Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.
I have a hot take on this topic: Your feed says more about you than Twitter in general. If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. Don't follow these people.
Here is a guideline for a good Twitter experience:
1. Everyone who is negative, irrational, too political and so on gets unfollowed.
2. Everyone who is interesting gets followed.
3. Unfollow is more important than follow, because negative Tweets are more attention grapping.
The most difficult part about Twitter is to start out and curate your feed from nothing. But once you have that, it's one of the best social media tools out there.
I agree with you very strongly. My Twitter feed, which I cull carefully, is deeply rewarding and enriching for me.
At the same time, doing that feed management feels increasingly like swimming upstream against Twitter's desires. First, they started showing tweets that people I follow simply liked. Now they suggest "topics" all the time.
I have to spend more and more time reminding Twitter not to do that garbage. But, overall, I still find the time spent is worth it in return for the quality of conversation and education I get in return.
Reddit is like this for me 10x, with very little effort required to maintain my feed. Spend a few minutes picking a handful of healthy subreddits and unsubscribing from the giant ones and Reddit easily becomes one of the best sites out there.
In my experience, many subreddits that should be healthy are too small to engage a serious community. For example, r/statistics ends up with teenagers posting homework questions. OTOH the big ones are indeed trash. The only thing to do is to follow fashion. Wallstreetbets was funny and insightful, then funny, now neither. NonCredibleDefense is funny and relevant at the moment. Nothing lasts.
Subs like /r/sysadmin ban this sort of question and tend to be mostly populated by working professionals.
Communities where all the top 10 hottest posts are made by newbies generally never grow into great subs. That sort of thing should be prob reserved to /r/askfoo or something.
Yes, subreddits really are communities: unique spaces populated by real humans and cultivated by actual human moderators. Each has its own microclimate and culture.
While in principle, you might assume certain topics should have a community of a certain size and caliber, there's no guarantee that such a community exists if the right set of humans haven't happened to coalesce around it.
That's just the nature of human group behavior. You might live in a city that has enough disco fans to support a thriving disco night every Saturday, but there's no guarantee that the right DJs and nightclub will get together to make it happen.
Also, twitter lists have stood the test of time and seem to bypass any changes they've made to force algorithmic view. That, or using an alternate client (eg. tweetbot, Echofon)
And likewise with YouTube. I often see folks complain about the junk YouTube is feeding to them or their kids, but I find nearly all their recommendations are fully in line with the stuff the family does regularly seek out and watch. To the point where some evenings I'll just visit youtube.com and expect to find something interesting, versus using many of the streaming services I pay for (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc.).
This makes sense. These platforms are in the "engagement" business. They're trying to have you spend more time by suggesting content you will watch, not turn you off and have you close the tab.
Yes, I have YouTube Premium and it is, by far, the best money I spend every month on video.
During the pandemic, my family settled into a routine of watching some YouTube every evening before we get the kids in bed. The recommendation system has dialed in our tastes very well and basically get an enriching, relaxing, enjoyable ~30 minutes or so of shared experiences every night specific to our hobbies and interests.
When we pick up a new interest, it's quick to notice and start recommending related stuff. When we move on, it doesn't tend to take long to get it to stop recommending stuff in that category.
It definitely tends to overfit, but it's so much better than most other systems and I will absolutely take that over it recommending garbage-but-popular content.
Also, most of my music listening these days is DJ mixes on YouTube.
My twitter using SO has complained that twitter constantly suggests tweets to her from people she is specifically not following due to their toxicity (and also doesn't care to block because doing so would potentially generate drama).
I have so, so may people on my Twitter feed muted for this reason. Toxic crap gets immediately muted - sometimes blocked. Have practically zero patience for crap so Twitter is quite nice for me. If you want to engage in a screaming contest you certainly can but that's not for me.
I just asked: Muting would make it so you couldn't see their part in conversations, which is a problem for their non-toxic content showing up in conversations that you're a part of.
What do you do when someone somewhat important in your industry puts out 20% abusive/toxic content (and that 20% is probably 90% of their engagement)? If you ban them you create drama, if you mute them you're still cutting yourself out of potentially important non-toxic conversations.
But when you don't ban/mute them twitter seems to want to constantly show you their hottest hottakes-- the very reason that you're not following them. (I'm not even sure if muting is enough to prevent the recommendations).
> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets.
False; Twitter’s algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't directly follow and is very clearly heavily driven by subject categorization (which is often also hilariously bad), as well as stylistic categorization (or maybe instead of it, as I see very little indication that the latter plays a role.) So, if you see toxic posts, it probably means you engage with tweets ON SUBJECTS on which some people post toxic takes, or follow people who post tweets on such topics.
It doesn't require any direct interaction with toxic tweets or individuals.
> False; Twitter’s algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't directly follow
I don't see any of that, on the official mobile app with timeline set to "latest Tweets". The only stuff from non-followed accounts I see are ads, and those aren't even terrible.
I do use the killfile zealously though.
I like Twitter precisely because it puts me in control over which accounts I get to see. It's the only social network that I still enjoy using.
This is my experience as well. Perhaps people use different clients and experience it differently. I use the web client almost exclusively and I often see toxic replies to people I follow or, occasionally, subjects I've engaged with before. It would be worth exploring alternative clients that show me only tweets from people I follow, and hides all responses unless I choose to dig in.
As someone with mostly high-quality follows, the "promoted" posts I get in my feed are so utterly trashy and obvious it's embarrassing. A lot of the "featured" posts are also way outside my interests and frequently posted out of context to the point that they don't make sense.
Do you happen to not receive Twitter's "recommendations"? I follow your steps religiously and I still get constantly bombarded by terrible "we think you'll like this" notifications that cannot be turned off.
The app and website both have "latest" feeds. You don't get that kind of recommendation in that feed. The closest to that kind of thing that I see are the trending topics on the right bar, which aren't in the feed.
I use Tweetbot for both MacOS and iOS. All I see are tweets and retweets from people I follow. Occasionally someone will go on a rant or tweet incessantly about their fantasy football team, and I mute them for a while. I can also mute words, hashtags, or people.
Now if Twitter removes 3rd party client access, well, yeah, I guess I'll see where my followees go. Or find another source of entertainment/news.
I use Tweetbot after trying Twitterrific for awhile. My only complaint is that sometimes a thread won't work in Tweetbot, and I'll have to open it in the website. If I had to use the website, or the official Twitter client, I'd stop using Twitter completely.
Nope, you don't see those while using nitter.net, an alternative Twitter front end. You only see the tweets, and you don't even have to be forced to login to see them.
> that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets
You need to be really brutal with muting anyone who creeps into your timeline and posts something you dislike, and turning off the retweets or just unfollowing people who bring the people you find yourself muting into your timeline.
Like straight away see something you don't like then hit mute.
For me positive reactions are way more prominent then negative ones—at least for me. Negative reactions are often hidden under a “Show more replies” button, or relegated quite far down the scroll. And then there is always the block feature, which can do wonders in cleaning up your feed.
I've only been on Twitter for less than year. I mostly follow journalists, some publications and a few industry experts. They are mostly rational people who post insightful things, but a few will dip their toes into nonsense takes on society or just feeding trolls who bark at them. I just unfollow. I found that my follows list topped out a little over 100 and just stopped because I would delete as quickly as I added. I never post and have no followers.
As someone who deleted Facebook after maybe two years on the platform and never took up anything else, I find Twitter to be slightly useful. I get insight from a handful of people for whom Twitter is their best outlet. I use it very much as source of information. It sucks as much as anything else when it comes to discourse. For my usage, I would see Twitter moderate content much, much more strictly than they do now. The most valuable creators don't come within 100 miles of violating any ethical boundaries and I'd reckon the vast majority of readers (and ad clickers) don't post much at all and will be completely unaffected by any moderation rules.
> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets.
This only works if you treat Twitter as read only. Any Tweet that reaches a sizable enough audience will have people interact with it and its author in a toxic way. The level of the toxicity will often depend on the specific author and certain types of people definitely receive more toxicity than others.
One bummer is that you then need to cut off people who were perfectly reasonable folks but failed to follow advice like yours and fell victim to twitter brain worms-- now spewing toxic hot takes themselves because that's all their feed was full of. Your answer isn't complete because twitter's toxicity tends to be contagious and when someone I know falls to it, I suffer too even when I've successfully avoided it myself.
I don't even use twitter but I've lost friends because they became intolerable after being radicalized by the twitter hot-take feed. It sucks. Also ignoring it or even avoiding the platform completely doesn't solve the problem when toxic twitter traffic has made you a target.
1. you literally can not control everything in your twitter feed if using twitter's apps. it will make things appear there which it thinks you'll like (this is obviously ignoring ads as that's not something you should expect to really control)
2. the toxicity is primarily in replies and interactions not always in posts. the posts which are toxic can still appear in your feed via RTs and simply looking at trending topics.
I agree you can do a lot to control your experience on twitter, but it simply isn't that simple unless you have a small <500 follower account.
I would be extremely careful about making introspective judgments based on an algorithm that somebody else wrote. It can change at any time, and you don’t know how it works (unless you work at Twitter). You might have some idea about the basics, but it can decide to show you crazy shit at any time, and it might not be related at all to who you are as a person.
I agree. Most of twitter requires self curation. Before following anyone I:
- check their liked items. Is this something I agree with or want on my timeline? Are they being consistent with their online persona? (Is a Christian account going out and liking pics of scantily clad people?)
- check their replies for how they talk to others. Ctrl+f for words or topics I just don’t want to see (and already have muted).
- check their following list. Who are the following? Do I want to see their 3p retweets in my feed?
Regarding the “topics” feature, I almost always click “I don’t want to see this” and I’m at the point where I never see that feature. It’s related to what you “like” so ymmv on how accurate it is for you. Additionally, I never follow tags or trends. That’s just asking for noise.
I’ve effectively created a twitter account that is isolated to “homesteading/gardening/farm twitter” and I’m pretty pleased with the experience. It’s everything I want and nothing I don’t.
It didn’t come without some online weed pulling though ;)
Agreed save for the last line - the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense.
Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish praise.
> the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense.
Definitely not my experience, or that of anybody I know who curates their feed carefully. It certainly promotes shallower conversation, and forces irritating kludges like threads. But it's simply not true that it categorically precludes complexity or depth.
Brevity isn't incomposability. If it was, your argument applies to sentences. If it did, humans wouldn't be able to successfully discuss anything complex.
My impression is that twitter has algorithms to try to maximize "engagement", and by "engagement", I mean conflict. I follow very few people, and the people I follow post things that are tech-related... But twitter will regularly try to show me inflammatory political tweets. These tweets are not coming from people I follow. I'm careful not to take the bait, but twitter definitely does try to bait you.
I think the other half of the equation is using the recent tweets view. Whenever I accidentally end up in the algorithm view I can tell right away because of how much irrelevant BS appears.
I agree with most of this except: On the desktop browser I still get recommendations in the sidebar for celebrity / politics / news bullshit despite not following any accounts close to these topics. I hate it. In the mobile official app I get just a shitload of ads I hate for all the same style stuff. It's just seemingly impossible to get rid of the outrage machine fully.
I've started using twitter heavily over the past year, and honestly as long as you keep it focused and immediately unfollow anyone who starts tweeting unrelated things it's a pretty decent experience.
Just pick a theme, and follow people who tweet about that theme. If they go off track, just unfollow them.
That only works if the prevalent and approved opinions make Twitter a happy place for you. For the rest of us though, it's a very political and sometimes evil place.
I wonder if you use the default Twitter client. Also, what you put there is not how Twitter suggests you use Twitter. Which says more about Twitter than you.
> I have a hot take on this topic: Your feed says more about you than Twitter in general. If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. Don't follow these people.
But a major source of toxic tweets is buying up all of Twitter.
$420 funding secured, "Thailand guy is a Pedo", constant attention-seeking, COVID19-conspiracy theories, etc. etc. Elon Musk's Twitter Account is one of the worst.
To see that this man is about to become the owner of Twitter really doesn't strike much confidence in me.
> Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists.
How is that a conspiracy theory? That's an opinion. Everyone has them. Why would you label him a conspiracy theorist for having an opinion you disagree with?
edit: why also is conspiracy theorist considered a pejorative? Conspiracy turns out to be the stuff of history.
At this point, we can say that "COVID19 will be done by April 2020" is a laughably incorrect response to the COVID19 issue entirely. Elon Musk was 100% the "like the flu", "Gone by April", "Lockdowns are stupid", "masking doesn't work" (etc. etc. etc.) bullshit train.
Everybody has their bad takes on various subjects. Elon Musk's COVID19 hot takes are among the worst I've seen. Others include some rather shitty behavior, like calling the Thailand guy a pedo for instance.
All-in-all, Elon Musk is NOT a good poster on Twitter, and if he takes over Twitter, I don't think I have much confidence in the long-term benefits of the platform. Its as if other online-trolls decided to take over various media outlets.
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Do you remember the 2020 election with any decent amount of memory? "COVID19 will go away as soon as the election is over", etc. etc. Tons of terrible takes on the subject. Musk was just part of that, and I daresay that falls into fall on conspiracy nut now that we can look back upon the pandemic with 2+ years of hindsight.
But if the COVID19 issue is a bad example / too political for your tastes, then I pivot to the Thailand Pedo guy tweets instead, which hopefully you can agree with me are uncalled for?
I disagree with you about Covid. That said we don't need to get into it. Just saying that arguments like:
> ..."COVID19 will go away as soon as the election is over", etc. etc. Tons of terrible takes on the subject...
are not terribly likely to sway me. In the same nature as you thinking people like that are crazy, I personally find your views to be wild. But it's nice we can both voice them and remain civil.
> Musk was just part of that, and I daresay that falls into fall on conspiracy nut now that we can look back upon the pandemic with 2+ years of hindsight.
Particularly:
> falls into fall on conspiracy nut now
Conspiracy is when a group of people conspire. To have a bad opinion is not to be a conspiracy theorist. If you want to call him a nut for a bad opinion, fine, but I just don't think conspiracy theorist makes sense when it has nothing to do with groups of people conspiring.
> But if the COVID19 issue is a bad example / too political for your tastes, then I pivot to the Thailand Pedo guy tweets instead, which hopefully you can agree with me are uncalled for?
Maybe I'll check out the Pedo guy tweets. I'm not on twitter, and don't know to which you refer.
Frankly I couldn't care much less about Musk. I care a great deal about free speech and throwing conspiracy theorist around as a pejorative.
The use of conspiracy theorist as a pejorative is an echo chamber way of attacking the message deliverer and dismissing what they have to say out of hand without consideration of their message. We do that too much in today's society, and considering the corruption present, we really shouldn't.
> All-in-all, Elon Musk is NOT a good poster on Twitter, and if he takes over Twitter, I don't think I have much confidence in the long-term benefits of the platform. Its as if other online-trolls decided to take over various media outlets.
Sure, maybe fair. I don't know. I feel that if he removes moderation and adds free speech, then it will be a net positive.
If any billionaire puts their slant on content moderation, I think its a net negative whether I agree with them or not. So, if he somehow does _just_ bring free speech back, then good. If not, then twitter will just be another biased platform as it has been, but with a new bias.
