the stuff i'm allowed to see. I don't know.
I've tried Twitter a few days and decided it's not for me. Same with Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, forums, irc, etc. Some parts of them are quite useful, but for the most they are a very stressful environment to participate in.
I have written mistakes and apologized for them. It seems most of you accept that. Or maybe it's so heavily moderated i only see the stuff i'm allowed to see. I don't know.
I've tried Twitter a few days and decided it's not for me. Same with Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, forums, irc, etc. Some parts of them are quite useful, but for the most they are a very stressful environment to participate in.
I like Twitter and use it a lot. I do experience the author's "problem one" though. I don't want to connect anyone I know in real life to my Twitter account so I just started tweeting with zero followers, and the results have not been great. I've gained ~30 from a year or two of infrequent tweets and those 30 never interact with me so they may all be bots.
In my experience getting followers is different than getting upvotes on reddit or hackernews. I think it's relatively rare for someone to see a single tweet which they think is so clever or informative that they must follow the tweeter, whereas it's common to upvotes (or like/favorite) such a comment.
The author's examples of accounts he follows "Patrick McKenzie, Zach Weinersmith, John Carmack" aren't famous for their tweets, but for blogging/start up advice, comics, and video games. In other words, if you're a notable famous person you can probably build a following on Twitter more or less as a product of your existing accomplishments.
In my experience getting followers is different than getting upvotes on reddit or hackernews. I think it's relatively rare for someone to see a single tweet which they think is so clever or informative that they must follow the tweeter, whereas it's common to upvotes (or like/favorite) such a comment.
The author's examples of accounts he follows "Patrick McKenzie, Zach Weinersmith, John Carmack" aren't famous for their tweets, but for blogging/start up advice, comics, and video games. In other words, if you're a notable famous person you can probably build a following on Twitter more or less as a product of your existing accomplishments.
There are many ways to use Twitter, the me of them isn’t to try to build followers, but to build a good follow list to learn from the best
> I still want to read what people like Patrick McKenzie, Zach Weinersmith, John Carmack and others have to say.
I quit twitter years ago for some of the same reasons mentioned in this blog post, and I 100% agree with this quote. I would love a way to get at the good content from twitter without all the constant rage.
Does anyone know a good tool or way to get a much more curated Twitter experience?
I quit twitter years ago for some of the same reasons mentioned in this blog post, and I 100% agree with this quote. I would love a way to get at the good content from twitter without all the constant rage.
Does anyone know a good tool or way to get a much more curated Twitter experience?
I just keep a markdown file with links to Twitter profiles from people I care about. Then I visit the links directly despite not having a Twitter profile, I get to read what they have to say. I also added the "Calm Twitter" plugin to my browser that strips out Trending stories, hides like counts, etc. It makes for a better, focused Twitter experience. I don't care about posting, so I get the info I want without needing to participate in the gamification.
That seems exactly equivalent to following those people and not posting, but more work. How is this better?
Because twitter will constantly try to show you content you don’t want in order to engage/enrage you.
Only if you tell it to. You can choose an algorithmic feed or a chronological feed. I don't know why anybody would choose the algorithmic feed, because you're right that it sucks, but there's also no pressure to do so.
As there's lots of confusion about this (I didn't downvote you btw) - it's untrue. First, it will switch you back to algorithmic feed at every opportunity. Second, it selectively show you likes and retweets from third parties you have nothing to do with. Third, it will show you topic based content (perhaps by remove all topics you can escape this, but it will try to add topics via dropping in links everywhere). Even if it just shows people you follow, you'll still end up seeing third party comments, and twitter will select those to engage/enrage you too.
Do you use Twitter much? Some of those were actual issues that arose when the algorithmic feed was first introduced, but none of that is the case anymore and hasn't been for at least at year and probably more. I can't remember the last time I was switched back to the algorithmic feed. The chronological feed categorically does not show you likes, and only shows retweets from people you follow. And the only replies that will appear on your timeline are when one person you follow replies to another person you follow.
I've not been clear enough.
