Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustinmoris | Hacker News Reader

In mid October I deleted almost all my tweets and likes (but Twitter being so shit they are still showing my likes except it’s not liked anymore lol) and have not been tweeting anything anymore.

I found Twitter too toxic, it made me angry with people for no reason, so I deleted all my tweets and the app. No more notifications, no more “just checking Twitter quickly”.

I now go to Twitter like once a day just to have a look what is going and and oh my god, the more I am absent the more I see how rotten Twitter is and all of its users. Everyone is so negative, pessimistic, judgemental, sarcastic in tone, confrontational, and self righteous. People are posting so much shit it’s unbelievable how much time they waste of their lives there. One huge thread after another, people crying for attention.

Everyone just posting negative stuff to make other people feel bad, down or guilty about something. I was part of the problem too.

Lots of this:

> “When I was a kid, I once had to work at my uncle’s shop. Let me tell you about <insert bullshit here>. A thread...”

I don’t know what Parler is, but Twitter is THE WORST of social media and if Parler is an alternative then it’s going to be equally bad!

View on HN

I've long held the opinion that Twitter and Facebook are just content in the medium, a bit like complaining about Sky, CNN or Fox on TV without looking at television itself and the impact it had on communication.

The internet has brought communication to everyone that travels at incredible speed. This has the effect of causing emotive responses, rather than reasoned. Requires no effort at all to respond, and encourages the toxicity you describe. What gains most traction are those posts that are the most emotive. It used to be "if it bleeds, it leads", but I suspect these days it's more akin to "emotion deserves promotion".

Speed carries a number of other implications. For example, it allows a cheap, steady stream of constant information that can be completely irrelevant at best to you, plus it's information about which you often can do nothing about, except hit the reply button. This can only make things worse, because people feel powerless except in this superficial way.

The other effect is the quantity of information, and it's impossible now for a user of the internet to wade through it, or even validate it without incredible effort. Our current techniques for filtering that information is essentially populist individualism: we rely on what other people have liked, linked to, or shared, but at the same time, read what is presented to us based on our previous interactions.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that I perhaps pessimistically feel that these things are fundamentally baked into the medium, in much the same way that Neil Postman felt entertainment was intrinsically baked into television. Hopefully I'm wrong, and there are solutions to these things. Not sure what they are myself.

The medium is the message :) [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

Well Neil Postman was a friend of McLuhan, and said "I can’t think of a book that I’ve written that I could have written if not for McLuhan". https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/neil-postman-...

Increasingly, the medium is the tribe. It’s not clear there are solutions to this because aligning on tribal beliefs is how we evolved to survive!

This is exactly it. The instant communication has created instant reinforcement for the tribe. It's something our minds aren't really ready to handle.

I agree there may not be a solution, given the technology we now have and the minds we'll never improve upon in our lifetimes.

But I think we have to try...

That and you can instantly find a huge tribe. In the past you had to deal with others around you as well, which challenged ideas. Now you plug in to this huge tribe of anonymous people around the world and assume you’ve found the truth.

I think this is a misunderstanding. Social platform users have little reason to leave one platform for another. Censorship is one of those few reasons. Censorship 8s at a very simple level telling those with different thoughts to go start a tribe somewhere else.

Twitter isn't making good decisions. The killed Vine and gave Musicaly and then TikTok oxygen. Their censorship is giving rise to competitors.

Parler censors energetically also, it's just that it's owned by Breitbart rather than amoral profit-seeking VCs. The VCs censor whatever gets anyone upset, especially powerful people who can cause them legislative, legal, or tax trouble. Parler's owners censor sex and other things that don't agree with their ideological line, probably anti-racism, anti-military/police and positive depictions of the socialized functions of government (which can probably all be neatly grouped under "terrorism.")

Indeed. My experience wading into the comment sections of conservative places is that they've been far /more/ censorship-friendly than the baseline.

The Internet just taps into the primal (that is, of primate) instincts of humans. We're just a bunch of apes with technology, and the Internet is just a conduit for our lackluster emotional brains to connect to each other.

There is no way around it because humans are deeply emotionally flawed, and these flaws are amplified by our technology. No amount of technology will fix it, as it will just be another catalyst.

Looking elsewhere in the branches of life for intelligence, such as octopuses, whales, in particular orcas, and elephants, we see different types. Are they more or less emotional? The communal spirit of elephants and that of orcas, the latter of which showcase particularly striking examples of cooperation, does make you wonder. But then it again, it makes you wonder if all higher forms of intelligence lead you to take advantage of a greater amount of situations and why we even bother trying to establish ourselves out there for other intelligent lifeforms to find.

I think it’s down to who you follow. First, never ever read “trends” or random tweets. Never trust Twitters official app to show you anything useful. Using third party apps also saves you from ads.

Second and most importantly, follow a set of users that are interesting, friendly, and who don’t engage publicly with trolls. It’s a magnificent tool for staying up to date with a narrow topic like a niche technology.

Just unfollow or block the negative people and trolls.

Block early, block often. Think twice before following someone.

People seem to get furious about being blocked. I’ve seen people post publicly the name of the person who blocked them demanding an explanation. It seems to escalate things rather than calm them down.

Thankfully with blocking you don't get to see these people ever again...