> Sure, maybe fair. I don't know. I feel that if he removes moderation and adds free speech, then it will be a net positive.
Do you even Jan 6th insurrection?
Donald Trump was removed from the platform because he has, and continues, to be a Jan6th conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump still believes he won the 2020 election.
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There's also a severe amount of Russian propaganda going around the internet right now. Do you support letting the Russian bots reign free on Twitter?
Russia / Moscow are clearly trying to use the internet to spread false information on Ukraine.
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In any case, having a "jackass" as the leader of Twitter (Pedo Tweet, Elon Musk "funding secured $420", and other such lies) is definitely a reason to leave the platform IMO. Elon Musk will attract other high-profile jackasses at a minimum.
The dumbass celebrity shitposting is the worst part of Twitter. I like Twitter mostly as an RSS-like replacement (since RSS itself is not as popular these days), with well-intentioned bloggers sharing information on a "push to serve" basis.
But the long-back-and-forth of 2-sentence long debates is... not useful for any form of discussion. It generates traffic and ad-revenue for sure, but its not useful to me. Good debates need longer-form formats, blogposts with multiple paragraphs and data to discuss.
I think "thread-reader" and 1/x and 2/x style long-form posts help a lot, but Twitter really isn't designed for medium-form discussion.
This is gross language. I assume apparently implying something so obvious as to make my points absurd?
Regardless free speech should be welcomed in this case too. People can then just ridicule his opinions and tear them down directly. It's not like he can't reach his audience on Gab or some other network.
For background, I'm not pro-Trump. I'm libertarian and think both sides of the spectrum are just legs of the same body that stomps on our freedoms and makes us poor.
> Do you support letting the Russian bots reign free on Twitter?
With regards to propaganda I think I have an operating brain. As such, I can make up my own mind. As for bots, I do think it would be nice if we could come up with a technical solution guaranteeing a human is posting the tweet.
> In any case, having a "jackass" as the leader of Twitter (Pedo Tweet, Elon Musk "funding secured $420", and other such lies) is definitely a reason to leave the platform IMO. Elon Musk will attract other high-profile jackasses at a minimum.
Sure.
> since RSS itself is not as popular these days
Which is really too bad. I really love RSS based podcasting though!
> 2-sentence long debates is... not useful for any form of discussion
> This is gross language. I assume apparently implying something so obvious as to make my points absurd?
Jan 6th insurrection is what started this "Twitter moderation debate" when Donald Trump was banned from the platform.
This is absolutely central to the entire discussion, and I'm trying to remind you of it. What should we, as an internet / online society do, to bad actors and/or trolls?
I think the solution chosen is obvious. We ban bad actors from online platforms of note. Russia (particularly Russian propaganda sources like RT) are another group, like Trump, who likely deserve the axe.
Once you and I agree that some actors deserve to be banned from online platforms, there's not much else to discuss. Its simply a matter of moderation, who truly deserves it or not. I think that moderation is a difficult and thankless job (I've done it myself on occasion).
But I absolutely see value in moderating forums / discussions. Twitter banning some bad actors is just a continuation of the online moderation model that we've used for so many years (since USENET at least).
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The #1 thing going all across conservative media right now, is how Elon Musk (might) bring Trump back to Twitter and reverse the Trump ban. Is this hypothetical something you'd support?
There's "free speech", and then there's "inciting rebellion against our entire system of government". And alas, I don't think that supporting the Jan 6th insurrection falls under the "free speech" camp, and that Donald Trump's ban should remain firm.
If a group of people want to spread conspiracy theories about the inadequacy of our election systems, then they no longer fall under "free speech" and are instead well within the category of "high treason" and/or "enemy of the state". That's the kind of talk that almost took down our entire country, and still threatens to do so in the next election cycle.
> This is absolutely central to the entire discussion, and I'm trying to remind you of it.
I don't think there's much to remind me of. I'm not on twitter and never really had the debate until now.
> What should we, as an internet / online society do, to bad actors and/or trolls?
Point out where they're factually incorrect. Ignore them. Ridicule them.
> I think the solution chosen is obvious.
This doesn't make it right.
> Once you and I agree that some actors deserve to be banned from online platforms, there's not much else to discuss.
I don't agree. And frankly, you just pointed out a a slippery slope that is exactly why I think you shouldn't ban anyone.
> But I absolutely see value in moderating forums / discussions.
I'm on the fence. Moderation is probably fine, but I don't like when megacorps do it. Centralization of power is my biggest concern.
> The #1 thing going all across conservative media right now, is...
I don't care. In my mind conservative and liberal media, cable news networks, and NPR, Etc... are just mouthpeices for the government and or corporatocracy. So long as the funding comes from a government or advertising, it's junk media in my mind.
> There's "free speech", and then there's "inciting rebellion against our entire system of government".
I would like you and me to peacefully rebel against our current system of government. Stop voting and stop paying taxes. Stop registering your vehicle, and stop getting government involved in marriage licensing. Let the whole dirtly system dissolve so we can be free individuals.
There, I openly incited rebellion. I'm sure you disagree, but that's not the point.
> I don't think that supporting the Jan 6th insurrection falls under the "free speech" camp
I disagree. But I think we're running in circles now.
> If a group of people want to spread conspiracy theories about the inadequacy of our election systems, then they no longer fall under "free speech" and are instead well within the category of "high treason" and/or "enemy of the state".
Wow, that's pretty dogmatic. Who watches the watchers? At some point a hammer like that will be used against perfectly peaceful people. Your statement sounds like it belongs in 1984 bequeathed by the Ministry of Truth. What if there at some point is an issue with the voting systems?
> particularly Russian propaganda sources like RT
One man's propaganda is another's BBC. BBC and NPR are both sponsored by governments that have bad track records of abuse of human rights. Why is Voice of America still allowed to operate on Twitter?
> Point out where they're factually incorrect. Ignore them. Ridicule them.
Good luck with that.
Trump, and his followers, today still believe the election was stolen. I don't believe there's any way to convince them otherwise. The only thing that can happen is to mitigate the damage.
You're welcome to try to convince them. I've done what I can from my side.
> Ridicule them.
That doesn't work for state-sponsored propaganda sites like RT. These groups have access to huge amounts of state-sponsored money and hire troll-farms from 3rd world countries to gaslight the discussion.
The opposite occurs, I'm ridiculed more often than not with these ridiculous discussion points. Its a losing battle because I fight fair, while they fight by buying up troll farms.
Unless I myself use a ton of fake accounts to build up a fake-following and build up a fake discussion, there's pretty much no hope at actually reaching critical mass and making discussion points move.
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The same occurs with billionare-level supporters like Elon Musk and/or Trump. They have the money to buy up false support and astroturf their supporters. You're up against literal professionals, who are paid per tweet to make the discussion look like their sponsored billionare is winning the discussions.
Its not quite as bad as state-sponsored propaganda like RT, but still bad.
You are naive. You aren't aware of the tactics being used in the modern social networks or how poisoned the discussion has become.
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> Why is Voice of America still allowed to operate on Twitter?
Are you seriously comparing BBC and Voice of America to RT? What side of the Ukrainian war are you on?
> I disagree. But I think we're running in circles now.
You're free to disagree, and I'm free to think of you as naive fool for doing so. At best, you're unaware of the tactics. At worst, you're in tacit support of them and are trying to convince me that the pro-Trump Jan6th insurrection crowd is a reasonable group that can hold a discussion with.
Alas, my experience says otherwise, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise. Because I have actually talked to many Jan6th truthers and alt-right people on my own time. I've also discussed the Russian/Ukraine issue with pro-Russian / RT-supporters.