> only shows retweets from people you follow
yes, but only shows you _select_ retweets from people you follow. You don't control that. Anything in your timeline that is curated can be used to manipulate you. And those retweets and likes are enough. Just wait until you see a retweet or like and think "but that's wrong / I disagree / waat" and try to catch yourself - you've been shown it for a reason.
> only shows retweets from people you follow
yes, but only shows you _select_ retweets from people you follow. You don't control that. Anything in your timeline that is curated can be used to manipulate you. And those retweets and likes are enough. Just wait until you see a retweet or like and think "but that's wrong / I disagree / waat" and try to catch yourself - you've been shown it for a reason.
just came across an example. I saw a retweet and thought "that's self-evidently false", started looking at the replies, and then decided to mute the original author... turned out it was someone I had already unfollowed, because they were tweeting nonsense. And the curation algorithm had deliberately shown me the most provocative tweet it could find from a person I'd unfollowed... Twitter is an unethical outrage machine.
It's not. I don't have to rely on Twitter's algo to pump irrelevant crap, replies, etc. I don't have to scroll an infinite feed. I just check the influencers that I care about, to get whatever they posted that day. I don't need to see all the noise. It takes me 15-20 minutes a day to catch up and then I move on.
You don't have to do that anyway. Just set your feed to "latest" and there's no algorithm besides "when did this appear on the timeline of someone you follow?"
I don't want to keep a Twitter account. I don't want notifications when someone retweets or whatever. I just don't mess with it. I don't want the temptation to respond. I don't want some new feature from Twitter interrupting my flow. The point is to check on the people I care about hearing from and ignore all else. Anyways, you do you, this works for me.
After I quit Twitter a few months ago, I set up a private instance of Nitter[0], and use Huginn[1] to forward posts from it to an instance of Pleroma[2].
Which reminds me, I need to clean up and publish my Huginn agent for posting to Mastodon/Pleroma. :)
(Nitter supports RSS, so you could probably use a regular RSS reader instead of Huginn/Pleroma. But I also configured some other, non-RSS, content in my feed.)
[0] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter [1] https://github.com/huginn/huginn [2] https://pleroma.social/
Which reminds me, I need to clean up and publish my Huginn agent for posting to Mastodon/Pleroma. :)
(Nitter supports RSS, so you could probably use a regular RSS reader instead of Huginn/Pleroma. But I also configured some other, non-RSS, content in my feed.)
[0] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter [1] https://github.com/huginn/huginn [2] https://pleroma.social/
There are tools that produce an RSS feed from Twitter feeds, so you can subscribe to them via RSS. This gives you their tweets (in a chronological feed - what an achievement) while hiding any of the noise such as like/retweet counts and other crap Twitter puts in there to increase engagement. You also don't need an account so you wouldn't be tempted to participate in any toxic conversations.
What works best for me is using a third-party client like Tweetbot. It has no algorithmic timeline at all. Just follow the McKenzies, Weinersmiths and Carmacks of the world, and that's all you will see.
Edit: The other big thing for me is just unfollowing/blocking people who post garbage, with no remorse. It doesn't matter if your feed is 95% gold, the 5% that isn't makes you not worth it.
Edit: The other big thing for me is just unfollowing/blocking people who post garbage, with no remorse. It doesn't matter if your feed is 95% gold, the 5% that isn't makes you not worth it.
Muted words is the only thing that makes Twitter useful for me. Totally takes the temperature down by just excluding things that aren’t useful to see. I mute everything from specific words that I know are going to spark useless arguments to phrases/emojis that show up in intentionally provocative tweets (eg, “that’s the tweet” or the clap emoji).
I was mass-blocking flat-earthers, magas and other Russian bots until I got suspended for 'automated behavior'. After several suspensions I gave up the account, never looked back and found a new hobby blocking twitter on every website.
It's rather odd that Twitter still exists without my participation.
The other option would be, which could be applied to anything we do, to be a responsible consumer/user but just like with everything else in life it is hard to do primarily for the reason that most services feed on our attention.
The amount of your self you open up to public is the amount you lose from it and the more you put in the more you depend on and are addicted to the feelings that rise from using the service. You liked the feeling of being acknowledged by total strangers? Here, some more tweets for you strangers! You want to argue with me on this trivial subject? I'll prove you wrong!
