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Comment by danschumann | Hacker News Reader

Twitter made me feel: some combination of violated, indignant, numb, inferior, empty, powerless, disappointed, embarassed, furious, annoyed, and infuriated.

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I used to feel that way, but I aggressively moderated who I follow in a purge, and being selective about who I add as follows.

It feels like it's easier to marie-kondo people I don't care for anymore in twitter since there's little-to-no-expectation that I know anyone on twitter, and for me, anyways, twitter is a much more pleasant experience than any other social network has been.

Aggressively unfollowing people is the only way to keep Twitter useful.

I think the mistake people make is approaching Twitter follows like they would friendship links on Facebook or other platforms. You don’t have a relationship with the people you follow. Don’t hesitate to let it go.

The loudest people on Twitter are often the worst at providing actual value. They optimize for clickbait and engagement, which can trick people into thinking that the person is a good follow.

The moment you realize someone’s Tweets are not providing value or they’re always making you sad/angry/outraged, click that unfollow button. It makes a world of difference.

I agree that it's possible to curate a good Twitter experience, but it's concerning to me that Twitter is hostile by default. I'm not sure if it's trying to promulgate a specific repugnant ideology or maybe it tries to provoke everyone equally (e.g., for engagement), but in either case it seems socially harmful. And to be clear, I don't mind that it shows me a lot of content from people with whom I disagree (even forcefully), but I do mind that the content it boosts is the lowest quality argumentation (calling it "argumentation" is too generous). For example, in a recent high profile self defense case, Twitter didn't boost any legal expert analysis, but it did boost the d-list celebrities and popular journalists (and their vitriolic followers) whose views don't survive even the slightest encounter with the evidence. And to be clear, the issue isn't that it's promoting this stuff to me (I have thick skin, apparently), but that it's promoting it to everyone by default, such that it is a systemic problem.

>Aggressively unfollowing people is the only way to keep Twitter useful.

Aggressively not following people to require unfollowing later would be another way

My problem is that "person" is a broader category than I want to unfollow. There are precious few people whose posts I want to see all of. Most people I have ever followed exist somewhere on a continuum of what proportion of their tweets I want to see. It would be nice to have more positions on the knob than 100% and 0%.

What I'd really like would be to say "don't show me tweets like this from this person". Yes it's hard to figure out what "tweets like this" mean to me, but hey, you're a giant company that does nothing but show an updating page of hypertext, seems like you could throw some work toward figuring this out.

Agreed. There are a lot of people and companies that are very important in the tech world who espouse repugnant racial ideologies a few times per year as the prevalent political fashion demands. I'd like to not block half the tech world, but I'd also like to hide their sporadic, vapid, ideo-tribal signaling posts.

> seems like you could throw some work toward figuring this out.

They already have a start - they push following categories. So presumably they are categorizing individual tweets into these categories. It should be feasible to both provide finer-grain categories, and tooling to include/exclude how those intersect with those accounts one is following.

The link between categories and the tweets assigned to them is weak. I puzzled over a political tweet categorized under Science until I realized that it included the word "reaction". (Or something like that.) That's a frequent occurrence. I unfollowed categories.

Oh yes, but they should simply do a much better job at this :)

Indeed. The final step is learning fine grained personal preference informed (but not entirely) by those coarser categories.

Same, but I went the opposite direction and started following more people to curate my feed. I seldom unfollow anyone unless I feel any interaction with them is likely to have a high proportion of conflict or strong disagreement on values.

I considered a similar purge, but ultimately decided the variety and evolution of what I’m exposed to is better for my experience. I’ve also made several friends through Twitter (and even a short romantic relationship, which also led to me adopting a puppy who’s the light of my life!), so I’ve tended to keep a pretty open mind about the whole thing.

Yeah I had a very selective strategy for purging:

- follow only tech people/tech-adjacent people

- unfollow any tech people/tech-adjacent people who post too much off-topic and/or do too much clickbait or too much emotionally taxing stuff

and moving forward I do:

- follow a more diverse (race, ethnicity, country, political leaning, gender) people, while following the above guidelines.

- follow some people who "post interesting shit" while following the above guidelines.

