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On Using Twitter

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Re: On Using Twitter

#101

Post by baud147258 »

balaam wrote: post #42
mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

This is the best way to use twitter. You get a clear stream of useful, relevant content. Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". I want a filter bubble. The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to se…

You can more or less remove the likes from your feed, by using the 'Not interested in this Tweet', then 'Show less likes from XXX'. Twitter will show those again in a few days, but at least your feed is cleaner for a few days. (I'm only browsing Twitter on browser, so I don't know how that works on the app)

Or maybe using lists

Re: On Using Twitter

#102

Post by ac2u »

skinkestek wrote: post #95
throw_m239339 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here. Was following smart programmers and engineers on programming related matters. Fast forward a few years and most of them were spending their time talking about completely unrelated US political matters and petty drama 99% of the time and very little actual programming stuff. I just removed Twitter from my phone. I'm not sure how Twitter works now, but I imagine that a system of bot generated topics ra…

> and most of them were spending their time talking about completely unrelated US political matters and petty drama 99% of the time and very little actual programming stuff. And that was one of the brilliant things about Google+: You could post under different topics so people could read my programming or local posts without having to cope with my religious or political posts (just examples, I never got around to the…

>You could post under different topics so people could read my programming or local posts without having to cope with my religious or political posts (just examples, I never got around to the two last ones I think).

I don't think that would work thesedays. If you had a political post, I'd say you'd correctly keep it in its correct circle (based on you highlighting the feature here), but since Google+ was a thing, a new generation of twitter addicts have the mantra of "everything is political, even looking at a keyboard is a political act, politics affects everything you do, even if you just sit there, so that's why my political rant is in your model train collector circle #sorrynotsorry"

So they'd abuse the circles feature with that mantra as an excuse.

Re: On Using Twitter

#103

Post by abdullahkhalids »

iamwpj wrote: post #85
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #19

My guide to using twitter: 1. Follow people with high signal to noise ratio. These are people whose full time job is creation, and no marketing. Eg. Scientists and engineers and certain types of artists. Politicians not so much. 2. Use the mute feature liberally. Go into settings and mute the name of every major politician in your country, or politicians that are popular world over. On every part of the political lan…

Echo chambers develop when you are only reading things you already know, not things you agree with. It's about learning new things vs. keeping your worldview narrow. Like if you have an opinion on climate change, reading arguments from deniers doesn't expand your worldview. Reading about how climate change affects different social classes can expand your worldview -- and all be from people you already agree with.

That's not what I mean. Climate-change denial is a very specific issue, and empirical in nature.

When I say ideological difference, I mean people who have different fundamental values. Say socialism vs capitalism. People from both those camps can disagree with each other, but still respect the arguments others make and learn from those arguments.

Obviously, when I say arguments I mean academia level arguments, not party-rally-slogan level arguments.

Re: On Using Twitter

#104

Post by allenu »

duxup wrote: post #64

>Cultivate a good set of accounts to follow Man I'm so done with that. Even cultivating a group of accounts on say a topic ... they're still people so I get their angry rants about whatever issue. And I respect their right to be a person and tweet about what they want, but that's a double edged sword as far as my interest goes. I really don't want to see a twitter spat, ever. Even if I AGREE with someone I'm followin…

It's an interesting problem because it's akin to going to a cocktail party and having idle chit chat and then someone brings up politics. Even if you agree with the politics of the person, by introducing it into the discussion, you have no choice but to "take a side" and agree with them on things (or not). All of a sudden, some nice banter has turned into a serious discussion. There's a time and place for those discussions, and the problem with twitter is that the discussions are ALWAYS going on, rendering it useless as a place for idle chat.

Re: On Using Twitter

#106

Post by tomjen3 »

skinkestek wrote: post #95
throw_m239339 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here. Was following smart programmers and engineers on programming related matters. Fast forward a few years and most of them were spending their time talking about completely unrelated US political matters and petty drama 99% of the time and very little actual programming stuff. I just removed Twitter from my phone. I'm not sure how Twitter works now, but I imagine that a system of bot generated topics ra…

> and most of them were spending their time talking about completely unrelated US political matters and petty drama 99% of the time and very little actual programming stuff. And that was one of the brilliant things about Google+: You could post under different topics so people could read my programming or local posts without having to cope with my religious or political posts (just examples, I never got around to the…

Google got it nearly right, but it was still the creator who had to choose the circle to post it in.

I want a social network where I can choose to follow people and some tags - want to be able to follow you, when you are not talking about politics and remain 100% ignorant of any posts you make about politics.

Re: On Using Twitter

#108

Post by apsec112 »

aspenmayer wrote: post #62
mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

I learned this in the early 90s on BBSes, MUDs, Usenet, and forums, before I even discovered the Web. Everything old is new again. Twitter is fine. It’s people who suck. Exercise your own restraint and freedom to associate. Externalizing blame is to throw up your hands and to join all the other naysayers in yelling at clouds.

Twitter has a machine learning algorithm that actively steers people towards political/controversial content. If you choose to see tweets "recent first" to avoid this, Twitter will accidentally-on-purpose 'forget' this every few days, and return you to the AI-generated anger maximization feed. That's blatantly user-hostile behavior that wasn't present on Usenet or IRC.

Re: On Using Twitter

#109

Post by jpindar »

balaam wrote: post #42
mayankkaizen wrote: post #37

Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world. On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was browsing. However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating machine". Everyone is o…

This is the best way to use twitter. You get a clear stream of useful, relevant content. Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". I want a filter bubble. The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to se…

> It tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it. You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other things I don't want to see.

Not if you use Tweetdeck.

https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

Re: On Using Twitter

#110

Post by draw_down »

allenu wrote: post #104
duxup wrote: post #64

>Cultivate a good set of accounts to follow Man I'm so done with that. Even cultivating a group of accounts on say a topic ... they're still people so I get their angry rants about whatever issue. And I respect their right to be a person and tweet about what they want, but that's a double edged sword as far as my interest goes. I really don't want to see a twitter spat, ever. Even if I AGREE with someone I'm followin…

It's an interesting problem because it's akin to going to a cocktail party and having idle chit chat and then someone brings up politics. Even if you agree with the politics of the person, by introducing it into the discussion, you have no choice but to "take a side" and agree with them on things (or not). All of a sudden, some nice banter has turned into a serious discussion. There's a time and place for those discu…

Well, unlike a cocktail party (most of them anyway), a lot of people go on there specifically to talk about politics. So you can't really do the move where you act like someone shit on the rug because they said something with political valence.

Not to mention the ever-increasing scope of what is considered "political" such that this adds up to a narrowing of what people are allowed to say. (e.g. "There is currently a pandemic so I think wearing masks would be prudent" is tantamount to a political assertion now)

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