On the flip side, you can still both use Twitter and keep your sanity, but to me, it just isn't worth it. Life is too short to pay attention to every little thing that one comes across to.
The amount of your self you open up to public is the amount you lose from it and the more you put in the more you depend on and are addicted to the feelings that rise from using the service. You liked the feeling of being acknowledged by total strangers? Here, some more tweets for you strangers! You want to argue with me on this trivial subject? I'll prove you wrong!
On the flip side, you can still both use Twitter and keep your sanity, but to me, it just isn't worth it. Life is too short to pay attention to every little thing that one comes across to.
This article reminds me of another article on HN a few days back about "kids bullying is about climbing up their social hierarchy" or something. I think the same thing can be said to Twitter; for many (including this OP), it's about climbing up whatever social positioning that the Twitter space provides.
I don't really understand that kind of use of Twitter. For me, it is always a personal echo chamber that I hang out with a couple of like-minded people. I've never followed "famous" people, and I tweet in the same way as I post on HN... it's mostly just a monologue or "note to self" that is aimed at pretty much no one but myself. Naturally I don't have any addiction problem with Twitter or HN.
I don't really understand that kind of use of Twitter. For me, it is always a personal echo chamber that I hang out with a couple of like-minded people. I've never followed "famous" people, and I tweet in the same way as I post on HN... it's mostly just a monologue or "note to self" that is aimed at pretty much no one but myself. Naturally I don't have any addiction problem with Twitter or HN.
I stopped using Twitter last summer and have had similar feelings as the author here.
It definitely warps your view of the world because it's biased towards certain types of posts. It's terrible for any nuanced discussion.
For me, I just got sick of people getting upset over everything and feeling they had to retweet or share everything that was upsetting. I get it that the world is an awful place, but it's draining to just keep seeing negative post after negative post. Even not engaging in the hot topic of the day can make you seem out of touch. And yes, you can choose not to care to engage in those things, but you get addicted to the engagement of twitter, trying to get more followers, more comments, more retweets, more likes, and on and on.
It definitely warps your view of the world because it's biased towards certain types of posts. It's terrible for any nuanced discussion.
For me, I just got sick of people getting upset over everything and feeling they had to retweet or share everything that was upsetting. I get it that the world is an awful place, but it's draining to just keep seeing negative post after negative post. Even not engaging in the hot topic of the day can make you seem out of touch. And yes, you can choose not to care to engage in those things, but you get addicted to the engagement of twitter, trying to get more followers, more comments, more retweets, more likes, and on and on.
For the first few days of unfollowing everyone and putting them into my private lists, I'd wondered why the use of lists wasn't much more widespread.
After about a week, I realized something else: with lists only, Twitter is a lot less addictive. The contents are still interesting and useful, but the rage-building contents ("That's outrageous! I have to find out more!") that I'd get from the "normal" Twitter flow are gone.
I ended up checking Twitter multiple times a day to once every few days. I think I'm better off now, but I can't help but feel something is missing--and I do realize it's probably withdrawal symptoms.
I understand why lists aren't more widespread: it's way worse at feeding your outrage addiction.
After about a week, I realized something else: with lists only, Twitter is a lot less addictive. The contents are still interesting and useful, but the rage-building contents ("That's outrageous! I have to find out more!") that I'd get from the "normal" Twitter flow are gone.
I ended up checking Twitter multiple times a day to once every few days. I think I'm better off now, but I can't help but feel something is missing--and I do realize it's probably withdrawal symptoms.
I understand why lists aren't more widespread: it's way worse at feeding your outrage addiction.
Anecdata: I have the blue check, 15.5K followers, and follow exactly 0 people. I found it quite refreshing to use Lists to manage collections of people, not unlike what you would do with an RSS reader.
That doesn't stop the inbound (or outbound!) barbs, complaining, and other garbage though. I've experimented with special tweets with replies disabled, deleting often, and leaving Twitter altogether. The last option of course is best for mental health but really impacted my ability to keep up with important developments in the Windows community.