Out of sight out of mind I guess... but meanwhile they're out there trying to shame you in front of your peers.

And you should care because...? This isn’t high school.

> And you should care because...?

Because your peers will only get their side of the story while they're criticising you.

> This isn’t high school.

Sorry not sure what you mean here. What does school have to do with it?

Alternatively you can mute them which is more discreet.

I published all my blocks with rationales to whyiblockedyou.com for a while. Then I decided to get serious about just banning networks of white nationalists en masse instead of blocking one user at a time.

Do you block people just for using promoted Tweets in any way?

I sure do!

Doesn't that just reinforce the echo chamber? I don't actually use Twitter or Facebook, and I deleted my Reddit, so I'm not the one to talk. But my wife uses Twitter a lot and has managed to get into conversations that are very hard to keep civil. She has found several approaches that work without blocking.

1. Only enable notifications and DMs from mutual follows. People who get into pile ons don't tend to follow their "arch enemies" to do so (because their followers would not like them to follow "the wrong people"). You have full control over who can pester you.

2. Walk away from conversations if your get harrassed, bored or annoyed, but be clear that you are doing it. "This is going nowhere and it's getting late. I'm muting this thread". Again, you have control. If you imagine getting into a heated debate in the pub, this is the equivalent of leaving the table to talk to another group. It gives you the ability to peacefully walk away, and deny someone the opportunity to keep arguing with you against your will.

3. Realise that people don't change their minds during an argument. Always give them room to back down. A cornered animal will always lash out, and we are just animals.

4. Always be clear and civil. Be generous. Don't assume that people are acting out of malice.

5. In sometime is a toxic person who causes pile ons, quote tweets you, intentionally misrepresents you by cherry picking your comments out of context, doxes etc, block the fuck out of them.

> Doesn't that just reinforce the echo chamber?

Yes. Twitter is fantastic only if you accept that you can’t have arguments on it. It’s just not a good idea. But not all conversation requires disagreement.

Also: I use Twitter as a news feed. I don’t tweet, just read. For me it’s the successor of rss.

Twitter is the kind of place to tell you SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS TOFFEE-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!

I'm not sure where John Cleese would be, but I don't think it would help

He unfollowed you when your 5 minutes were up. Good morning.

>> [block early, block often] > Doesn't that just reinforce the echo chamber?

No, I think there's a big difference between an echo chamber constructed by algorithms that push content upon you without your consent or knowledge, and an "echo chamber" constructed by yourself when you actively curate and trim the media you consume.

You and your wife's suggestions are really good ideas, but for them to be effective, it's essential that you exercise control over what hits your eyeballs. Twitter, in particular, is a hot mess. I use the "muted words" feature to filter out tweets that contain words that raise my blood pressure, it's now well over 200 words since late 2016. Is that a making a bubble? Perhaps, but I've found it's better to engage with that subject matter in a time and context of my own choosing rather than having it dropped into "my feed".

"No, I think there's a big difference between an echo chamber constructed by algorithms that push content upon you without your consent or knowledge, and an "echo chamber" constructed by yourself when you actively curate and trim the media you consume."

What is the difference?

I am guessing the difference is the level of control of the echoes.

Well presumably the parent to my comment is implying that echo chambers are only problematic if they are "imposed" upon you by "the algorithm", which I would disagree with.

The problem is that people have become hyper-partisan en masse and whether they arrived there because of "the algorithm" or because they intentionally filter out sources they disagree with ... it doesn't really matter.

https://www.allsides.com/filter-bubbles

The real problem (in my humble opinion) is that there is too much news and it's almost all intentionally biased to some extent. It's therefore not practical for people to keep up with the news without entering an echo chamber. You would have to, for each instance of "news", read at least 3 versions of it to ensure you are considering all perspectives. No one is going to do that.

Do people want to consume net unbiased news? Everyone says they do but consumption patterns says otherwise. Is it commercially viable to produce unbiased news? It used to be favorable but now distribution is cheap and there is more competition so the incentives are to be more biased and find a niche.

I don't think this is a solvable problem, the genie is out of the bottle. This is just a price we pay societally for having the Internet.

Absolutely. Apparently CSPAN's coverage of the US election was far more even-handed, but people want to watch Fox or CNN because they're drawn to the smell of blood from the tribal war. People love to band together with their tribe to hate other tribes. It's sad because when you look at the basic needs of all people, they're the same. And when you put a reasonable Democrat into a room with a reasonable Republican, ban any talk of party affiliations and just discuss those basic needs they'll agree more than they disagree. The internet is a marvel, but humans didn't evolve the ability to stay rational in large numbers, so ultimately I think we're better off without it.

> whether they arrived there because of "the algorithm" or because they intentionally filter out sources they disagree with ... it doesn't really matter.

At the end of the day, we're each responsible for making sense of the world from news sources. People get too hung up on the concept of "unbiased". I think that's an unrealistic ideal when it comes to politics. It's like wanting to eat fruit but always expecting it to be peeled for you, meticulously, and placed on your plate without blemishes or bruises.

While it's certainly possible to responsibly and critically "consume a feed" that has been algorithmically generated for you based on your history of media consumption behavior and your social network attributes-- it's much more efficient to seek out high quality sources of information.

