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Quitting Twitter

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Re: Quitting Twitter

#181

Post by ska »

reaperducer wrote: post #164
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71

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’…

My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new? people who simply tweet too many times per day. I'm with you on that one.

> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber

Only if you choose to. "I don't want to be consuming" doesn't need to mean that you disagree with them, just you aren't getting value from reading it.

Further to your point: It's one of those paradoxes that while the marginal utility of listening to some people you disagree with is obviously high, the marginal utility of listening to any particular person you often disagree with is likely quite low. Most people are not particularly thoughtful or particularly articulate, but your best bang-for-buck will be to try and find some who are both.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#183

Post by aylmao »

reaperducer wrote: post #164
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71

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’…

My approach to Twitter has been to aggressively unfollow anyone posting content that I don’t want to be consuming Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new? people who simply tweet too many times per day. I'm with you on that one.

> Doesn't that just leave you in an echo chamber of people who agree with you, and you don't learn anything new?

This was an interesting question. I have two thoughts here:

1. On unfollowing content that I don't disagree with: I got very tired of a lot of the dev content I was following on Twitter and how it was flooding away other stuff I follow. I unfollowed a TON of devs. It's not that I disagree with them, I just don't want to consume that content.

2. On unfollowing content that I disagree with: I don't think the issue with echo chambers is the echo chamber itself.

For example, I'm not religious. I can choose not to follow religious content and be in an "atheist echo chamber", and still, when encountering religious people talking about religious things, respect them. If I'm coming from a tolerant and accepting place, when I encounter them I can learn from them, hear them out, understand their point of view, but otherwise choose to live my life without constantly consuming religion.

Religion is very much in the social discourse, but this applies to other things too. I don't know much about Nepal. If I ever go to Nepal, meet a Nepalese person, or just get curious about it I'll respect their ways and be ready to learn a lot, in spite of not consuming Nepalese content.

I don't think its the "echo chamber" per-se that's the issue— it's the intolerance, and for some people the echo chamber just makes it worse.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#185

Post by core-questions »

chad_strategic wrote: post #184

I dumped facebook in 2012. I quit twitter in 2017. Stopped going to new websites and listening NPR in Fall of 2020. Where is my prize? Oh wait, mental health wins the day.

This is my approach, though I stuck around a lot longer than you did.

There's something about the format that makes debates into arguments and makes arguments into shit-slinging. People froth at the mouth on there who would be much more civil in other forums. It's a bit too rapid fire, a bit too unhinged. Narrow columns have something to do with it, I think....

Re: Quitting Twitter

#186

Post by aylmao »

TehShrike wrote: post #130
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71

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.

Over the course of a few months I about halved my following count on Twitter. The application definitely makes it easier to follow people than to unfollow them, but also this mentality of thinking more about the possibly of interesting content than the damage of content that's uninteresting made getting used to reducing my following count tricky.

It is kind of how when decluttering it's not only more effort to clean than to ignore the issue, but it's also easy to fall into the mindset of "I liked/needed this thing that one time, maybe I'll like/need it again sometime in the future".

Re: Quitting Twitter

#187

Post by rubyist5eva »

liminal wrote: post #45

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…

You could try just...not being outraged?

Re: Quitting Twitter

#188

Post by WorldMaker »

chaosharmonic wrote: post #172
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71

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’…

> Removing everyone else doesn’t take as much work as I expected, as long as you’re not hesitant to unfollow (or even block) those who distract from your desired timeline. It's also not even necessarily them . Twitter is enthusiastic in assuming that, because you're engaging with one person, you must also be interested in what they're engaging with. My efforts to have reasoned debate with one person in my life who wa…

Yeah, I think the rise of "follow-of-a-follow" "engagement" content and promoted tweets were where I heavily started to lose any impression at all that I could control/curate my Twitter timeline, and started to lose a lot of interest in Twitter altogether. (Algorithmic reshuffling of the "timeline" into something that wasn't purely time-based didn't help either, but seemed a modest symptom to the other two problems.)

Re: Quitting Twitter

#189

Post by tradesmanhelix »

grioghar wrote: post #107
tradesmanhelix wrote: post #48

I recently "quit" Twitter myself. I say "quit" because if you actually delete/remove/whatever your account, your handle may then become available for others to use. To avoid that, I used a combo of scripts/services to remove all of my Twitter data (tweets, likes, follows, etc.) and scrubbed my bio, profile pics, etc. I also set a reminder to log in every 6 months to avoid being purged and have my handle become availa…

Thank you for that. I am going to investigate this further. I didn’t think there was a functioning way of doing this. I’d really like to find something similar for Instagram. I want to consume that without creating an account, but haven’t figure out how.

You bet :)

And FYI, per its website, Fraidycat says it does support Instagram, although I can't vouch for the experience as it's not a platform I use.

Re: Quitting Twitter

#190

Post by allknowingfrog »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #125
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.

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 s…

This is what finally pushed me off of Twitter. I just wish I had the ability to filter posts based on whether the user is qualified to have an opinion on the topic. I don't want opinions on technology from members of congress, and I don't want political rants from tech experts.
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