(I explored going private, but that'd require I get 15k people to unfollow me as they are automatically grandfathered in. Or perform the block-unblock everyone trick via API. Gee thanks Twitter.)
That doesn't stop the inbound (or outbound!) barbs, complaining, and other garbage though. I've experimented with special tweets with replies disabled, deleting often, and leaving Twitter altogether. The last option of course is best for mental health but really impacted my ability to keep up with important developments in the Windows community.
(I explored going private, but that'd require I get 15k people to unfollow me as they are automatically grandfathered in. Or perform the block-unblock everyone trick via API. Gee thanks Twitter.)
Twitter seems to have some unique properties, especially for users that don't have many followers. It feels like you have friends even if you don't know them at all. On other platforms it's way more one-sided, more passive. Something about the way twitter works makes you think you belong to the groups you share interests with - but most of the time it's just a false feeling.
I know several people that are glued to twitter, 50k+ tweets and more (for some reason they have mostly niche interests) thinking they belong and have friends, not realizing how toxic it actually is for their mental health. Something about twitters formula works very well for certain kinds of personalities, but what is it?
I know several people that are glued to twitter, 50k+ tweets and more (for some reason they have mostly niche interests) thinking they belong and have friends, not realizing how toxic it actually is for their mental health. Something about twitters formula works very well for certain kinds of personalities, but what is it?
Twitter is fantastic in many ways, but a double edged sword is how rapidly things (including bad faith takes) spread. You can misinterpret even someone you generally agree with, fire off an angry reply, tag in high profile accounts, and end up with a total mess in minutes.
Other social media can be used in a similar way but the power of the @mention makes the "R value" particularly high on Twitter. If you say something in a podcast, a YouTube video, on a mailing list, or even in a HN comment, it's more likely to pass on by, even if it's something genuinely contemptible, than an innocuous but misinterpretable tweet.
Other social media can be used in a similar way but the power of the @mention makes the "R value" particularly high on Twitter. If you say something in a podcast, a YouTube video, on a mailing list, or even in a HN comment, it's more likely to pass on by, even if it's something genuinely contemptible, than an innocuous but misinterpretable tweet.
"When I use reddit or Hacker News, I find that it’s trivial to get thousands of karma and a handful of awards"
You have to be kidding! It takes me months to earn a few points that I flush down the toilet the next day with some insensitive comment.
You have to be kidding! It takes me months to earn a few points that I flush down the toilet the next day with some insensitive comment.
You should create a new blog category, containing only posts with titles up to 280 characters and just post the tidbits you'd otherwise post to Twitter. Styled accordingly.
If worthy enough, you could even share the link to any one of them on Twitter. ;)
If worthy enough, you could even share the link to any one of them on Twitter. ;)
Pro tip for anyone considering doing this but for some reason haven't pulled the trigger: use the "t" cli to backup all your seemingly important stuff, then unfollow everyone and/or deactivate your account. It's like putting your old crap in a sealed bag and dumping it in a storage locker. If it occurs to you to go through the effort of opening it, then go for it. Otherwise nature takes its course.
fwiw, Twitter actually has an awesome offline archive of your data available, so you can download that before deactivating your account and have a perfect replica of the interface to browse through it all.
fwiw, Twitter actually has an awesome offline archive of your data available, so you can download that before deactivating your account and have a perfect replica of the interface to browse through it all.
I am perfectly fine using Twitter by following carefully via lists only and not following anyone who regularly makes Twitter storms, not following any celebrities, very few journalists, no major publications/tv networks whatsoever
I know it is more of a disengagement strategy, but with Twitter in it's current state ...
[deleted]
Try scaling back all forms of social media + notification-based apps and start re-adding them incrementally, one variable at a time, and track how you feel and think in response to each new addition. It takes a while but opens your eyes to the egregious behavior modification taking place on these platforms at scale.
I'm at a point in my life where I only care about major, materially-significant news events that could impact my health/safety and the safety of people I care about. I treat all other content as ignorable, nice-to-have at best.
I'm at a point in my life where I only care about major, materially-significant news events that could impact my health/safety and the safety of people I care about. I treat all other content as ignorable, nice-to-have at best.
