Earlier quoted context omitted.
I settled on a similar approach. I used to liberally follow all sorts of accounts that seemed even remotely relevant, but signal to noise was abysmal and there was way too much drama. Several times I was on the verge of quitting, even though Twitter was quite useful for promoting my own work and that of my students. But recently I decided to try a new approach and systematically unfollowed a lot of accounts. Now I st…
Regarding 1, I actually go much further and have blocked many of the major politicians (on every side of the spectrum), and muted their names. I see very little partisan politics on my timeline now.
I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
211–220 of 228 posts
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is of course completely unsuitable as means of official communication - just the word limit makes it terrible for the purpose. What it is good for is sending sound bites at each other. (For emergency communications SMS is better and sufficient.)
Not to mention that you can no longer view more than a couple tweets of a given user without having the experience blocked with a "sign in!" modal covering the screen, preventing further use of the platform. This change alone has made the platform less accessible than ever.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#213I'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…
>Block retweets which aren't quotes. How do you do that? I only know you can disable all retweets from a particular person you follow. I didn't know you could disable non-quote retweets from all accounts you follow.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#214twitter is still hostile to noscript/basic (x)html browsers.
nitter for all?
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience is that the algorithmic feed just wants to firehose 99.9% sensationalist trending muck I don't want from people and topics I don't want to follow or read about on twitter.
For me the absolute worst of the worst is the "More Tweets" list under certain tweets. It's basically designed to be the most sensationalist, polarizing, "hot take"ist bullshit imaginable. I'm not sure I've ever read a single thing worth reading in that section. A rather meta example: scroll down to the "More Tweets" section under this recent Elon Musk tweet - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525738556102164480 I…
I don't follow every player, coach, or organization and it's common for me to see 1 tweet from one of my follows and the More Tweets to contain content I want to consume from the 1000's of others talking about this specific scene.
I'd also recommend not using the More Tweets feature for anything too popular as it's like reading a youtube comments section.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#216Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote one for iOS and macOS: https://underpassapp.com/tweaks/ There are some in the Chrome Web Store too, though I don't have links.
Looks opinionated and sketchy, sorry.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#218 >Here are a few good reasons to be on Twitter:
>>To stay informed about what's going on (in the world, in your country, in your industry, in your community, in the niche you're in).
>>To meet and connect with like-minded people, find new Twitter friends with common interests, and expand your social circle.
>>To promote your business or sell your products and services. Twitter is a great way to do it without being pushy.
>>To share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the world. Create serendipity around yourself!
>>To help people who are currently at the stages of their lives that you've already gone through. Share your lessons!
>See? This instantly makes Twitter more purposeful.
-----compare and contrast with another outlook on twitter i found recently:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/16/23075683/jeff-bezos-twitt...
>I cannot believe I am about to explain Twitter, but for those of you who are not on the social media platform fondly referred to as “the hellsite” by its most committed users: the dumbest users and the smartest users post the exact same way. Sentence fragments, inconsistent punctuation, half-baked ideas, and a strong propensity for trolling are all among the power users’ most consistent traits.
>Trolling is crucial, actually. See, one of Twitter’s major engagement mechanisms is the quote-tweet dunk, where you post someone else’s tweet to make fun of it. This means that Twitter heavily incentivizes bad behavior. Sure, a good own will drive engagement, but so will an obviously stupid take that provides other users with an opening to dunk, thus spreading your original tweet further. There is no incentive to be reasonable. I’m going to say it again, because this is a fundamental law of Twitter: there is no incentive to be reasonable.Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks opinionated and sketchy, sorry.
Heh, ok. I don't mind if you don't want to use it, but I'm puzzled by "sketchy" and even more puzzled by "opinionated".
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, ok. I don't mind if you don't want to use it, but I'm puzzled by "sketchy" and even more puzzled by "opinionated".
Opinionated on UI changes, sketchy with the lack of details on how the click tracking removal works (the easier ways that come to mind on implementation are the same or worse for privacy)
There are more than 20 settings that can be individually enabled/disabled, so it's all up to the user how much they want.
> sketchy with the lack of details on how the click tracking removal works (the easier ways that come to mind on implementation are the same or worse for privacy)
Ah, ok. The word "sketchy" can be ambiguous. :-)
The real URL is actually already hidden in the DOM, so it's a simple matter of replacement.