That doesn't mean block out everything you disagree with, but it does mean block out noise and consider what you give your attention to. You can't do that easily when a third party is dumping garbage onto the page for the sake of motivations that have little to do with informing you.

I block based on behavior, not opinions. I follow a lot of people that I disagree with, but we’re all civil with each other.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a limited viewpoint or an echo chamber but I haven't actually seen one operate (plenty of clutched pearls though).

I have a simple rule: I won't block or defollow based on your ideas, but I will do it very quickly if you are obnoxious, boring, trying to build an audience on twitter to sell products or build a brand or otherwise act stupid.

It is easier to follow my "don't say stupid things" if we already agree on most things, so I relax it a bit for those whom I disagree with to only include not denying reality and being non-stupid within their world view (e.g I am not going to follow someone who posts about 5G covid, but I have followed people who are against abortions.

And disable retweets.

What’s the point of that? You must use Twitter quite differently than I do. Retweets are most of the commentary I consume and produce.

>I think it’s down to who you follow.

Isn't there the problem where your favorite "celebrity" you follow posts nice stuff but when election or some other event is happening they start posting a ton of "off-topic" stuff ?

If you don't like the stuff they post, don't follow them. This includes things that you don't think they should post - you know, the "off-topic" stuff.

Them posting that stuff isn't a "problem" just because you do not appreciate some of the content.

You also get posts that they may have favourited or friend a they follow. That's when things get toxic.

Twitter was just starting to share favorites when I stopped using it. What a terrible decision that was.

No. That’s not what Twitter does. That’s something some clients do , unfortunately including the official Twitter clients.

I just see tweets from those I follow, in chronological order, with no ads.

If I saw ads, “recommended” or “trending” etc., I’d get off that client in a hurry.

Twitter indeed works like that. You’ve used the star menu to set your feed to chronological, which is not the default.

I don’t use any client from Twitter (such as the official Twitter app or the Twitter dot com website) and I’d probably rather stop using Twitter than use one of them.

That’s my point: Twitter isn’t half as good if using the official clients.

Not only is it not the default, it switches back after an arbitrary amount of time (they do say they'll do that when you switch, but they aren't specific on how long and don't alert you when it's gone back)

Absolutely. You follow humans. Whole humans. They have every right to attract followers with technical tweets and then suddenly anger half their followers by being political come election year.

I don’t think it’s possible to create a safe space from opinions you disagree with. What happens on twitter could happen with your friend or uncle. On Twitter it’s at least easy to unfollow someone and it’s not a personal tragedy like it is if you need to break from a relative because they turn out to believe in conspiracy theories.

It could happen, but it doesn’t happen nearly so often. I’ve had to mute one of my best friends on Twitter, because his posts are just filled with toxic bile that I’ve never seen reflected when I talk to him in person.

The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is relevant here:

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Except it isn't actually anonymity (or pseudonymity) per-se, as the phenomenon has long existed in many other contexts as well:

https://youtu.be/kFHT1lw3vSI

You can probably generalize to something like "technologically mediated assholism", but there is more than one thing happening here, such as:

+ Filter bubbles/homogeneous in-group opinions lead people to becoming more extreme in their views.

+ Observing some rando (it doesn't have to be an authority figure, although that helps) "say the quiet part out loud" is validating, to say the least.

+ Lack of f2f contact leads to thinking of individuals as impersonal abstractions, and in particular, as the "other".

+ The pathetic fallacy applies to groups just as it does to inanimate objects.

+ Text communication often causes people to misread tone.

+ The affective fallacy (the assumption that the effect of an action was the intent behind it) becomes particularly powerful because of the former two points.

+ The affective fallacy seems to operate in reverse too: Someone informing you of an outcome seems like they are making a claim about your intent.

+ No-one is a villain in their own story. On the internet, everything is a story, and if the story is about someone like you, obviously they can't be a villain either.

+ Exposure to information that conflicts with (even weakly held) beliefs tied to a person's identity often triggers defensive rejection of the new information and strengthens those beliefs.

+ Group dynamics are in play for public interactions, so there is always a performative aspect even for ostensibly 1-to-1 communications. This often doesn't get turned off for private electronic channels such as email.

And so on. A lot of these mental quirks are like ratchets that only ever tighten. Although each in isolation is often self limiting, the limiter can be bypassed by some other quirk, after which the ratchet can tighten some more.

Very uncharitable response.

The above poster is right on. That your favorite poet or whoever can fly off the handle with their toxic political faction-war delusions or whatever is a direct contradiction to the common idea where Twitter is useful for following your favorite X.

It often sucks the fun out of things you like and it’s a good reason to not use it at all. Nobody is pitching “safe spaces” here. But it’s a good time to ask yourself how much a toxic one is going to enrich your life.

Getting off Twitter and Reddit are two great life upgrade tips.

> You follow humans. Whole humans.

You follow Twitter accounts. Those can be thematic slices of humans, whole humans, aggregates of humans, or lots of different things.

Sure, but you need to be at least able to assume and accept that you risk being a follower of a whole human, with flaws and opinions.

Muting specific words usually fixes that problem.

The seems like one area where Google Circles could have been superior.