Social media is anything but. I nuked mine because the signal was low and the positive/negative ratio wasn't good.
Online participation needs changes to be more worthwhile:
1. Micropayments to participate.
2. Names, verified identities, and pictures. 37signals did a whole article about how people treated each other when there was too much anonymity.
3. Elimination of karma and other gamification. Promotion based on anonymous interest of others.
4. Automatic recognition of insults, crybullying, hate speech, dog whistles, and personal attacks.
5. 7 random people moderation.
6. Less deplatforming, more civil debating.
Online participation needs changes to be more worthwhile:
1. Micropayments to participate.
2. Names, verified identities, and pictures. 37signals did a whole article about how people treated each other when there was too much anonymity.
3. Elimination of karma and other gamification. Promotion based on anonymous interest of others.
4. Automatic recognition of insults, crybullying, hate speech, dog whistles, and personal attacks.
5. 7 random people moderation.
6. Less deplatforming, more civil debating.
I can relate to the point about feeling 'unheard' on Twitter.
It feels like the hierarchy of publishers and subscribers has already been established and there's nothing that can be done to change it.
IMO, the real purpose of Twitter today is to maintain the socio-economic order; obviously, Twitter Inc has opted to achieve that by tweaking their algorithms to pin down and lock-in the broadcast/consume hierarchy to reduce popularity churn as much as possible.
People might be interested in a project Linus Lee (https://thesephist.com/) started to create a more personal adaption of using Twitter: https://thesephist.com/posts/lucerne/
It seems to tackle the main concerns people have and really focus on the aspect of reaching hard to find niches.
It seems to tackle the main concerns people have and really focus on the aspect of reaching hard to find niches.
Beautiful UI! Interesting that you've named your programming language Ink. My first thought on seeing the UI was that this would be perfect for my e ink tablet.
[deleted]
Twitter was useful for following people in the tech field but otherwise I do not miss it. The constant 'gotcha' tweets and blue-checkmark posturing... ughhh, so awful.
Whenever I think about signing up because I came across some post and want to provide an answer, I remember that funny GIF that I've seen: "Are u ready to get insanely fucking mad" [1] and somehow hold myself back. I think I'll pass ever singing up for it.
[1] https://twitter.com/legaladvice_txt/status/11630943816389304...
[1] https://twitter.com/legaladvice_txt/status/11630943816389304...
I have been on Twitter for 10+ years. It was exciting the first few years, but I honestly don't know why I haven't deleted my account yet.
I have tried to "reboot" my Twitter account several times during this decade, but my timeline eventually gets full of random political diatribes, passive aggressive tweets, and cliquey inside jokes. It's as if Twitter's algorithms were designed to amplify toxic content and hide thoughtful, assertive stuff.
I have tried to "reboot" my Twitter account several times during this decade, but my timeline eventually gets full of random political diatribes, passive aggressive tweets, and cliquey inside jokes. It's as if Twitter's algorithms were designed to amplify toxic content and hide thoughtful, assertive stuff.
> I think Tiktok gets it right here. No matter who the creator is, if the content is good enough it will get hundreds of thousands of views. That system feels fairer to than Twitter.
How hard would it be to create a TikTok version of Twitter? (that is, a Twitter feed that generated without following anyone)?
Is this simply a matter of nobody having tried this? Or are the signals for text posts insufficient (vs. short form videos)?
How hard would it be to create a TikTok version of Twitter? (that is, a Twitter feed that generated without following anyone)?
Is this simply a matter of nobody having tried this? Or are the signals for text posts insufficient (vs. short form videos)?
Neat idea. A real good test of NLP to identify similar posts/tweet and posters. Signals could be generating by swiping left or right based on interest of the post, or clicking on a star or heart to indicate 'super interest'.
Will no doubt end up in situations where people are complaining about _other peoples_ filter bubbles though.
Will no doubt end up in situations where people are complaining about _other peoples_ filter bubbles though.
Gosh, I particularly resonate with point #2 although all of them are good points. It seems people on twitter are all constantly angry about something, and it's a platform for the squeakiest wheels to find most success regardless of the quality of their content.
