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Quitting Twitter

blog.nindalf.com

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Re: Quitting Twitter

#31

Post by picks_at_nits »

sneak wrote: post #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 e…

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#32

Post by chrisco255 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #24

> 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 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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#33

Post by Nextgrid »

kevinherron wrote: post #29
firebaze wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still supporting a platform where avoiding toxic content is active mental work.

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#34

Post by Jerry2 »

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...

Re: Quitting Twitter

#35

Post by rriepe »

sneak wrote: post #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 e…

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#36

Post by _qulr »

bachmeier wrote: post #23

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 ha…

> 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?

Re: Quitting Twitter

#37

Post by Nextgrid »

andrewmutz wrote: post #24

> 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?

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#38

Post by minikites »

kevinherron wrote: post #29
firebaze wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still supporting a platform where avoiding toxic content is active mental work.

Life is a platform that requires active work to avoid toxic content.

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#39

Post by picks_at_nits »

firebaze wrote: post #17
tinyhouse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.)

Re: Quitting Twitter

#40

Post by chc »

chrisco255 wrote: post #32
andrewmutz wrote: post #24

> 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 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 needi…

That seems exactly equivalent to following those people and not posting, but more work. How is this better?
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