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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

I have to unfollow people on Twitter whenever they start pitching their Substack, affiliate links, paid courses, or other money making enterprise. I use social media for information, not to be turned into a money-making asset for those I follow.

Weaving markets and cryptocurrency into the fabric of a social network sounds like a dream come true for people trying to monetize their followers, but a nightmare for anyone who actually wants to follow them.

BitClout also uses some nasty dark patterns to get people to sign up. They scrape your profile from other social media sites, then assign it a “value” with a dollar amount. You have to sign up to claim the value, but after signing up you discover that the value isn’t real and you aren’t claiming the supposed money that was waiting for you.

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As an aside, I agree regarding the constant advertisement on Twitter, but I find the constant oversharing even worse. So many times I will see a few quality tweets from someone I don't follow, either retweeted by people I do follow or just recommended by the Twitter algorithm. Then when I do follow them the occasional interesting tweet is outnumbered 10:1 by mundane personal information about e.g. their kids or what they're having for dinner. No complaints about random people who use it as a social platform amongst friends doing this, but serious jouranlists with 50k followers who use Twitter as a career tool also do it. It reeks of narcissism.

Different people follow for different things. Some people like seeing that other stuff. It would be very helpful if Twitter let accounts tag tweets into categories, and let people choose to subscribe or unsubscribe to those. Maintaining multiple Twitter accounts for different content is very tedious. No doubt your point is valid as well, it's easy to get addicted to that platform, and the likes and notification system gamifies that need for validation.

>>> It would be very helpful if Twitter let accounts tag tweets into categories, <<<

Something close is ‘Topics’ where Twitter automatically categorizes tweets into Topics such as Programming, Sports, Startup, etc. You can follow a topic and thus see only tweets in that group. So Mr A sends 2 tweets - one about his kids and the other about Python. If you’re following the topic ‘Programming’, you’ll only see the second tweet

I gotta disagree there. The original Twitter was all about sharing random shit. People take it too seriously sometimes now that it’s big business.

I just unfollow people who have no Twitter-discipline and post random useless personal stuff, even if they do post quality tweets every now and then. Best to keep your follower list small and selective. Quality info will still get to you.

That attitude seems extraordinary to me. People need to make a living, and if you don't pay them to produce the stuff you like, either they will stop doing it, or turn to shady crap like whatever this BitClout thing is, NFTs, or just spyware advertising.

It's the individual's choice to turn their personal Twitter (or email list or blog) into a billboard. Similarly it is the user's choice to unfollow said individual if they dislike billboards.

I myself have had to do this for numerous art accounts as sometime in 2021 they all started shilling NFTs.

Who said it wasn’t an individual choice? Many things you’re perfectly within your rights to do have negative or perverse consequences.

For nearly all artists, their “personal” Twitter was always a billboard. If you have been enjoying people’s art, but never given them any money for it, it’s hardly surprising they turn to some strategy that might make them money, is it?

If you have been financially supporting artists you like in some other way, this doesn’t apply.

Nothing wrong with making a living, but I don't visit Twitter every day to see streams of advertisements any more than I watch YouTube so I can see the ads. I don't mind seeing occasional ads or asks or self-promotion, but when the self-promotion drowns out the useful content I unfollow.

> if you don't pay them to produce the stuff you like, either they will stop doing it, or turn to shady crap like whatever this BitClout thing is, NFTs, or just spyware advertising.

What a cynical take. "Pay me or I'll advertise spyware!" It doesn't work like that. I use Twitter as a social network to communicate with people, not to be pitched products I don't want.

I'm not asking for free stuff, I just want a decent signal to noise ratio and some honest conversations.

I actually pay for few substacks. I do not see anything wrong with paying for independent content and none of the people I subscribe to had ever over advertised. To me it is about the value these people provide.

Totally agree. If Substack or self-promoted book has good value - I am thankful that people promote it.

Dismissive attitude makes you miss out on a lot of opportunities.

I'm also subscribed to a few substacks, but I don't want to subscribe to 20 different people's newsletters.

Nothing wrong with paying for content, but I don't want my Twitter feed full of daily pitches to sign up for the same thing over and over again. I use Twitter as a social network to communicate with people, not consume advertisements for content on other platforms. When someone turns their Twitter feed into a stream of ads or asks, I unfollow.

> I use social media for information, not to be turned into a money-making asset for those I follow.

I mean it's social media... literally the entire purpose of it is to monetize you, any information you manage to extract from it is just a tertiary side effect. Not only that, but typically the quality of information exchanged on social media is of the lowest quality, so you're really getting a bad deal on the whole if this is your expectation.

Did you mean BitClout, on your last paragraph?

Yes, thank you. Autocorrect changed it. Fixed.

> They scrape your profile from other social media sites, then assign it a “value” with a dollar amount. You have to sign up to claim the value

Only if you are one of the ~1500 initial users they seeded the system with. You don't have any money waiting for you because nobody has invested in you.

> I use social media for information, not to be turned into a money-making asset for those I follow.

can you describe what you use as sources of information on twitter? Can't be any traditional media outlets because they also want you to pay.

There are many independent individuals who share interesting information and opinions on Twitter. But they're stuck in a sea of... everything else everyone associates with Twitter.

I strongly doubt they meant following a corporation's Twitter, or something like that.

If it's available where you live, very local news (like at the neighborhood or town level) is pretty useful to follow for info like why a road is closed or what local trails you should check out.

Professionally, I also follow academic conferences I'm involved in. They tweet announcements like deadlines and highlight new research.

The only reason to publish something to social media is to promote your business initiatives. Otherwise you're just letting an ill behaving private company monetize your personal/social life. You can either be exploited or leverage the system for whatever gain you can eek out of it.

> I use social media for information

Oh boy.

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