I don't think that could help, because you have a person with many followers and in their mind they think they are doing a good thing to spread "the message" so they would push their message to as many people as possible.

I was thinking you could have say a way to tag your posts or shares so your professional posts and personal posts could be separated but the "activist" would ignore the tags so they push their message to everyone. So as other suggested you would need a filter on client side to get around people that attempt to push some to everyone.

>It’s a magnificent tool for staying up to date with a narrow topic like a niche technology.

A blog/website with an RSS feed is even better, IMO. And for in-depth discussions traditional forums (or even subreddits) beat Twitter easily. Twitter is the king of low-effort posting.

The trick is not to read the tweets of the people you follow, and not to follow the people you read, necessarily:

https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/

Huh I might sign up and give this a try again.

Twitter does a good job of highlighting the important posts someone makes rather than requiring I curate for myself. It also has brought to my attention the important people in the network of those I follow introducing me to insightful people I might not have otherwise known.

I prefer twitter's method to RSS feeds. I need curation with the amount of content that my list publishes.

Actually, if your goal is to stay up-to-date on specific topics, tools like Discord and Slack are much better IMO because of the way they work to allow two-way communication. Even Reddit is offering a similar setup now.

If you do want to continue in Twitter, change your location. I used to follow key topics (like Go and Flutter) on Twitter, but couldn't avoid the nasty "trends" Twitter throws at you that (IMO) are very biased. So, I set my location as Iceland (I live in the US), and after that life has been good. :)

I long for the old IRC days...when you can open a room on DalNet and talk to a small group of like minded people about what you are interested in and curious about..invite/kick those who get obnoxious. It was cozy and I’d give anything to get an online community where we all get along and where it’s ok to be open to new ideas.

Most of the BBS and IRC rooms I frequented had little to no moderation. Flamewars occurred, but everyone eventually calmed the fuck down..you just have to let it burn out almost like how you’d allow a child to have his tantrum and then it’s back to life as usual.

I think moderation and rules are making communication worse. Anyone who has been in a marriage or a relationship can maybe attest to the fact that in the fiery instances where we don’t sit down and ‘figure out rules of engagement’ burn out fast. When there are rules for the emotional pressure valves to be released, arguments and disagreements become nested and multi layered.

In today’s world..we are all toddlers and/or married to each other on social media and Twitter, FB et al have become our nannies creating and putting out meltdowns and tantrums at the same time.

Having said that, IG is still my favourite. Except that they are allergic to images of certain parts of the human anatomy and sometimes even onions can be too sexy for their nipple detection algorithms..but otherwise it’s brimming with joy and positivity.

I miss those days too! I used to spend a lot of time in #efnet and #dalnet, speaking to strangers about things like #skateboarding and other random topics. It was kind of cool because back then most people didn't know what irc was, nor did they have the prowess to download, install, and configure a client. Mirc was the jam.

I'm working on a new open chat site, https://sqwok.im, and hoping to recapture some of that essence. Particularly the simplicity, and lack of overly strict moderation like you describe. Irc never hit mainstream because the majority of users would never download and install a client, but it's neat that with modern web technology we can finally build these experiences in a way that general users can enjoy.

Checked it out. I like the simplicity of the design. The font/size is a little odd for my eyes but I can get used to it.(maybe because I am seeing it on my phone)

I am unsure tho how to navigate to get to the chat rooms.

ETA: ahhh! I got it! Will there be some form of indexing?

Eta2: can I describe it this way: the author of a topic of discussion is the moderator of the topic?

Thanks for checking it out!

So the key thing is on Sqwok each post has a built-in chat room instead of comments, meaning that creating your own chat and sharing it with anyone else is as easy as sharing the url for your post. It currently works on mobile and desktop web.

> can I describe it this way: the author of a topic of discussion is the moderator of the topic?

yes this is accurate! I'm still actively building out some key features including ability to do some basic moderation, but that's the plan!

I like that there are no "engagement" or "proofing" indicators like likes and hearts, or other mechanisms signaling approval and consent-of-the-crowd(like votes/points/karma).

Do you intend to keep it this way? (Please say yes)

I second this sentiment.

Yes! I wanted to build a place that's mission focused on conversation, and tries to mimic the real world as much as possible. There are no plans to add likes, voting, or public "karma", and I'm split on whether or not to show follower count. In real life people "vote" by either walking away from a conversation, or chiming in with an alternate viewpoint. The relevance algorithm is based on conversation metrics such as activity and publish date, and I'd like to explore further ideas around that.

Outstanding! I've signed up and am already having a few interesting chats about space launches :) Really interesting experiment you've made here, I hope it succeeds

thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to check it out.

will post the link since I'm going to be hanging out there watching the SpaceX Crew 1 launch :D

https://sqwok.im/p/QGSQH214bPZbBQ

Great idea! When trying to create an account, it wouldn't let me chose a password over 20 characters. Why the limit?

hey, thank you & thanks for checking it out, appreciate it!

hmm, that seems like a bug! the username limit is set at 20 but maybe I accidentally copied that validation onto the password field, I'll remove it, thanks for reporting!

it was #atheism for me on dalnet. quarter century since, i still am friends with my chat buddies there. what does that tell you? "social media' as a platform these days, is laughable. i will laugh my arse off one of these days.

haha yep, that's about the time I was hanging out on there, although I mostly remember hanging out in quake gaming channels, #skaters on efnet, maybe a few others. It was a fun time because due to the slight obstacle of figuring out how to get online, there was a certain exclusiveness to it. Plus it was the first time I had ever used something like that other than AOL chatrooms (which I think were around at the time of the aol cdrom you would install)

edit: forgot there was #undernet too.. dang, what a fun time. I remember there were a bunch of other servers on top of those but I can't remember them

I’m only a very light Twitter user, but I cull and curate my feed. It’s mostly funny, positive people in fintwit now, and it’s a good experience. I almost always learn something while flicking through.