I never understand why so many people in the tech field are fond of it, it's nearly impossible to have any meaningful conversions or real connections.
I never understand why so many people in the tech field are fond of it, it's nearly impossible to have any meaningful conversions or real connections.
Twitter is a terrible platform managed very poorly. It's my sincere opinion is that Twitter Hate is what is breaking down modern society.
Only a tiny fraction of society is on twitter at all.
If you want to follow a few specific accounts, just try following their RSS feeds! You get to see what they say without all the other junk.
Twitter is totally optional.
I’ve quit multiple times, for years at a time.
Returning is always completely jarring - like learning a language that’s 100% slang.
Nobody cares if you’re not there and you’re not going to be quizzed about it later.
The first time I quit, it was a year before even 1 of my followers even reached out to say, “hey haven’t seen you on Twitter in a while, let’s grab a beer”.
I’ve quit multiple times, for years at a time.
Returning is always completely jarring - like learning a language that’s 100% slang.
Nobody cares if you’re not there and you’re not going to be quizzed about it later.
The first time I quit, it was a year before even 1 of my followers even reached out to say, “hey haven’t seen you on Twitter in a while, let’s grab a beer”.
The best way to break from Twitter, is to get banned.. You'll spend a few days asking why, they give valid answers.. You still check it.. But then once you cant give supposed meaningful feedback.. You don't care.
What you write in twitter only matters to your legacy.
It's a semi protocol now after all.
What you write in twitter only matters to your legacy.
It's a semi protocol now after all.
I joined Twitter in the spring of 2009 and immediately began grooming a set of programmers to follow. These were, in equal measure, interesting people I’ve worked with, famous open source developers, and random interesting folks who tweeted about programming. I really loved it. As a recluse who has no friends IRL, I found Twitter to be my one respite from extreme social isolation.
It all changed when Trump announced his candidacy for president. As a staunchly apolitical person, I found it painful to watch my corner of Twitter lose its mind. Formerly engaging and technically curious folks reverted to feverishly decrying each new political development and news story. Outrage became a badge of honor among techies.
I did what I’ve always done before: fell back on curation as a means of keeping order. At first I shunted specific individuals into a separate Twitter list. This worked for a while until it turned out that each visit to the “special” list caused me aggravation and disgust. After a few more attempts at re-shuffling my follows, I gave up and unfollowed everyone, renamed my account, and deleted the mobile app.
That was in late 2015. I haven’t looked back since then, although in the early weeks of my Twitter abstinence I found it difficult to keep away. But I persevered and never came back.
I believe I’m better off. I still have no IRL friends, and there isn’t a social platform on which I’m active. This may not be ideal, but it’s better than watching supposedly intelligent people descend into madness. I won’t have any part of that.
It all changed when Trump announced his candidacy for president. As a staunchly apolitical person, I found it painful to watch my corner of Twitter lose its mind. Formerly engaging and technically curious folks reverted to feverishly decrying each new political development and news story. Outrage became a badge of honor among techies.
I did what I’ve always done before: fell back on curation as a means of keeping order. At first I shunted specific individuals into a separate Twitter list. This worked for a while until it turned out that each visit to the “special” list caused me aggravation and disgust. After a few more attempts at re-shuffling my follows, I gave up and unfollowed everyone, renamed my account, and deleted the mobile app.
That was in late 2015. I haven’t looked back since then, although in the early weeks of my Twitter abstinence I found it difficult to keep away. But I persevered and never came back.
I believe I’m better off. I still have no IRL friends, and there isn’t a social platform on which I’m active. This may not be ideal, but it’s better than watching supposedly intelligent people descend into madness. I won’t have any part of that.
You shouldn't discount people as 'descending into madness'.
There is a genuine reason why they feel the way they do. We are at a critical point in world history whereby the global monetary system is deteriorating and the monetary policies which are currently in place are making life extremely easy for some people and extremely difficult for others. This bifurcation of society is an expected result of that.
If you don't feel that there are any problems in society, then you're probably on the 'easy side' because believe me, it's unmistakable when you find yourself on the 'hard side'; things change very quickly.