Its not like their "free speech" has disappeared off the face of the internet. I still seek them out for debate and they're readily available to discuss the issues with me.
> Good luck with that.
> You're welcome to try to convince them. I've done what I can from my side.
Bit defeatist, but fair enough.
> Its a losing battle because I fight fair, while they fight by buying up troll farms.
Now who's the conspiracy theorist? Who's they!?
Just ribbin' you. : )
> You are naive. You aren't aware of the tactics being used in the modern social networks or how poisoned the discussion has become.
I've read some articles and have found most of this to be unconvincing. I think you're probably right that Twitter lends itself to bad conversation. But, just because a bunch of bots show up with false information or call me a dork, doesn't mean I have to believe them. I can verify sources, and quantity != quality when it comes to shitposts.
> Are you seriously comparing BBC and Voice of America to RT? What side of the Ukrainian war are you on
I'm on the side that understands without governments there aren't wars.
> You're free to disagree, and I'm free to think of you as naive fool for doing so.
Yup.
> Because I have actually talked to many Jan6th truthers and alt-right people on my own time.
Not unique to your experience. Many of that view run in my circles.
> Alas, my experience says otherwise, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.
Okay. Well talking to an immovable wall isn't a good look, so I'll drop it.
> Its not like their "free speech" has disappeared off the face of the internet.
Yup, which is why I don't care too much about Twitter either way. I'm just an advocate for free speech.
@dragontamer,
Thank you for the extended discussion. I'm going to try to get some work done.
Hope you have a great evening (assuming it's near night wherever you are)
> I can verify sources, and quantity != quality when it comes to shitposts.
I feel I have the ability to figure this stuff out too.
Unfortunately, the people I care about do not have such ability. And they trust these online personalities (who are largely supported by bots) more than my discussion points or arguments.
Yes, I'm defeatist, but there's a reason for that. I don't think my friends being dumbasses / unable to handle propaganda is a reason to cut them out of my lives, but it is very disconcerting to me how terrible at logos they've become, and how much ethos/pathos sways them these days.
These are people close to me: my mother, coworkers, my sister, etc. etc. I enjoy a spirited debate with them now and then still but its not to actually convince them of any facts, but only for me to check up on how far the propaganda train they've gone. Actually trying to convince them of anything doesn't work, and is not the point of discussions in my experience.
The fact remains: online personalities (be they Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Trump, etc. etc.) hold more sway to these people than my own words. I cannot win the ethos or pathos battle, only the logos battle (but that's only one peg of the rhetorical triangle). Without any support of ethos or pathos, its all for naught.
That's why rhetoric is ethos + pathos + logos. We can't just focus on the logos leg. Figuring out ways to punish the ethos (ex: banning Trump from Twitter, to diminish his reputation) seems like the only answer.
Any attempts for me to diminish ethos on my own only leads to an ad hominem attack which is easily deflected and diminishes my own logos.
> Hope you have a great evening (assuming it's near night wherever you are)
It's only nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team. Which currently works in a very mobster-like manner: for my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law. The rules seem to apply one to some, and many times without any evidence.
if and only if you want to use twitter to discuss politics
I'm noticing
A) twitter users that interest me and don't discuss politics are usually pretty great
B) I generally don't want to read anybody's political opinions on Twitter or most places... people who want to talk about politics mostly seem to be in to fighting a culture war, there might be people who aren't but I don't see them and it isn't the platform's fault or a moderation issue
> twitter users that interest me and don't discuss politics are usually pretty great
It seems to be falling out of fashion, but a few years ago a lot of prominent Silicon Valley technologists started intermingling overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets among their otherwise interesting and insightful tech Tweets. I think Twitter and other ideologically-aligned media radicalized them, which is to say that avoiding political accounts is a fine thing except (1) sometimes Twitter turns accounts political and (2) avoiding accounts that Tweet about politics at all is swimming against the current and (3) it sucks to have the all-or-nothing choice between following/not-following an account (rather than being able to follow interesting tech Tweets but uninteresting political Tweets, for example).
I guess I don't think a person owes me a politics-free experience, if they say things I don't like then I don't like what they say and don't want to follow them. No amount of moderation is going to stop people from expressing themselves in ways I don't like and I don't really blame the platform for people turning toxic, it's on the people themselves.
No one is arguing that they owe you a politics free experience, but one obvious solution is to allow people to have “channels” so I can subscribe to your tech opinions or your politics opinions distinctly. There are lots of other things that moderation could improve, like not centering the most toxic versions of each viewpoint.
> a few years ago a lot of prominent Silicon Valley technologists started intermingling overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets among their otherwise interesting and insightful tech Tweets.
"I don't think California should repeal civil rights legislation in order to allow overt hiring on the basis of race and gender."
"I think we should perhaps reconsider our non-enforcement of property crimes due to the fact that nobody can park on the street, the stores across from me are boarded up, and two pharmacies in my relatively affluent neighborhood just closed due to theft."
"I didn't find it appropriate for the protestors to tear down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or rename a school from Abraham Lincoln."
"I don't think it should be part of the school curriculum to be talking to preschoolers about gender and sexuality."
"Asians are disproportionally denied access to schools and employment due to arbitrary ethic and racial targets."
I don't think the sarcastic response really contributes to the discussion. There is enough toxicity on twitter that if someone digs hard enough they could find examples that aren't twitter-political-bubble-strawmen.
I disagree. I find their examples a good collection of the kind of viewpoints that get caught in the crossfire and disallowed when content moderation goes too far.
To be clear: there is often a lot of gray area and some middle ground to be taken in complex debates. When one side (eg: far-right American trollish behaviour) goes too hard in to the paint, the (over?) reaction by the opposing side(s) often loses perspective and it's the more reasonable opinions in the middle that get squashed in the well meaning attempts to supress troll like extremist influence. I think the above post highlights exactly these kind of opinions that get steamrolled away, even though many of them are within the realm of sensible debate.
I think that highlighting would have accomplished that better without sarcastically presenting them as "bad views".
All the sarcasm accomplished was an indirect criticism of the prior poster who asserted without evidence tech figureheads were tweeting "overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets". It's pretty uncharitable to assume they were referring to stuff on that list (many of which aren't just in the realm of sensible debate, but are actually majority views-- e.g. #1 we can look to the results of the ballot measure).
I don't think anyone seriously doubts that with enough searching we could find a couple examples that would make their claim technically true, at the very least... without delving into comments within the realm of sensible debate.
We shouldn't need to be so cynical, but if we must we don't need to do it at the expense of other participants here!
Twitter encourages hot-takes. Because of that all sorts of ill considered crap shows up there-- and that includes both inappropriately tarring views as racist as well as racist views that most people would agree are racist.
That's true, it probably would have helped had the original poster provided some examples of the supposed racist behaviour to save us the trouble of speculating.
It really isn’t germane and had I posted examples the thread almost certainly would have devolved further since this stuff really brings out the trolls.
This isn't what I had in mind (I tried to signal that by using "overt"). I don't want to drill into details because it seems like it will only invite flame. If there was a DM feature on this site, I'd link you to some stuff to show you what I'm talking about.
Would you identify which of your examples is speech that you find objectionable? The last statement about discrimination against Asians seems particularly well-supported by evidence, so it's not clear to me and perhaps others which statement(s) you intend to highlight as the example of "hateful things".
I guess it helps to share the moderation team's politics if you're on Twitter to talk about politics or other hot button stuff, but I thought it was pretty clear that the GP is not on Twitter for that.
This is a good point, however, I would say that the % of things which are NOT hot button issues has decreased dramatically over the past 5-6 years or so. It's a lot harder to avoid now.
