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Quitting Twitter

blog.nindalf.com

11–20 of 292 posts

Re: Quitting Twitter

#11
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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#12

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 f…

Is Twitter more addictive than say HN?

Re: Quitting Twitter

#14
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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#15

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 f…

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).

Re: Quitting Twitter

#16
post #8

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 conv…

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#17

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 f…

Is Twitter more addictive than say HN?

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#18
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

Re: Quitting Twitter

#19
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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#20

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 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.
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