Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

martinboss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 228 posts

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#81

Post by aeturnum »

berberous wrote: post #14
zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

People shit on the algorithmic feed, but I love it. I’m too busy to wade through bad/boring tweets, and don’t want to spend all day scrolling. I can check it once or day or less and the algorithmic sorting surfaces the best content right at the top. That said, I don’t really need a smarter algorithm than “show my tweets with a lot of favorites”. Just like a prefer to have Reddit sort by best vs new.

I also really like the algorithmic feed. Though it's interesting that you like it because you check it infrequently - for me, it works because I check it often, so it's "close to chronological but with extra surprises" which I like.

I think the algorithmic feed actually does a good job of promoting the things Twitter does well and I wonder how many people who hate it actually just disagree with the Twitter devs about how the service should work.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#82

Post by snthpy »

zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

Does TweetDeck still work? I mostly stopped using Twitter when TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter and they shut down the Android client.

Before that I had different curated lists and then it just became a mess.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#83

Post by handsaway »

This is... an almost obsessive level of thinking about Twitter. I don't know why you would force yourself to use something you clearly didn't need.

I do find it funny that he found a community of people focused on getting followers on twitter to tweet to about twitter.

This has reinforced my decision to avoid this website at all costs.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#84

Post by erk__ »

snthpy wrote: post #82
zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

Does TweetDeck still work? I mostly stopped using Twitter when TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter and they shut down the Android client. Before that I had different curated lists and then it just became a mess.

Tweet deck works well though only in the browser now. I use it extensively for keeping a seperation between my messy feed and my lists

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#85

Post by MuffinFlavored »

zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

> you into Twitter cesspools.

What % of the userbase is "Twitter cesspools" and how do you define that? What exactly is a "Twitter cesspool"? Viewpoints that don't align with yours? Radical politics?

Is Twitter the platform of giving the 10-20% most fringed members of both political parties a voice? Why does what they post get "upvoted/liked/retweeted" enough to the point where it gets visibility instead of being drowned out? What kind of content are they posting exactly that is "ok" to not be removed by moderation policies, but you define it as "cesspool" material?

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#86

Post by bekantan »

I picked up Twitter in 2021 after a longer break.

Today I prefer lists over following and have several prioritized lists per interest, e.g. P0, P1, ..., Pn for programmers.

When I want to see what's going on, I start with level zero.

Very few people on my lists tweet every day. I enjoy reading people who tweet about new insights within their current area of interest - this rarely happens more than once per week. I aspire to have such account myself. I don't mind staying silent if I don't have something interesting to share.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#87

Post by desas »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #85
zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

> you into Twitter cesspools. What % of the userbase is "Twitter cesspools" and how do you define that? What exactly is a "Twitter cesspool"? Viewpoints that don't align with yours? Radical politics? Is Twitter the platform of giving the 10-20% most fringed members of both political parties a voice? Why does what they post get "upvoted/liked/retweeted" enough to the point where it gets visibility instead of being dro…

> What exactly is a "Twitter cesspool"? Viewpoints that don't align with yours? Radical politics?

This is a very presumptuous response.

A more charitable interpretation might just be where discussions are happening that you're not interested in on twitter. For example, 'this person keeps getting embroiled in twitter arguments about covid', so I'm going to unfloow them because even though I agree with their opinions, I'm not interested in the inevitably heated and pointless discussions leaking into my timeline.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#88

Post by affectsk »

zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

Great tips, although I do like the algo - works great for discovery!

Other than that, it really is about how you curate it. Follow the people you're interested in, engage with the content you find useful, tell Twitter you don't like something by muting/blocking/notinterestedin-ing and you're good.

In that regard it's not unlike any other social media: if you don't tell it what you like, it'll show you what it things you want to see, which won't necessarily be something you'd want to see.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#89

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #85
zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

> you into Twitter cesspools. What % of the userbase is "Twitter cesspools" and how do you define that? What exactly is a "Twitter cesspool"? Viewpoints that don't align with yours? Radical politics? Is Twitter the platform of giving the 10-20% most fringed members of both political parties a voice? Why does what they post get "upvoted/liked/retweeted" enough to the point where it gets visibility instead of being dro…

>> you into Twitter cesspools. > how do you define that?

I'd imagine it's a personal definition and could be reasonably substituted with "you don't want to hear from." for the same effect.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#90

Post by Sakos »

zaphar wrote: post #7

I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…

> I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engagement are:

This also worked for Facebook back when I still had an account. All the posts I saw were ones directly related to my interests and local events that I was interested in. We have a lot of control over how social media presents us with information, just most people don't bother trying to make it work for them.

Post reply on HN