It kind of feels like big companies are using big data to shape people's online experience in radical ways. I literally went from getting tons of upvotes everywhere I posted to getting only downvotes. The content I produce is pretty much the same as it always was but it feels like the online algorithms must have put me in the 'contrarian' bucket and started manipulating my online experience in a negative way.
Also it's frustrating career-wise because I became much better as a developer over time but I'm getting less attention than I ever did. It also became impossible to get any funding nowadays; you literally feel like a social pariah even though you never did anything wrong.
There is a genuine reason why they feel the way they do. We are at a critical point in world history whereby the global monetary system is deteriorating and the monetary policies which are currently in place are making life extremely easy for some people and extremely difficult for others. This bifurcation of society is an expected result of that.
If you don't feel that there are any problems in society, then you're probably on the 'easy side' because believe me, it's unmistakable when you find yourself on the 'hard side'; things change very quickly.
It kind of feels like big companies are using big data to shape people's online experience in radical ways. I literally went from getting tons of upvotes everywhere I posted to getting only downvotes. The content I produce is pretty much the same as it always was but it feels like the online algorithms must have put me in the 'contrarian' bucket and started manipulating my online experience in a negative way.
Also it's frustrating career-wise because I became much better as a developer over time but I'm getting less attention than I ever did. It also became impossible to get any funding nowadays; you literally feel like a social pariah even though you never did anything wrong.
I won’t miss people dunking on each other while also not mentioning the dunkee, piquing my curiosity to the point where I investigate who the dunkee was and why. A waste of time
Next sentence:
Some guy with 14k followers said something. [proceeds to "dunk" on dunkee not mentioned]
Next sentence:
Some guy with 14k followers said something. [proceeds to "dunk" on dunkee not mentioned]
I've found the algo generated list of tweets that I'm presented with in the app to be pretty poor these days. More and more often I am having to manually go to specific users to find their tweets because they are not being uplifted by the algorithms.
If Twitter was a pub, it’d be the odd one where everyone gets pissed way too early, aggressive way too easily and at the of the day smash all the furniture for no good reason.
Never understood why would anyone want to hang out or even work there…
Never understood why would anyone want to hang out or even work there…
i quit twitter after years of using it when i got exhausted of having to see political tweets from anyone i was following in tech. i just want to follow certain topics, but unfortunately the mute feature is not enough to filter out all the crap
I had an account, but never used it.
But recently I noticed, it is really important to tell people about your projects. No one else you get that much visibility. Thus, I have now started using it more
However, I have barely any followers, so I am not getting any visibility
But recently I noticed, it is really important to tell people about your projects. No one else you get that much visibility. Thus, I have now started using it more
However, I have barely any followers, so I am not getting any visibility
Twitter is a troll farm were the trolls don't know they are on a farm.
If you think you are just on there to get news then you have already been duped. "News" is the pretty wrapper on the candy bar full of razors.
No good comes from crowd rage on tap.
If you think you are just on there to get news then you have already been duped. "News" is the pretty wrapper on the candy bar full of razors.
No good comes from crowd rage on tap.
These are all great points. I recently quit too. It was mostly because like this post, I found someone I really respected and it turned out he was a raging bigot against people like me.
The site's tagline should be "Meet your heroes!"
The site's tagline should be "Meet your heroes!"
Twitter is the mother of all rabbit holes. Even the best threads don’t justify opening this portal to hell just to feel used, abused and filthy after 5 min using it.
No matter what the topic, it turns peer groups into toxic waste.
No matter what the topic, it turns peer groups into toxic waste.
Very empathetic and solid writing. Here's my generalized experience https://blog.alexrohde.com/archives/703
All wonderful points. I also stopped using Twitter a few months ago, not for me. I especially like the point about piquing interest on “who the dunkee” is — wow what a waste of time.
Ive quit all of them a few years ago now i spend my extra time doing woodwork that is soo much more pleasent than collecting internet points and discussing with strangers..
We might solve some of these problems with a 3rd party reader that uses Twitter APIs but with a differently structured feed (focus on X people, ignore Y term, etc). Anybody else?
I never really used it much, but sometimes there are really interesting threads or content on local events.