Twitter seems to really want everyone to be talking about politics though. Every time I click on a trending news article "the algorithm" just bombards me with recommends to follow every single politician under the sun. It's a minefield and it turns me off from the service as a whole.
You're confused about this. The current twitter moderation guidelines are fairly clear. A tweet cannot target someone for what I can describe as "inherent traits". The classic example is
"I hate Muslim men" = banned (Muslim and man are inherent traits)
"I hate Muslim cab drivers" = OK (cab driver is a chosen profession)
I have a friend who was banned for saying something to the effect of "I hope white men have trouble sleeping tonight"
They have specific rules and they apply them. No one is going through millions of tweets every day and seeing if they match an ideology.
That's an interesting take. I will share just a single example that flew by earlier this week that is clear evidence of this policy not being followed, either by algorithms, or by manual followup.
Content moderation can be a challenging problem, but this is a clear failure of both algorithmic and human moderation processes, and there are an enormous number of these failures that lead to real harm in the form of radicalization and targeting of individuals and groups online and the real world.
Yet Twitter is full of hate tweets towards white people and men. And they rarely get banned. I've reported hundreds. Do you care to guess how many got banned?
Also, Muslim isn't an inherent trait. It's a religion that is taught. Even your examples are faulty.
I barely use Twitter, but I don't understand using Twitter for political discussions. To me it seems that it is a horrible platform for it. 280 characters isn't enough space to do much actual discussing of politics. It's enough to throw meaningless insults at the other side or post meaningless virtue-signalling type content, and that's about it. Maybe I'm wrong though, because I don't really use the platform much.
It's good for quippy slogans and volume-based demonstrations. One of my favorite accounts @TheWarOnCars, a pro-cycling and transit urbanist podcast, spends most of its timeline retweeting famous people complaining about traffic or parking with the phrase "@Person, welcome to the war on cars". The idea is to point out that, even people who say they love cars and promote suburban-style development, pretty clearly hate the everyday reality of living in a car-centric city when they're not talking in a political context.
> It's only nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team.
I'll go even farther and say it's nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team and you are too insecure about those politics to entertain other viewpoints. The sort of people about whom John Stewart Mill wrote:
> He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
Is there any friendly place on the internet where you can have open, unrestricted and constructive discussion on politics and deep social issues, with people from various backgrounds and differing opinions ?
That's not the case. Literally everyone who's dealt in inflammatory content (talking about a violent event, say, the recent Ukraine war has been filled with this) has had run-ins with the moderation process at twitter. They issue suspensions for false positives all the time, and everyone thinks it's targetted censorship. It's not.
Where it starts to look biased is that they've drawn two lines in the sand in recent years: 1. No disinformation about a global pandemic, and 2. No using lies about an election to justify violence against the government. And they banned a bunch of people that did that. And yes: it was one side that made those issues "partisan".
I really don't know what you want Twitter to do here. In any other society, those would seem like reasonable rules.
Disinformation about the global pandemic? How do we know if it’s disinformation if it can’t even be debated? It’s a fact that vaccines can cause injury. It’s a fact that there is a risk of myocarditis. But you can’t talk about that.
Why was Robert Malone kicked off? Isn’t his opinion more valuable than some random news personality when it comes to Covid? Literally banning a scientist who helped invent the very tech he is discussing. If he’s wrong, that’s fine, but it isn’t about facts — even the debate is banned.
That simply isn't true. I'd love an example of how yourself or other you follow are censored. I'm deeply familiar with the platform and have not witnessed censorship outside of threats and direct hate speech, as well as extreme disinformation campaigns (ie Trump).
(Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.)
> (Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.)
I think this is what I don’t understand about the general sentiment that Twitter is some kind of uber-censored platform. Sure, high profile accounts and tweets can sometimes be removed, but have you ever tried reporting tweets?
9 out of 10 times that I report tweets threatening violence or harm against someone, I get a notification a few hours later that the “moderation team” has reviewed that tweet and found it not to be in breach of any policies.
Twitter’s reporting system is ineffective at best, and I almost wish I had seen the kind of heavy handed moderation that people prescribe to Twitter here.
I mean recent Twitter leaks have shown internal tools that let them categorize users into blacklists and the ability censor their tweets so they dont get much reach or engagement by not showing up in Trending lists and etc. The screenshots of the tools came out during the big hack a year ago that was pushing crypto scams.
And why is that a bad thing? Trending blacklists are a standard moderation tool, basically every social media platform uses them nowadays. Without them, bad actors can game the algorithm to get their spam promoted through the trends system.
The fact that moderation tools exist does not imply that they are being used for political censorship. None of the screenshots of "search blacklisted" accounts from the leak showed any evidence of it being used on actual people, they are all random alphanumeric usernames with more reports than tweets.
In fact, the opposite is true. In 2018, when the feature was first rolled out, it was found to be catching several notable conservative commentators because their tweeting behavior is hard to distinguish from trolls and spambots (wonder why...), so those people were explicitly whitelisted so that they would appear in searches and trends despite their bad behavior.
We quickly went from "Twitter isn't a heavily censored platform" to "they have secret blacklists, but it's totally normal and not political and a good thing anyway". This game of moving goalposts is tiresome and clearly disingenuous.
Twitter is a moderated platform. Tooling for moderating content existing does not inherently imply it is being used for political purposes, but you’re more than welcome to contradict that with sources.
There’s no goalpost moving here - a social media site having the ability to prevent large volumes of spam making its way to the trending page in front of thousands of eyeballs shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The number of crypto scams in replies to tweets by Elon himself suggests that this tooling is definitely not as draconian in ability as you seem to believe.
Your email provider also has “secret” blacklists, and if incoming email originates from a sender on those lists then it gets put in your junk (or even bounced). Does that concern you?
For a vast amount of people (on both sides of the political spectrum, oddly enough), referring to Levine as a man is an objective statement of reality.
The tweet is still up, even. Babylon Bee are being asked to delete it as a form of bending the knee to an opposing ideology. It's wrongthink, not hate speech or incitement, that you and Twitter are concerned with.
I don't have a horse in the trans debate, but I have my fair share of opinions that are verboten in progressive circles. It would be stupid of me to deny what is happening there.
For a long time referring to ____ race (or women, etc) as having a naturally lower intelligence was "an objective statement of reality" to the vast majority of people, so I don't that a compelling argument for defining hate speech.
Especially in this case where it was targeted at an individual, and not just a conservative blog post on transgenderism being linked to etc. Notice that Ben Shapiro et al have not been banned.
> I don't that a compelling argument for defining hate speech.
I'm not trying to define hate speech, I'm saying that there's no hate there to begin with and so all we're left with is an argument over reality (or the terms we use to describe it): is a woman an adult human female, or is there something else we have to consider?
In your counterexamples, black people/women are being declared strictly inferior. That's not the case here - Levine isn't lessened by being an adult human male.
If you want something censored, the onus should be on you to prove that it is hateful, not on someone else to prove that it is not. For that, you need to define hate speech and explain how the Babylon Bee's post fits that definition alongside the examples you just gave.
The fact that your comment is being downvoted is why we need more free speech. The above comment is simply a biological fact. Many people are stuck in echo chambers that make them think their fringe opinions are from the majority, Twitter enables this enormously
Banning the Bee is warranted only in the eyes of transgender ideologues.
The whole point of free speech is that no faction should be allowed to suppress the speech of others, lest such factions prevent consideration of ideas that might eventually prove convincing and true.
>The conservative-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, was suspended by Twitter for 12 hours, after it had mockingly awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine the title "Man of the Year."
In what way was this "100% warranted"? You mean it's "100% warranted" to ban accounts which make fun of people and things you don't like? What about making fun of Trump? Is that fine? Seems to be, and seems to be based entirely on the mod's political persuasions.