But yes, I’ve found that without careful curation, it quickly turns into a depressing cesspit. Then again, that’s not unique to Twitter. I culled my contacts in the real world when in high-school and college for the same reasons and to the same effect.

I find that some of my professional colleagues are some of the most toxic posters. I've got many active filters in place, but in some cases, I've simply muted/blocked some of them.

Done the same on Facebook, which I use mostly for family communication and posting dad jokes. But again, as hard as I try to separate work / family life, colleagues want to connect and they spew the same tired BS I see elsewhere.

So, on FB, I can permanently mute them. Which, I do.

If twitter's business model was to be a toxic stew of partisan talk and censorship of "incorrect views", yeah, they nailed it.

I noticed same thing some years back. Don't let the social medias work ON you, push trends on you. Ignore all suggestions. Keep it minimal and use only for your personal goals. Importantly stop notifications on cell phone.

Facebook I stopped using a while back. It gives me the feeling of universal garbage bag where everyone in a race to impress others. On twitter I follow top people from my domain and ignore everything. No political BS. In LinkedIn, I literally removed all HR connections and started to follow people whom I really adore and take direction from their career path.

I'm a longtime lurker on Twitter, the list of people I follow is well-curated. If someone looks like they cause me more trouble than insights, I unfollow or even block them with little hesitation. In this form, Twitter is working great for me. Needless to say that I stay away from politics (and related topics) as much as possible.

I tried that hard for quite some time but never managed to get a purely on-topic timeline. Follow 10 experts who post mostly about topic X and you'll constantly find at least one of them posting something different at any point.

For example you can't subscribe to grugq for political-infosec content without some IRA memes. And I don't mean that other people shouldn't post stuff they want, just that I'd like to see a filtered view of their posts most of the time. After a few iterations I gave up Twitter almost completely.

That's the problem with Twitter, you can't follow only a subset of tweets of a person that is related to a particular interest of that person. You only can follow everything the person tweets, likes, and retweets (albeit randomly filtered by Twitter's AI logic). Which makes it hard to exclude various nonsense from the feed.

I wish Twitter allowed people to tweet into different personal channels, and I could only subscribe to the personal channels I'm interested in.

Social networks badly need to evolve. What they are currently is quickly eroding the social fabrics.

On Twitter I also mainly lurk. I've found it to be the best place to get the detailed news I want (for example, Wasserman or Cohn for election result), but know to avoid comments unless I'm looking for pure entertainment.

But, I have all Twitter alerts turned off, and only check every few days. I rarely look at my own Twitter timeline and instead go directly to people's timeline who I have found will have the news I'm interested in.

If you only want to visit other people's timelines, you might want to have a look at https://nitter.net

It's a blazing fast way of accessing Twitter content.

Neat! Thanks!

Yeah, I agree. I still occassionaly read some people I follow on Twitter, but I rarely comment and never read notifications.

I also entirely stopped using Reddit for the same reason. IMHO it's even more toxic than Twitter.

And don't get me started about Facebook. What is it about politics that takes relatively sane friendly people who you've known for years and transforms them into raging psychopaths? When my own sister found out I didn't think Trump was a literal Nazi, she then proceeded to call me a racist, with all her douchebag "online friends" cheering her on. And before Facebook, we used to get along really well. But now it's like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

Every occurrence of "twitter" in the top level comment could have any other social media site substituted and it would read the same and still be entirely accurate (HN is one of the rare exceptions obv.)

I've ditched the lot, deleted my reddit and twitter accounts, configured my pihole to block the domains for the occasions that my willpower fails me and my life has improved dramatically.

I haven't used Twitter or Facebook since about 2007. People say they need to use these platforms to stay on top of what's happening in the world, but I have not found that to be true at all. If something is important, I hear about it about an hour after everyone else, and then read up on it if I want to.

What gets thrown out by that filter is all the inconsequential news, and gossip, and speculation, and learning people's knee-jerk reactions before you've had a chance to make up your own mind. You can still seek out all that stuff if you have the impulse, but you aren't being fed it intravenously all the time.

This is all by way of saying that the cost of just cutting these platforms out of your life altogether is pretty low, and there are some benefits.

Wow, that's rather shocking to me. I find Twitter to be a fantastic news source, with higher concentration of good links than HN, and often see stuff there far before it shows up ok HN.

The thing about Twitter is that it is entirely about who you follow, and what those people talk about and retweet. So if somebody is a source of toxicity, unfollow them. I have a very low threshold for both following and unfollowing.

