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Comment by bernardlunn | Hacker News Reader

Clickait headline without much substance

I've looked briefly at Mastadon, but hadn't been motivated to used it.

However, as a Twitter user for the last decade, the platform seems to be decaying. Either no on is really on it much any longer, or they've squelched my account severely.

The fun seemed to depart after late 2016, as though something happened which dismayed The Powers That Be.

Twitter's problem is that it won't do anything about users with handles like @magapatriot2130945785 who have turned the site into trash.

It's not that they CAN'T do anything about it, the problem is that they WON'T.

Why do think that users with usernames like that have turned the site into trash? In my experience, Twitteer's problems seem more systematic, and related to their attempts to maximize your time on site, and thus ads viewed.

Have you actually used Twitter since 2016?

Isn't Twitter much more heavily slanted towards left-wing politics? Twitter has pretty much become a haven for that. I really don't see why you would think that the group you mentioned are the ones that ruined Twitter. Incidentally, Reddit seems to be going the same way, but they probably have more niche communities that are isolated from the rest of the site, so it might not become as big of an issue.

Have you tried using a third party Twitter app (eg Tweetbot on Mac & iOS, Fenix on Android)?

I find I get a vastly different experience on those apps to the official site - on the website, tweets from various friends aren't being shown at all, and replies are being re-ordered. It's as if the Twitter site is re-ordering things to maximize "engagement" (ie outrage). The third party apps still show things by chronological order, don't show tweets that others like/heart, making for a much better experience.

i was a HUGE third party user, but nowadays i just prefer using twitter web and twitter for android (specially after twitter finally added latest home page instead of those weird curated timelines).

also, list support is a lot better on the official app (and i use a lot of lists so i don't clutter my main timeline with random stuff).

For people still using Twitter with a web browser on a laptop or desktop, I’d highly recommend tweetdeck.twitter.com. The interface is split into multiple columns and allows one to focus on what’s interesting or relevant. I personally liked it a lot when I used Twitter in the past for sometime.

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