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Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

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Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#131

Post by danielpetho »

bearjaws wrote: post #117
pluc wrote: post #114

If you don't want engagement bait or politics on Twitter.. why are you on Twitter? RSS is better to keep up to date on news, and if none of your friends are on Mastodon, get new friends.

I think Twitter has two core users 1. People who want to debate / react to things / politics / just get angry apparently. 2. People who are like a town crier from times past, they want to be the first to know some event has happened and then go to their group chats & other social media to post about it.

i disagree, or at least i don't consider myself to either of these groups.

i think there is still a large enough group which is there to share work / projects

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#132

Post by pluc »

andrewla wrote: post #129
pluc wrote: post #114

If you don't want engagement bait or politics on Twitter.. why are you on Twitter? RSS is better to keep up to date on news, and if none of your friends are on Mastodon, get new friends.

Sorry, ignorant question -- how does one us RSS to keep up to date on news? With Twitter, I can see content from people I follow and from content referenced or highlighted by people I follow. People in this case can also include news organizations or other professional journalistic content. In addition there is the algorithmically generated garbage feed stuff that is mostly useful for seeing (potentially) interesting…

For the next month, every time you find something interesting on Twitter, go to the source. Look for their RSS feed - if they don't have one, ask them to work on implementing one both via Twitter and via their contact form.

I don't know if it's still the case, but there used to be RSS feeds for Twitter accounts too.

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#133

Post by andrewla »

danielpetho wrote: post #81
haunter wrote: post #79

I don't have to because I just use the "following" tab? I only see people I follow. Really don't get the point of this service

i like the for you page since i can discover fresh/new work from others. otherwise how would i get to the point of following someone? (excluding when you find the person's account on an external site) but i feel you, the following tab is definitely a healthier/more controllable space

Your "following" feed contains content liked or retweeted/replied to by people you follow. At least, it used to -- since likes went private I'm not sure that you see this any more.

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#134

Post by andrewla »

pluc wrote: post #132
andrewla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, ignorant question -- how does one us RSS to keep up to date on news? With Twitter, I can see content from people I follow and from content referenced or highlighted by people I follow. People in this case can also include news organizations or other professional journalistic content. In addition there is the algorithmically generated garbage feed stuff that is mostly useful for seeing (potentially) interesting…

For the next month, every time you find something interesting on Twitter, go to the source. Look for their RSS feed - if they don't have one, ask them to work on implementing one both via Twitter and via their contact form. I don't know if it's still the case, but there used to be RSS feeds for Twitter accounts too.

And what then do I do with the RSS links? The last time I dealt with RSS at all was in the Google Reader days. Are there cross-platform solutions that maintain any context? Is there any way to reply or give feedback through RSS, or participate in conversations?

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#136

Post by MattDaEskimo »

bearjaws wrote: post #117
pluc wrote: post #114

If you don't want engagement bait or politics on Twitter.. why are you on Twitter? RSS is better to keep up to date on news, and if none of your friends are on Mastodon, get new friends.

I think Twitter has two core users 1. People who want to debate / react to things / politics / just get angry apparently. 2. People who are like a town crier from times past, they want to be the first to know some event has happened and then go to their group chats & other social media to post about it.

3. Those who just don't care about the sociological trends and impact of using, and therefore promoting Twitter

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#137

Post by danielpetho »

russdill wrote: post #115
vanrohan wrote: post #92

I'm also on a mission to clean the "For You" feed. I tried using local LLMs to do this real-time classification, but it's currently just too slow. Another way to reduce the spam, is to remove bot followers from your account, I believe these bots use "likes" (which are hidden) to boost content for the botnet owners. Most of these bots are easy to spot, 0 posts, and very bad follower/following ratios. I built this Chro…

It'd be nice if x would let you do what bluesky does, let you write your own algorithms and create your own feeds.

ah maybe i'm living under the rock, but how you could do such thing for bluesky?

my feed is pretty boring there:d

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#138

Post by MattDaEskimo »

DantesKite wrote: post #43

Such a great demonstration of the concept. I think it’s inevitable that we’ll start to see more sophisticated ways of organizing our social media feeds. I don’t think it has to be this binary decision where we either abandon social media altogether or expose ourselves to the most emotionally draining content possible. There’s likely many different unexplored metas as it were. I often joke that we should have a market…

This is what the algorithm & tools of the platform is supposed to do for you.

It's also what makes you valuable as a free consumer.

If you want lumber, don't buy a house and strip it

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#139

Post by danielpetho »

derivagral wrote: post #123

Cool idea! I had something similar for using LLMs as an intermediary not for spam but for "boring" local news matching to your profile. Court stuff, town meetings on youtube, that kind of thing.

sounds interesting! tho that would be rather summarizing content i assume?

Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

#140

Post by ksec »

insin wrote: post #59

> i'm pretty tired of engagement bait and all the political nonsense on my x/twitter feed Getting rid of "For you" entirely and removing Retweets from the chronological timeline (default configuration for [1]) gets you 95% of the way there - you'll only get engagement bait and political nonsense if the people you choose to follow are the ones actively doing it, in which case… [1] https://jbscript.dev/control-panel-fo…

Yes. I dont even use "For you". I dont even "follow" most people, just put them into a list and visit that list only. In hind sight I have been using X / Twitter like RSS for a very long time. I guess that is because coming from RSS and I dont know how Twitter work at first and I first thought why do I have all these random people on my feeds.

I have lists for Software, Hardware, Politics, VCs, Economy, Art, and some other wired stuff.

You can ignore 99% of Spam, bait etc and only focus on the signal.

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