Doesn’t this by definition mean that you’re in a social media bubble with those who agree with you?
I've started to wonder if "bubbles" are a good thing. Others beliefs shouldn't be foisted on me at any given moment of my day, and if I don't care to hear them there isn't anything wrong with that. Moreover, communication seems less hostile and more nuanced when we aren't forced to discuss everything with everyone at once. That is why more focused communities like this one seem to be more enjoyable to use.
The problem I found with blocking and muting people is that twitter continues to show tweets from people I don’t follow - entirely in the hope of engaging me of course, which most of the time means trying to pull me into an argument.
Sometimes it introduces you to new people though that are interesting to follow (usually because people in your network liked their post or something). I find this generally valuable. If you want to be extreme about it, you can put everyone in lists and then this won't happen. You can also use a third party client that doesn't do this. My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck. I'd much ra…
> My main Twitter complaint is the ads. There are so many and they suck.
There are no ads in third party clients such as Tweetbot.
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?
Because twitter will constantly try to show you content you don’t want in order to engage/enrage you.
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.
Same here. My overall Twitter experience is great! Every time I had a bad experience, it was something I could have easily avoided by just not joining a conversation that I kind of knew was going to be a flame war.
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.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who behave really well and have really interesting things to say about tech, but for anything political, they just vent really hateful, angry things (or retweet the same). The Go community has a fair amount of this, sadly. It sucks to have to choose, but more importantly I think Twitter actually radicalizes people toward hate and divisiveness. I don't think these people were so hateful or angry ~7 years ago. When I look at the curated news section, it seems purpose-built to make me mad, with the dumbest, most toxic comments at the top.
The problem I found with blocking and muting people is that twitter continues to show tweets from people I don’t follow - entirely in the hope of engaging me of course, which most of the time means trying to pull me into an argument.
> twitter continues to show tweets from people I don’t follow Are you using the reverse chronological timeline? That's the only way to fly.
I check Twitter to learn what I should be outraged about. I literally say to myself "I wonder what I should be outraged about today?" and then lo and behold, Twitter tells me. I don't know where else to get that information. I wish I did, since Twitter is very inefficient with too many people retweeting the same tidbit so they can try their hand at a witty rejoinder. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the rejoinders, but th…
> I don't know where else to get that information.
The Daily Mail is a fairly good source of 'fury' (a term they use a lot in their headlines).
They are not being transparent about your experience being manipulated for the purposes of generating engagement either. Most non-technical people don't immediately associate "contains ads" with "will use all kinds of nasty tricks to make you spend more time looking at said ads". You have something there that applies to all of social media (and just because others do it doesn't make it ok). Algorithms are black boxes…
The fact that some people are blind to these issues doesn't mean we shouldn't be calling out unethical, malicious, misleading or defective behavior and/or software.
100% agree. It may be futile with the vast majority of their users, but every person who actually cares about it and becomes more informed though advocacy is a modest win of some kind.
Twitter seems to have some unique properties, especially for users that don't have many followers. It feels like you have friends even if you don't know them at all. On other platforms it's way more one-sided, more passive. Something about the way twitter works makes you think you belong to the groups you share interests with - but most of the time it's just a false feeling.
I know several people that are glued to twitter, 50k+ tweets and more (for some reason they have mostly niche interests) thinking they belong and have friends, not realizing how toxic it actually is for their mental health. Something about twitters formula works very well for certain kinds of personalities, but what is it?
My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming. That ranges from constantly dunking on every opportunity to people who simply tweet too many times per day. The best content and discussion comes from small groups of people with similar interests who aren’t using Twitter simply to fill time or to build their personal brand. Removing everyone else doesn’…
I do similarly. My Twitter feed is pleasant and very useful.
Judging from posts like these (and the other comments on this thread), most people have difficulty unfollowing others, which is a shame.