There also seems to be a massive amount of vile and rude commenters.
Considering quitting all social media. Twitter - Quit, Facebook - Quit, Whatsapp - Quit, Reddit - quit, LinkedIn - Under consideration.
Freetime++ Focus++ Adtracking--
Freetime++ Focus++ Adtracking--
I quit everything but Reddit (which I pretty much only lurk in, and only do hobby talk) and LinkedIn (until I strike it rich, I still gotta have a job). It's been excellent since I no longer waste my time being angry about things I can't change, or seeking attention or approval. Obviously some people can cope with the demands of social media more than others, but it didn't work for me, and I think, like me, a lot of people are putting themselves through unnecessary pain to stick to a platform which actually brings little or no value to themselves. In short, fuck social media.
I think its an attention economy where companies try to get you hooked by slot machine rewards getting social approval from like buttons.
I dumped facebook in 2012.
I quit twitter in 2017.
Stopped going to new websites and listening NPR in Fall of 2020.
Where is my prize?
Oh wait, mental health wins the day.
Where is my prize?
Oh wait, mental health wins the day.
This is my approach, though I stuck around a lot longer than you did.
There's something about the format that makes debates into arguments and makes arguments into shit-slinging. People froth at the mouth on there who would be much more civil in other forums. It's a bit too rapid fire, a bit too unhinged. Narrow columns have something to do with it, I think....
There's something about the format that makes debates into arguments and makes arguments into shit-slinging. People froth at the mouth on there who would be much more civil in other forums. It's a bit too rapid fire, a bit too unhinged. Narrow columns have something to do with it, I think....
If you live the twitter life, you ARE A TWIT
Agree with a lot of these points, but not quite sure how you solve them with a better solution.
Twitter banned me. Apparently, you cannot call Maxine Waters a 'stupid old hag'.
I've also stopped using for a few months and found more time and focus without it.
it's insane how slowly people realize that social medias are trash
I'd say that only small communities are worth something, especially forums.
only forum's format is good for discussion unlike fb groups or reddit/hn's format
I'd say that only small communities are worth something, especially forums.
only forum's format is good for discussion unlike fb groups or reddit/hn's format
Quitting Twitter is by far the best thing you can do for your mental health.
you can only speak for yourself.
I mean I'd say that even talking about 6th January is a sign of being in the twitter bubble.
On there it was an attack worse than 9/11.
In the real world it was a bunch of memable pictures that no one cares about 2 months later.
I do wonder what happened to podium guy.
On there it was an attack worse than 9/11.
In the real world it was a bunch of memable pictures that no one cares about 2 months later.
I do wonder what happened to podium guy.
Twitter has a useful feature: unfollow. Just follow what you want to read, and curate the content this way.
The other issue, getting more followers, is all about posting something worth following.
The other issue, getting more followers, is all about posting something worth following.
The best way to quit is to have never started.
Out of all the good reasons to quit Twitter, not having enough likes, and observing the proverbial assholes who share one's nationality must be in the bottom 1%
If as many people quit twitter as talk about it, the company would be bankrupt. There are a lot of people “sneaking a smoke” on twitter when the kids are at school.
Yep. A lot of people "quit" these nasty centralized you-as-a-product services but what they mean by quit is that they don't use their account anymore. They still use the services.
Wow. Dead on, in almost every respect.
App idea: Qwitter, for Twitter rehab.
I've never used Twitter in my life. Sounds like all the bullshit from high school that I ditched.
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The best content and discussion comes from small groups of people with similar interests who aren’t using Twitter simply to fill time or to build their personal brand. Removing everyone else doesn’t take as much work as I expected, as long as you’re not hesitant to unfollow (or even block) those who distract from your desired timeline.
The mute function is also highly useful. I often add trending topics like GameStop or Bitcoin or Tesla to my mute list simply because I don’t need to hear everyone’s take or dunk on a popular topic.
Finally, taking breaks is important. If you can’t resist checking Twitter 5, 10, or 50 times per day then maybe it’s better being removed from your routine altogether. With a curated follow list, I don’t feel like I miss much by checking every other day or not looking on weekends.