Let's talk about Hunter Biden's laptop. This was banned almost immediately under the premise of "hacked material." Okay, seems fair. Except they allowed (and continue to allow) hacked material to circulate about the Canadian Freedom Convoy donors.
Let's talk about covid. Twitter banned any and all mentions (and accounts) which discussed the possibility that covid came from a lab in Wuhan. This is now a leading theory of its origin. Project Veritas, whether you like them or not, have been instrumental in exposing the relationship between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance. The fact that Fauci oversaw re-defining the term "gain of function research," that he explicitly gave funding to EcoHealth Alliance, knowing they would be funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain of function research, and uncovered incorrectly redacted emails between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance.
Twitter even suspended Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled the country to talk about the high likelihood of a lab leak.
I feel quite certain you're busy telling yourself "but these are all totally justified!" This means your views align really well with the moderation on Twitter. Where it's fine to ban things like this, but not the hacked private information about Canadian Freedom Convoy donors, or Trump and family hacks, or the doxing of Libs of Ticktok founder Chaya Raichik.
> Let's talk about covid. Twitter banned any and all mentions (and accounts) which discussed the possibility that covid came from a lab in Wuhan.
This is the one example everyone who is getting their knickers in a twist about Twitter censorship loves to bring up, but it doesn't seem to be a great example. There's only weak circumstantial evidence in favour of the theory and banning discussion of it was something Twitter realised was a mistake and rolled back on.
I don't think it's unreasonable for mistakes to happen as long as they're corrected. I think there are plenty of things you can criticise Twitter for, but this seems like an odd one to highlight.
> Twitter even suspended Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled the country to talk about the high likelihood of a lab leak.
"Even"? This is a misrepresentation. Yan is a political hack. She refuses to have her work peer-reviewed. See e.g. [0]. She's a useful pawn for Steve Bannon.
What a shock you are getting downvoted - not sure why, other than you are challenging people’s cherished dogma.
Which is exactly why if Elon can forced moderation to at least be transparent and consistent, and not purely through the lens of political ideology we will all be better for it.
And if it makes people uncomfortable - good! If you are fat, dumb and happy then you really aren’t doing anything. Life without friction is pretty meaningless - probably why so many people are pretty miserable even if they don’t actively realize it. Reading some of the comments in here - the lack of self awareness by many is pretty amazing.
"Transparent and consistent" moderation has nothing to do with freeing it from "political ideology".
Twitter's moderation is fairly transparent, and mostly consistentish (as it can be, moderating on the scale that twitter does, which i guess is not very consistent at all...). Just because you don't agree with their moderation doesn't make it untransparent, or inconsistent.
Libs of TikTok was temporarily suspended twice for targeted harassment. On April 13, 2022, Libs of TikTok was suspended for 12 hours from Twitter for "hateful conduct." Hours after being reinstated, the account was suspended a second time for another 12 hours.
The only thing Libs of TikTok posts is videos made by liberals on TikTok. Yet it was deemed hateful? Reposting liberal content is hateful now.
I spent 2 seconds reading through:
"This polyamorous genderfluid witch is a preschool teacher in Florida. She’s so proud of herself that she discusses her gender and sexuality with 4 year olds"
"This is a mental illness"
"This teacher has been identified and is employed by @FergFlorSchools"
"3rd grade teacher at @GracemorNKC teaches 8 year olds about gender identity and then “wonders if anyone [students] will change their minds” presumably about their gender. These groomer teachers need to be fired. "
You say "just annotating videos", those political blinders you're wearing must be pretty strong...
That is not all it does, it's posts videos that are longer than any of their 'true believer' readers will actually watch. Many of which are at best 'cringe'. Then labels the videos as evidence of pedophelia/child grooming. Which they are clearly not.
So what if they label videos? Not sure how that matters. Mute or block if you are offended. Sticks and stone y’know?
How many posts have there been on Twitter calling republicans Nazis? Or claiming the 2016 election was stolen? Or calling Clarence Thomas a house —-r or an Uncle Tom.
>I'm deeply familiar with the platform and have not witnessed censorship outside of threats and direct hate speech
Maybe you're brainwashed to the point where everything Twitter bans falls into categories of "hate speech" or "extreme disinformation". That doesn't mean the majority of people out there share your views. Of course, you don't have to deal with those people, because you probably hang out only on websites that reinforce your biases via censorship.
>I'd love an example of how yourself or other you follow are censored.
Unity 2020 campaign account got permanently banned and links to its website were restricted even in private messages. They broke no rules, posted nothing edgy and no one ever coherently explained why this happened.
New York Post got suspended after Tweeting Hunter Biden laptop article link. The suspension was based on clearly fabricated rationale.
These are just two egregious cases that I'm well familiar with. I can post about a dozen more. There are thousands less notable, but no less clear-cut examples out there. There are even more examples that are debatable, but which in totality indicate a pattern or political manipulation.
Funny thing is, I don't even use Twitter. The question is, why does a person like me is more aware of its censorship that someone who claims to be well familiar with the platform?
i'm just going to repeat what you said back to you, because it also applies to you.
Maybe you're brainwashed to the point where everything Twitter bans falls into categories of "hate speech" or "extreme disinformation". That doesn't mean the majority of people out there share your views. Of course, you don't have to deal with those people, because you probably hang out only on websites that reinforce your biases via censorship.
>> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.
Its like white people telling brown people that airport security isnt a toxic place and its all in their mind. Things are toxic...just not for everyone. Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is.
The point of twitter isnt just to read, but also to engage. But engagement is hard when tiki-toting nationalists are sending death threads to anyone that doesnt want to turn the world into prison.
Even technical (non political) conversations get all sorts of hate flung at PoC accounts.
> Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is.
Try being a white right-of-center man and see how toxic it is. Try being a Christian and see how how toxic it is. Try being a gender-critical feminist and see how toxic it is. Etc.
I love how you just mentioned this and people jumped in to prove your point. You never said these groups were oppressed, or anything about being silenced, just that interacting with people can be toxic if this is what you believe. Suddenly, people are jumping at you, claiming you're crying and putting all these words into your mouth. Everyone, this is the toxicity he's claiming! Not that he's oppressed, or he has no free speech.
There's a difference between receiving hate for merely existing and receiving hate for espousing harmful beliefs.
If you got hate for having Christian imagery or references in your profile, that would be awful. But if "being a Christian" means quoting Leviticus 18:22 at homosexuals then that is an action you're taking and getting pushback for.
I find people like yourself in traditional power structures genuinely believe the enforcement of the existing structure is a "neutral" act or position to hold. I think this delusion is how you come to think of politics you actively engage is as merely "being". It's not, and no on else is obligated to pretend it is.
> Not all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live privilieged lives
And I didn't say that they did. I'm just saying that proclaiming that you're white and male doesn't give me any information that would lead me to assume that you are marginalized. That doesn't mean you can't be in some capacity or that you must be privileged, it just means that people who look like that typically are less marginalized than people who are, say, Black or Hispanic.
There's a broad spectrum of marginalizations that exist, such as disability or economic - you can be marginalized as a disabled white guy! That's absolutely true! But when speaking purely about race or ethnicity, it's helpful to realize that people of color broadly experience far more racism.
What’s stranger is you assume every person from other categories is marginalized by default if they claim it. It’s time to stop generalizing and stomp out hate in the individual cases it can be found.
>sure, people may give you crap, but there’s nothing structural working against you
Except rapidly creeping D&I policies which explicitly discriminate against white men?