This part, curating your feed, is not trivial, but it is what determines 100% of your experience. I don't blame you at all for having a bad experience and not wanting to use Twitter again! But also realize that it's not the only experience to be had there, and I think that for many, and hopefully most people, it's a positive experience.

Leaving curation to the user means certain users will have good feeds and others will have horrible feeds, with the default being horrible feeds.

Thus, Twitter is horrible, no matter the fake emotional output of a single user's anecdotal experience.

The default Twitter lets you select from lists of topics, none of which are very toxic unless you ease into confrontational politics.

If this default is "horrible" can you say more about that?

> fake emotional output of a single user's anecdotal experience

What do you mean by this? What is the emotional output and what is fake? Are you talking about my single user's experience, or that of the person I replied to?

I am not a twitter user really. I check it maybe once every 2-3 weeks at most. But,.... It really depends on who you follow. I follow a few indie game dev friends and unfollow if one of them starts posting political stuff. My feed is mostly cool info about indie games in unity, unreal, pico-8, some graphics info. Very little bad stuff except for twitter itself with it inserting ads and trying to get me to follow "popular" people I have zero interest in or posting "trending" crap. Some of that I've managed to ublock origin away though of course it's extremely frustrating that both twitter and facebook obfuscate their css

Strongly agree.

If you’re seeing Tweets that make you angry, unfollow that person. It’s really as simple as that.

If someone doesn’t have the willpower to avoid anger-inducing follows and tweets, deleting Twitter entirely is a good option. For everyone else, it’s really not difficult to curate your feed to be more reasonable.

Use the unfollow button liberally.

Twitter can feel like YouTube without the videos, just the comments.

I especially despise the “trends” sections. It ignores any keywords and sites that you’ve blocked and seems designed to inflame. Dorsey at one point made a big statement about trying to change the tone but I’ve seen little evidence of it.

I have a small list of people that I actually follow who tend to keep things civil

> Everyone is so negative, pessimistic, judgemental, sarcastic in tone, confrontational, and self righteous. People are posting so much shit it’s unbelievable how much time they waste of their lives there. One huge thread after another, people crying for attention.

> I was part of the problem too.

Not to be overly personal here, but doesn't this post veer close to describing itself?

Oversharing is a thing with modern media. But, does the emotional response really feel different than in person interactions?

Very close? That’s precisely what this post is!

Twitter is a hellfire, but it still has value if well controlled. I use a third-party client and added dozens of muted word (eg anything political or covid related) and it's amazing; it's a bit of a escape even. Once I realized I don't have any obligation to mind the Latest Piece of Shitty News 24/7, I'm a much better online social media user.

I still read the news every day (Feedly) and know what's going on, but it's compartmentalized.

Via Twitter, ironically:

> "Wonder if shaping discourse via a site where performativity is rewarded, single lines can be taken out of context from qualifying threads and piled on, pithy takes are amplified over nuance, and everyone is either Good or Bad, was overall a positive or negative development"

It took me a while to realize what Twitter was. At first, it was described as "micro blogging" and it sorta looked like people just text messaging to the world with shades of IRC.

But I eventually realized what it really is: a gossip site. With all the mean gossip anyone could ever want.

I pretty much just ignore it now.

You can unfollow people you know. I make it a point to unfollow or mute anyone who's too negative. There's some value in Twitter, but it requires curation.

The way I see it, the problem with social media is that you surround yourself with like-minded people, which diminishes your tolerance to different views. People become self righteous and can't take criticism lightly. Compare this to how things were 15 years ago, or how they are in here, where everyone and their dog can challenge your opinion. You become more open minded long term, and can handle criticism in a more mature way.

I take the contrarian viewpoint here. I think the division is good. There's no reason people in the valley should have to live by the cultural rules of the people in Jackson Mississippi or vice versa. That's exactly what happens right now under our political system. The US has at least two distinct cultures and the more they grow to despise one another the sooner we can have an amicable divorce and allow each group to live freely. There can never be mutual respect when we toggle back and forth between who is forcing their will on the other.

If we're not striving for some modicum of cultural unity, then yes, we need to get over our insistence that every solution be implemented at the federal level.

Sounds nice, but obviously that “amicable divorce” is extremely difficult to imagine.

The UK is in the process of a nonviolent divorce with Brexit.

The EU has an explicit process for members to leave nonviolently. The United States has, well, one example of an extreme opposite of that.

The former USSR dissolved rather peacefully at the end of the cold war.

With the notable exception of the former Yugoslavia.

I had to accept recently that anything trying to emulate Twitter will suffer from the same problems. I wrote about it: https://kyefox.com/2020/09/17/mastodon-shows-its-stripes/

Since then, my favorite instance was killed by a bunch of irony-poisoned instances ganging up on it to convince others it was a toxic hell (projection!) and defederate from it. The instance was basically dead within a week as people migrated off to avoid losing contact with friends on the fediverse.

https://twitter.com/DamienGranz/status/1314710715635204103

It's not much different from people ganging up on someone on Twitter to report them into an automated suspension.

Wait, I thought that post length was NOT limited on Mastodon ? (That's why I never used Twitter - 140 characters is just too short - I'm not a poet !)

The default is 500 characters. Some compatible implementations of ActivityPub have longer limits. Mastodon hides longer posts from those instances behind a link to open the toot[1] and show the whole thing.

