Quitting Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Quitting Twitter

#51

Post by el-salvador » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

firebaze wrote: post #21

tinyhouse wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#52

Post by gonehome » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #16

ketzo wrote: 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.

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).

Re: Quitting Twitter

#53

Post by chanmad29 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #28

leesalminen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

much like a well managed subreddit?

Re: Quitting Twitter

#54

Post by murat124 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#55

Post by cambalache » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

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%

Re: Quitting Twitter

#56

Post by picks_at_nits » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #43

picks_at_nits wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

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…

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#57

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: 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…

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#58

Post by asjkaehauisa » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

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

Re: Quitting Twitter

#59

Post by Quarrelsome » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #16

ketzo wrote: 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.

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.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#60

Post by superkuh » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

mberning wrote: post #5

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.