Ask HN: Is it just me or is Twitter pretty good these days?

I am enjoying Twitter a lot. I use it for maybe 5 minutes every few days (no notifications so I only login when I remember), and I see some interesting posts from people I like, press a couple of hearts and a retweet here or there.

Because I get to choose who I am following and it’s relatively impersonal so I don’t feel obliged to reply / acknowledge the message and so forth. The benefits of one to many communication.

So I wanted to ask if this was a general trend and more people are enjoying Twitter, more in a relative sense in comparison to its own history and in comparison to its peers in social media.

I had a great experience with Twitter in its very early days. It seemed like I was connecting with actual people that cared and had time to interact with one another.

My experience now is that it's mostly accounts chasing fame, and bots retweeting bots.

It seems that people are afraid to be themselves on social media too - perhaps for good reason.

I'd say it can be pretty good if you can maintain good digital hygiene(as you pointed out with notifs, etc.). So it's actually pretty bad for most people :-)

Twitter can be really great if you take the time to curate who you follow and don’t get overly upset when accounts share things outside of what they do (like a pixel artist sharing random photos, etc.) and avoid the trending section. I’m aware of the toxic portions, but it really can be as easy as not engaging with those accounts.

I use it almost as a newsfeed for things like small artists I like releasing new albums. News that I wouldn't get otherwise.

It's really not a social network I think. Communication is not really different to YouTube comment feeds, where there are people with social standing leaving messages and literally thousands commenting with no hope of ever getting a reply (unless they're socially relevant themselves).

I can't shake the feeling of being part of the masses when I use it, with my role in it being at most leaving a +1 in someone's followers/likes/retweets. Way less interactive than an old school forum, or HN, for example.