[1] Instances choose how to render things delivered over ActivityPub. So (for example) Mastodon would render a write.as post as a toot, while write.as might render replies to that toot as comments on a blog post.

You might like this. Same problem identified before big social: https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit...

I've aggressively sanitized my Twitter and Instagram to make sure it's little more than an easy way to see posts about computing, video games, vinyl records, or whatever nerdity I'm into at the moment. The moment one of those accounts posts something related to the outrage du jour, it's an almost immediate unfollow. It doesn't matter whether I agree with the content of the post or not.

I'm sure I miss a few from time to time, but you get the point.

I've unfollowed lots of tech luminaries I admire, lots of musicians whose music I love, lots of brands that make good products. And I still buy some of the books and albums and products they produce. I might even miss the occasional awesome announcement from one of those outlets. But the resulting sanity and focus of my social media feeds is worth it.

That's the frustrating thing. I was convinced to try using a twitter account by a friend who talked about how great it is to follow interesting tech people. For some cases, I guess it could be. But the problem is, everyone seems to also tweet about current political stuff, and I have no interest in seeing that at every turn. I know "stop talking about politics everywhere" is trite, but stop talking about politics everywhere.

It shouldn’t be seen as trite to want rest and reprieve from the psychologically exhaustive nature of “always on” political engagement[1]-especially in times such as these, but I completely understand what you’re getting at, and to my own individual extents: I agree with you.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/reading-t...

To some extent the top voted post at the moment displays an inherent issue with a lot of people of these platforms. If the message is not pleasant to the reader, either they will engage with it in a reactionary way, or seek to further isolate themselves in information bubbles. (Notwithstanding abusive behaviour, which should not be tolerated)

Learn to get the Twitter algorithm on your side! https://ibb.co/3BFQZhb

Look at how many negative words are in this post of yours and hopefully see the irony of what you’re saying. Twitter isn’t magic, it can only give you what it thinks you want from what you give it!

Until censorship.

Just to bring to levity to this discussion, your quote very much brings to mind the hilarious and ever-relevant Four Yorkshiremen[0] sketch from Monty Python.

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

[0]: https://youtu.be/ue7wM0QC5LE

And people get addicted to that thing. I remember when Twitter used to have a tweet counter on people's profiles, and for some people it was running into the tens of thousands.

I look at twitter discussions and it honestly like like a lot of people are just shouting past each other. I don't think anyone is out to win hearts and minds out there...

They are shouting past each other, because they aren't talking to each other, they are talking for a hypothetical audience, cheering them on.

You are not alone in this. There are actually tens of alternative social media sites started by people who are fed up with the status quo.

For starters, here's a good maintained list: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/...

I did that years ago. Twitter is an even bigger cesspool than youtube comments and facebook. I use facebook but only for the messenger.

It s still a good way to follow current events by following specific people or journalists.

Switching to chronological mode, aggressively unfollowing the rude people who think that their technical knowledge allows them to plaster their opinions on your face, and changing my location to burundi did it for me.

Just out of curiosity, what is up with changing location to Burundi? Does that change targeted political ads or something?

No more trending topic suggestions. Apparently nothing happens in burundi which is great. It also stopped suggesting me local politicians but i m not sure it's related

>It's still a good way to follow current events

This is where the major problem lies and you don't even realize you're complicit in it. The "current events" blasted out on Twitter are curated by Twitter admins to only show what they want to show. They place heavy over-weighting on events and discussion that they want everyone to see. They hide hashtags they don't want trending. They don't show a pure list of what's actually trending. They shadow-ban users that talk about topics they don't want talked about. They give priority to media outlets that are also involved in heavy censorship, therefore adding extra fake credibility to false narratives. And the latest is the whole "Fact check" thing, where they only fact check the discussion that they want discredited (even if it's 100% true).

You are an example how censorship is so powerful. When people believe they've found a "good way to follow current events", and refuse to question the accuracy of the medium, they quickly become prone to believing false narratives. Currently, the elites who own the media are doing everything in their power to further the left's agenda. (The active campaign is their attempt to cover up and discredit any discussion of election fraud. Also, you probably didn't hear that Zuckerberg donated half a billion dollars towards democrat vote-counting strategies) Many people want to bury their head in the sand because it aligns with their political beliefs. Hopefully this is a wake up call to some.

> current events" blasted out on Twitter are curated by Twitter admins

I didnt even know that it exists. I meant twitter users that cover current events (like wars), that you can find by searching or through other social media. It works like a telegraph office. I agree that algorithms range from plain bad and lazy to dangerous. If one thinks that what's trending on twitter is reality, they are delusional

“The couple initially gave $250 million to the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which has set up a grant program that funds local government efforts to expand voter access, including drive-through voting, temporary staffing support, equipment to process ballots and applications and nonpartisan voter educations”

God forbid people be able to exercise the right to vote.

“A conservative legal group, Thomas More Society, has filed lawsuits in eight states, including the presidential battlegrounds of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Iowa, seeking to block the grants from going through”

So let me get this straight, your response to my criticism of left-wing censorship is to quote an article from a major left-wing media outlet who actively participates in censorship & altered-framing of news topics? And on top of that, you provide a smug response that misses the underlying point? This thought-cycle is common, and is deepening the divide in America. I urge you to diversify your news sources, and think critically about issues rather than believing everything you read.

