If you want "Twitter" without ads, algorithmic feed manipulated by marketing, actual moderation, and actual community, I suggest joining a Mastodon[0] instance (and you probably already know people who are on the platform, making it easier to choose which instance ;)). It's kinda like using Twitter in 2007, but with way more features. For example, selective permissions per-"toot" ("followers only", or "unlisted" whic…
the problem with Nitter is you can see only one user's timeline, I want to see multiple users combined, then I can ditch Twitter site completely just for passive reading, but until then it's still more convenient with one account read multiple accounts in one timeline instead opening them one by one unless I'm missing something and Nitter allows combined timeline from multiple accounts
Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
201–210 of 235 posts
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#202Is there any easy way to follow a couple of Twitter accounts in chronological order without having a Twitter account? Nitter is nice to follow individual accounts, but you have to go to each account 1 by 1 rather than create a personal timeline with chronological posts from different accounts.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#2031. Create list 2. Add people 3. Read as reverse chronological feed without ads.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#204Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to fo…
My fear is dutifully curating lists for this purpose -- which would take ages -- only for them to monkey with this feature. I see a lot of people on Twitter who say something like "if you put me in a list, I will block you," which makes me think there's some sort of list-spamming capability currently. (I can't figure out any other reason people wouldn't want to be added to lists...?) I use the reverse-chron feed almo…
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#205Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to fo…
The one feature I wish Twitter lists had is turning off retweets by account in a list. Currently, a retweet-generous account will pollute the entire list. You can turn off retweets only for accounts you actually follow, and it applies only to your main timeline, not the lists.
Yes! Or even a global "turn off retweets." I took the time to nuke retweets on everyone and now do it one-by-one when I follow new people.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#206I still haven’t figured out how to read twitter conversations / threads and profiles. Everything always seems out of order. Referenced things are just generally missing as well. I don’t think they were deleted but I have no idea.
I think this is a fundamental flaw in the platform. Shared context is the key to having productive conversations, and twitter is a massive decontextualization machine.
Traditional forums allow messages to be disseminated widely to readers who potentially have no out-of-band context. But they have enough in-band context to enable productive conversations: (1) there's a thread title and an original post which everyone generally reads, (2) all messages in a thread are visible to everyone, and (3) longer messages are supported.
Short messages of a sentence or two are insufficient to convey much information without context, but can be very useful with context: "Sure, 6 sounds good". SMS and messaging apps work fine because messages are displayed in the context of a conversation, and dissemination is limited to known recipients who generally have some out-of-band context.
But twitter provides little or no in-band context, messages are too short to stand on their own without context, and messages are disseminated to a global user base which has no out-of-band context. You'd expect that to be a recipe for a dumpster fire.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#207They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…
> They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline Or the simpler explanation is that the chronological timeline isn't actually the preferred setting, outside of a small but vocal minority. If the chronological timeline is somehow hurting their profitability, why would they offer it at all? I think the more obvious explanation is that very few people were actually using it according to their…
Companies need to service the vocal minority. This isn't a factory at Ford, they are more than capable and resourced enough to deliver colors other than black.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Profit doesn't have to be equivalent to abuse. The idea that you have to abuse your users to make a profit is a relatively new one pioneered by Silicon Valley scum thanks to anti-competitive practices and lax/non-existent regulation. Before this, we had centuries of businesses who were sustainable by just charging a fair premium on the goods they sold to their customers, and both sides were happy enough with the tran…
Well, considering the context of this thread, are there any social networks not working based on the Silicon Valley model? I don't know any.
The phone company? You pay them a fee for access and that's it - they have no incentive to prioritize certain callers over others for "engagement"'s sake.
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#209Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to fo…
Caveat: I immediately block anyone who adds me to a list (it's only happened 3 or 4 times and it seems spammy). And I've seen a number of other accounts with "don't add me to lists" or equivalent in their bio.
Genuine question - why do you block people who are you to lists?
I'm a relatively new Twitter user and I've been making heavy use of the list functionality. So what's the down side?
Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed
#210I have been using Twitter for 13 years and it's quite clear why they are pushing this so hard - because people aren't tweeting anymore.
I follow around 400 accounts, constantly adding and removing accounts. My chronological feed used to be a steady stream of content that I couldn't keep up with. Nowadays I can go for hours without a new tweet appearing in my feed. If I go to the algorithmic feed (or when Twitter randomly sends me back there) there's a huge unending stream of content, but if you pay attention to the dates on the tweets, lots of them are 4+ days old.
Twitter is a dying platform and the algorithmic feed has two goals. First and foremost it's to keep you scrolling. But secondly it's to mask just how dead the platform is.