>Ah yes, white moderate men, the historically oppressed population, beaten down by years of hardship
This line of reasoning is a toxic non-sequitur. The fact that white men weren't "oppressed" historically does not mean that they are incapable of being oppressed now or should not be allowed to make such claims. Especially when you consider that even if "straight white men" are in power, the policies of that managing minority can absolutely skew our institutions against the rest who aren't in management. Which, by the way, is the entire point of D&I, so it's incredibly dishonest to pretend that oppression isn't happening when the oppressors are overtly trying to "level the playing field" by reducing/denying opportunity to this demographic.
You don't get to pretend that these policies aren't oppressive/discriminatory just because you agree with them, but that's what proponents are absolutely doing. And without pushback there's nothing stopping an overcorrection, which metrics indicate is already happening, since no one is bothered by a team that is 100% "diverse" (i.e. zero white males).
I don’t really understand this defense. It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?”
Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.
> It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?”
I would agree, but many people see it as just "part and parcel of what's necessary to have a city".
I think this is the kind of fundamental disagreement that comes up; what is known and familiar is "normal" even if you admit it's "not great" but what is not great about things that are not known and familiar is "insanely bad how could anyone even think about living that way".
Same here, I only follow tech and creative people doing work that's relevant to my interests and unfollow at the first whiff of unrelated political topics. The only problem with this approach is that you do have to unfollow a lot of people to make it work (or be invested enough in the good stuff on Twitter to sift through a timeline full of garbage looking for it, which I am not). For some of my interests, like infosec, I can't really follow anyone because it's just the norm to use your professional account to broadcast your uninsightful pro/anti/smugly aloof views on the hot US political topic of the week.
I doubt changes in Twitter leadership will change much for people who use Twitter this way. It's unlikely it would be in Twitter's interests or even widely popular but I do hope for better tools for configuring your feed, especially options to filter out politics and current events if that's not what you're on Twitter to read about.
I've been disappointed after following scientists/engineers who's work I respect to find that they consistently tweet cynical, negative takes on inconsequential topics. For better or worse it really degrades my respect for them intellectually and has been one of those "don't meet you heroes" moments for me.
I can't say that I've ever felt the emotion of rage when using twitter. People say things I don't agree with all the time, even here. It just doesn't warrant an emotional reaction.
My experience with twitter is great. Things happen and the people that I follow react to them. I see news, machine learning papers and one liner jokes / pithy observations. I've no problems with freedom of speech or any other aspect of it.
I also find twitter to be a nice place. I pretty much follow other developers and the option to order by datetime pretty much removes any attempt from twitter to control what I see.
>> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?
That is what I too think every time some says that.
I find Twitter a generally enjoyable place. I mostly engage with local New Yorkers about YIMBY/transportation alternatives subjects, and then recently, with subject matter experts about the Russian-Ukraine War. Twitter is generally by far the best news source I've found; you'll hear about things way before it hits the major network. Admittedly it does require a more discriminating approach.
I have the same experience, I don't dive into trending "drama" I follow people I find funny, companies/athletes/celebrities that I am interested in, etc. I prune who I follow probably about twice a year to cut back on people I maybe followed because I saw one funny thing.
If someone trolls me in a reply, I ignore them and move on. Having the last word means nothing on the internet.
It's like Reddit, or uh, a billion other things in life. People complain about it because they don't have the will or emotional health[1] to be disciplined about how they use it. Despite following a decent number of econ- and politics-adjacent accounts, my feed is high-quality because I keep an extremely high bar for intellectual honesty, and remove those who violated it, even when accounts were previously high quality[2].
Though to be fair, I do have to avoid reading the replies in every post. This feels like an actual loss, since they often contain thorough, intelligent rebuttals or supplements. It's just not worth wading through all the insane people.
[1] I say this with empathy. I think outrage addiction is real.
[2] eg Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias both turned into trolls at one point, though silver has since improved
I've been active on Twitter for a while, but I haven't gone through the trouble of "curating" which is to say, using a third party client to avoid the (often propagandist) spam and blocking everyone who says insane shit. And it's not just a simple matter of "being careful about who you follow" since you can follow people who have reasonably well-articulated opinions, but whose followers (or others attracted to their Tweets) are toxic and may number into the tens or hundreds of thousands (e.g., Matt Yglesias posts a lot of interesting stuff, but the comments are often a shit-show). That's a lot of shit to wade through.
> I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators
I tried to do this for years but I’ve been unable to do this because everyone just tweets about politics (or Twitter finds a way to inject their recommendations into my feed). So I gave up and stopped trying to control that.
Even when Twitter finally made the option to use ‘latest tweets’ instead of their feed, after a decade of making that difficult, it still seemed to be too far gone.
Now I only use Twitter when I get linked to it from other sources.
I've said it on HN before. You need to be willing to spend some effort self-curating your feed. Only follow people you're interested in, use the settings feature to mute tweets containing certain words or phrases, and make heavy use of the lists feature.
Once you've done all that it's much better. Of course you can't think of everything so some stuff slips through but that's a given for anything.
Totally agree. It's incredibly easy for me to simply filter out ppl who rage-bait. I am more internet-native than most though? Maybe it's harder for the general populace than I might otherwise assume?
I think 99.99% of the issue with Twitter is how it seems to be the single place that news media, blogs and numerous other platforms use to cite and spread inflammatory content.
Nobody I follow ever bothers me and I certainly don't post much, but it's the internet flame factory in terms of how much other nonsense gets posted because the content is public by default. That's almost the point.
News stories like, "One user on Twitter thinks..." that shows a tweet showing the inflammatory thing they want to pretend is a trend, even though the tweet itself has virtually no likes were the beginning of a trend that got us to the news cycle we are today.
IMO it's the root cause of the "everybody is terrible" news cycle that people have been trying to live in for the past 10 years. IMO it's all been a media driven attempt to polarize people and it's self reinforcing because Twitter becomes the reference point to determine if people are polarized.
I also find Twitter a nice place, as I mainly follow science and engineering topics. As for occasional stray into politics and culture wars, I simply try to get information and analysis but ignore opinions. Take the controversy on the "don't say gay" bill, I simply tried to get answers to questions like what the bill says, does it target any specific group, was what Disney said true, why some people were angry that the bill forbids teaching any sex orientation before 3rd grade, why sex education is such a divisive topic in the US, and etc.
As long as I focus on getting information and ignore those who consistently gave doctored information, Twitter is awesome.
I got on twitter to follow COVID-19 and then election news, but accidentally stumbled across a great community. Lots of bright, interesting people -- very y-combinator and slate-star-codex-esque.
People are starting to organize hangouts/parties with people in "this corner of twitter." I even met up with dudes from twitter last weekend and had a great time!
@visakanv and @eigenrobot (among many others) seem to be some of the biggest community members. Even though it's probably more lib-right than I am there's a wide range of fascinating people who I pretty much consider internet friends.
Agree with this. Twitter is by far and away my favourite platform for consuming stuff from (mostly) others in my industry and OS intel on things like the Ukrainian war.
I can’t remember blocking anyone in recent memory and follow ~350 people. I’ve also had some of my best customer service experiences there, typically from places that, without twitter, I’d have to phone and spend hours on hold.
My simple rule for anything on my phone is that I’m extremely tight on what app I give notification rights to. I can count on one hand how many apps have that ability and twitter most definitely isn’t one of them.
Not by default though and this is terrible UX. Everyone who claims that they have a good feed also makes a point of stating something like 'you need to curate your feed'. It takes active intervention to prevent the app from disintegrating into a toxic maelstrom - this is a serious problem. And sometimes it is hard to unfollow people you are close with in person but are obnoxious online (it can be awkward). The app's default behavior is not the responsibility of the users, it belongs to the company.
Most social networks are nice places if you pick the right people/topics to follow, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, etc...