Also, donations towards partisan strategies meant to directly impact election results aren't allowed.

"Mr. Landry said one way the grant money could be used would be to send out prepaid return ballots in heavily Democratic districts around New Orleans, “while some guy in a rural parish [a conservative area] still has to buy his 50-cent stamp.”"

"Though the CTCL maintains it is a non-partisan organization that offers “free and low-cost resources for local election administrators” with no regard to political leaning, the group’s founders each boast records in progressive and pro-Democratic circles. Prior to creating the CTCL, all three founding members – Tiana Epps-Johnson, Donny Bridges and Whitney May – held top positions with the New Organizing Institute, described by the Washington Post in 2014 as “the left's think tank for campaign know-how.” Epps-Johnson also remains a fellow at the Obama Foundation, her LinkedIn page shows."

"In Philadelphia, long a Democratic stronghold, money provided by the center is to be used to establish 800 polling places, an increase of 76% the number of polling places"

Reference: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/29/zuckerberg-...

Since you provided no citation about Zuckerberg’s grants to 50 states but chose to frame it as a “democrat” conspiracy, I thought other readers could use some context.

Curiously, the right (and you) have no problem with 42 other states having access to those grants, but god forbid any purple states get that money. The fact that Joe Bob lives in a rural parish that wont apply for grants is on your team, not those sneaky lefties.

“800 polling places”

Why do people loathe making voting accessible? What does it matter how many there are? That’s the best you can do on a site that loathes Zuck?

Has the Moonie Times found Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate yet? See, I do read it, and I have a very long memory. Thx for playing.

You clearly don't understand my primary point. You don't even understand why I provided those specific examples. (e.g. 800 polling places is completely fucking unnecessary and is setting the stage for fraud in a historically fraudulent city). Not worth my time explaining to someone not interested in understanding.

I'm sorry for triggering you with non thought-police compliant dialogue. You may re-enter your safe echo chamber now where your participation awards are waiting.

You seem to have engaged with this content and followed networks of people who also engage. My twitter is a very engineering-forward happy place. Sorry you got the you know what end of the algorithm stick. I feel in some way this was self-fulfilling?

I had a similar experience with Facebook: I was pretty good at not feeding trolls, but I'd get involved in these long discussions on political topics with apparently well-meaning people and inevitably, someone in the thread would start arguing from either bad faith or an "alternative facts" perspective -- and I'd end up angry and exhausted and having convinced nobody.

Now I haven't used Facebook for six weeks (I still use Instagram and Messenger). I don't miss it at all. If I'm bored or tired, every once in a while I'll reflexively start to open it in a browser tab but so far I have always caught myself and not gone into the Zuckerworld.

I'm not active on Twitter but I imagine it's more of the same.

I doubt if some Alternabook that lets conspiracy theorists go nuts in their own little bubble will make the world a better place, but I'm not convinced it'll be any worse than what Facebook and Twitter have been doing.

I am beginning to wonder if social media may have had its heyday. Specifically I’m curious as to whether Facebook and Twitter will start to be used less and less by people, but who won’t abandon it completely.

I do wonder if this might make them less useful for advertisers.

>Everyone is so negative, pessimistic, judgemental, sarcastic in tone, confrontational, and self righteous

Welcome to planet earth. We hope you enjoy your stay.

The best parts for me are speed of news dissemination, like a news headline aggregate. And professional / hobby interests. Those are wholesome.

I had the same experience that leads me to delete my account entirely.

You have to see it for what it is: An online digital slot machine. The stakes are, well your time and your life. And just like in real life, the house always wins.

You need to get you some better Twitter follows, oof

The only thing you've actually told us with this comment is you follow people who post a lot of drama. Presumably because you like reading it. I have no sympathy.

if twitter is so bad, why do you keep using it?

Ever tried smoking?

> if twitter is so bad, why do you keep using it?

Did you read what I said? I have stopped using Twitter. I don't tweet, I don't have the app, I don't engage in anything what happens there now.

I just occasionally peek in to see if I'm missing out on anything and surprisingly I don't. As a result I see myself (unconsciously) check Twitter less and less.

> I have stopped using Twitter.

> I just occasionally [use Twitter] to see if . . .

Hm.

When I switch TV programs I might view a program for 1 minute before I decide that I don’t like the content. The next day when I look for something to watch I might tune into the same TV station again for a minute before moving on. I am not a “user” (viewer) of that TV station despite checking it out for approximately a minute each.

My current Twitter “usage” is the same concept. You decide if you call this a Twitter user or not.

To be fair, we're all "using" Twitter somehow now. It became impossible to ignore when mainstream news would now lead based on what people have tweeted.

That's the thing: it's become extremely deeply embedded in our society, since it's damn catnip to 24-hour news (which, IMO, was the originator of this problem - they need content, now, and anything which provides is thrown up there).

With mainstream news being so propagandist, only way to keep up with actual news is Twitter: people bypassing curators and directly & efficiently stating what happens.

great job pivoting to posting negative stuff on Hacker news then

Reply on news.ycombinator.com