I would place an exception on Facebook, or Facebook-like networks because you follow actual people, not public persona and ideas. For example I have some good friends that have some debatable political ideas, that's fine, we may have small and respectful arguments, but most of the times, we just avoid the subject and do things we both enjoy. But add them to Facebook and you get all the vomit, no only their posts, but others too, because Facebook thinks that if you like a person, you must share the same ideas. It makes my Facebook feed essentially worthless, as if being littered with ads wasn't enough.
No matter how careful you are, you will eventually still end up following some new media like New York Times or CNN or Fox News or US president or some celebrity. And then it's only a slippery slop because for many stories, there are two sides and you will identify with one of them. I did not become regular Twitter user until I meticulously cleaned up who I follow. I removed every single news media, every political personality including US president and every non-technical celebrity. Now I only follow ML/Ai researchers and scientists and my feed couldn't be better. However, Twitter still recommands me to follow celebrity or new media once in a while and I have to carefully ignore that.
Every time I tried to make a Twitter account it was locked and needed a phone or email. Never posted just followed, made accounts just for Conferences or a city I was going for travel.. . It was years ago and years before that as well. After getting locked out for just wanting a feed with personal data exploitation so many times .. I'll never understand how anyone defends Twitter. I would only use it if someone paid me at this point.
Maybe I have a different experience than most. I just wanted an anon account for specific times and organic content. Guess if you do that you are evil and shouldn't have that right.
Ya, you might actually be the only one. I quit years ago when all of the mostly interesting web design ppl I followed started unironically outrage baiting their followers. People I had largely met in real life. After I unfollowed them, I found that Twitter decided it was ok to fill the gaps with content from people I didn't follow, but were maybe at best tertiary connections, and also embodied the same crap. Every day I'd check, and some bullshit would be telling me I don't feel bad enough for X or I'm not mad enough about some world issue
I tried that approach but was unable to achieve what you seem to have. I would constantly get "someone who ___ follows posted x" or likes y which meant that I was exposed constantly to vitriol and general ugliness. After a few years of trying (read clicking "stop showing me this" over and over) I gave up and deleted the account.
Not sure why my experience was different but I was trying to make the site work in good faith and didn't feel politically targeted. I just was unable to keep anger and reactivity off my feed from accounts I didn't even follow.
With the flexible content controls that Twitter already has in place, you can make Twitter to be just about as nice as you want it to be. If you mark your profile private, selectively follow, and either mute or block things / accounts that interfere with your worldview, it can be quite pleasant.
The problem is that you have to be public to get virality, and that virality opens you up to people who disagree. Locking your account and developing your own content haven is an easy tradeoff for those people sane enough to not need internet likes from random people.
> Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place?
I sure read a lot more junk here on HN than I do on my twitter feed, mostly because I have a lot more control on what comes my way there. However, keep in mind that by having such control, one is very prone to ending up in an echo chamber whereas on HN, I learn to think differently once in a while because of someone who disagrees with me and puts up a civilized response.
I'd like to have both environments. Each have their pros and cons.
Completely agree, you're very much in control of what you see, and who you interact with. There's plenty of features in place to aid with not seeing things you don't want to.
>I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?
Most complains about twitter aren't really about it's "toxicity", which is about how the user who browses twitter perceives the content, like you said. The main issue with Twitter is differential treatment and straight out censorship in some cases. This is not something the "user can fix" by changing his perception or views.
The problem is twitter doesn’t have multiple channels for a single user[2], very few people create multiple accounts to keep their interests separate, inevitably people start posting politics social or simply not relevant stuff [1] to their accounts.
[1] I may follow someone for their tech content, that person may also be a big American football fan a sport I have no interest in.
[2] hashtags are not the same and people don’t use them consistently
“Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest.”
you sound completely braindead
“I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?”
no, it isn’t
“Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.”
It might be on me, but they're trying to build a public forum, not a niche community. If you want to attract the number of people that Twitter wants to attract, it can't be built on power users. Hell I'm a 'power user' and I don't want to be spending my time to figure out how to curate a community for my benefit, I'll just go to reddit or here for that.
The problem is when you follow people for topic X and then they decide to use their audience to talk about unrelated topic Y. I hate that. If I follow someone because they talk about some tech topic, I really could care less what their opinion is on some social or political topic. I found heavy handed use of muted keywords and muting people helps A LOT.
I'm following exactly one person (a mathematician). A significant number of the tweets I get to read are still political. I also get some stupid recommendation (tabloid type of content).
It's entertaining, probably not toxic, but addictive, noisy and overall not a very productive activity. I get much more from HN.
I never got into twitter, but I feel that way about instagram. Took me a while, but carefully following and unfollowing, I have a nice, non-toxic, interesting pastime when I want it.
I do occasionally get the random suggestion that is irrelevant, but that's a quick fix.
Facebook however. I don't think there is any help for my feed. I've abandoned trying.
My twitter feed got infinitely better after I blocked lazy retweets and suggested tweets[1]. Now I only see things from people that I care to follow and the tweets they care enough about to quote tweet.
[1]: mute the following forever, all without quotes: "RT @", "suggest_activity_tweet", "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline"
e.g. I just saw a tweet from someone I don't follow in my feed -- let's say, Lisa. Above it, it said "You are seeing this because Bob liked it". But I don't follow Lisa, nor Bob! Why am I seeing this??? I swear this has just happened, and it happens all the time.
Problem is, even if you are careful about who you follow, they will eventually start tweeting about US politics, world views, etc. I follow mostly sports, but can't stand influencer devs, etc.
One exception is wesbos of course, maybe I just like the guy since he not always tweets about programming and I still enjoy his content.
I tried to mostly follow tech people, but so far I haven't had any luck finding someone to follow who doesn't fill 50% of their feed with political tweets. I could probably make it work with a mute list or something, but I just don't care enough to spend the time to be honest.
For some things, Twitter can be cool. I don't subscribe as much to the "Twitter is entirely a cesspool" idea that a lot of critics have, but I dislike it because it encourages lack of context and nuance due to an artificial character limit. What are you gonna use up your space for in a tweet: detailed information, or something to grab someone's attention? Usually and most likely the latter.
For this reason, I don't use Twitter at all. I prefer to stay on sites like HN or even Reddit. All of them have their issues and rage bait, but at least those two in particular generally have more long-form content. Reddit, when used for hobby-related content, is actually pretty great, even though it gets a lot of crap (granted, the crap is kinda deserved). Just don't use it for political stuff and you're fine.
Agreed, I only use it for board game design and discussion. If you stay away from politics it is quite valuable and rarely toxic. They have recently even added explicit Communities and that has been good so far.
I tend to agree. I've seen things turn bad on my feed pretty quickly, so you have to really take an active role in unfollowing / delisting content you don't want for the algorithm to work.
I agree, my twitter view is very nice. Computer graphics, few authors, some dry political analysts, space stuff. If someone posts something irascible I just unfollow them (but might later refollow).
People that are offended at tweets are looking for offense. It is an error in the dopamine addiction that compels them towards the quest of real justice.
i believe it becomes a shitshow if you start twitting. Thats because twitter will notify you of replies to your posts (it shouldn't maybe). there are mobs of political trolls that trigger each other and it can become pretty funny. if you can ignore it , fine, but most of them are being deliberately provocative
I've tried to like Twitter a million times over but "the algorithm" keeps spewing outrage spam at me through recommendations, notifications and basically every free piece of white space on the website. The whole social network looks like one of those ad-ridden top 5 things spam site - I really don't understand how can anyone tolerate this. Especially when clean, beautiful alternatives like Mastodon exist.
yeah it is , but given this a lot of people are going to leave and some others will become very rabid. Smells like trump again . And perhaps it's for the best - this kind of service should be served by some decentralized protocol so that the chaos is warranted