To sum it up: Most worthwhile twitter follows are a mini publishing house in disguise. They talk about a few things, regularly, but aren't using twitter to shoot the shit with friends.

This is the exact opposite of how twitter felt in the beginning – a massively global IRC chatroom for people to shoot the shit.

I wouldn't say that, a few of the people I follow are shooting the shit with friends. That counts as "potentially interesting shit" and that sort of long-tail content does wind up on my feed.

I agree. Every so often, I just glance at my feed and see if I can KonMari out some people. At this point I follow some decent tech feeds, a lot of art and game dev feeds and some very pleasant and funny people. I find it pretty fun to scroll through the feeds about once a day

It's a huge contrast from reddit where you can follow subreddits but most of the stuff you see is surfaced up and there's a hive mind at work. I won't even bother with FB since I deleted my account months ago

I see so many people complain about Facebook but it's probably my best behaved social network. The key for me was to unfriend any high school "friend" I haven't seen in real life for almost 30 years. Then mute my Boomer relatives who I need to remain Facebook friends with to keep the peace. The result is a feed of about 20 people I enjoy who share pictures and goings-on day to day with the occasional posting from someone outside the core group who I still enjoy interacting with.

I have a very short list, like 150 or so. I add people one or two at a time, and see how my TL responds. If it starts skewing sideways, I unfollow. I find this very successful.

What kills me are the brand accounts. Like, McDonald's: 4.3M followers. For what? Why are you purposely asking for advertising in the middle of your advertising?

Same, but I go a step beyond.

Any tweet I see that I don't like (usually someone using a tone that gives me a terrible vibe from them), I block the author of the tweet.

Now almost all tweets that I see have a positive vibe.

Edit: I also adhere to an old adage that goes "follow slowly; block fast".

I do this too. I don't block people based on their politics because I don't want to be in a bubble, but I do block people that make bad faith arguments. Unfortunately, that means I end up in a bit of a bubble because so many folks of a particular political persuasion love to make bad faith arguments.

Yeah, that's the trick to Twitter definitely. You're very much in charge of what you see there beyond the tricks you have to pull to get retweeted items out of your feed.

I really wish there were more aggressive options to do that in lists, some people have great content but retweet an insane amount of things as well and it'd be nice to be able to exclude those from a list but not universally across the whole feed like you can with block words.

This is about people leaving the company Twitter as employees, not about people unsubscribing from the service.

I would argue that a social media platform that default to reinforcing negative emotions and one has to "aggressively moderate" to get value from is not a good social media platform.

For anyone else looking to do the same, consider using https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/

The only issue with this is you create your own echo chamber. imo it's why conservatives feel so emboldened, recently -- they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them making their "movement" seem larger than it actually is.

That goes both ways. The hyper progressive echo chambers are just as problematic. Echo champers are problematic in general, it doesn't matter the political leanings.

Because echo chamber is distant from the rest of people. Distant-> withdrawn or numb ( both anger emotions )

I just aggressively unfollow anyone who talks about politics, either right or left. I also unfollow anyone whose average tweet rate is > 0.5/day. Works fine for me, but I understand that would just kill the whole experience for many people.

I can enjoy a tweet while at the same time disagreeing with it.

Same on HN. I often upvote comments, even though I disagree with them, whenever I feel they’re a meaningful contribution to the discourse.

Kudos. Many times if I want to bring up an unpopular opinion of mine it will get downvoted to oblivion, so I have to self-censor.

I see a pattern where they are downvoted initially, then later return. I suspect type of people that read HN periodically are different than those that are refreshing regularly.

> they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them making their "movement" seem larger than it actually is.

At least in the U.S., I think that’s more attributable to their enormously disproportionate political power.

This is mostly an issue if you use Twitter for politics. If you use it to follow people in topics that you're interested in/hobbies, this isn't really relevant. You don't really need to worry about an echo chamber among baking pages, or DIY home guides, etc.

Honestly, life was so much more peaceful once I curated my social media apps to focus on my hobbies and remove "general news/current events" from my feed, which are largely garbage. I'll look up info about candidates when elections roll around, the rest of the year, I don't want to hear the worthless bullshit in that space.

I don't use Twitter for politics. It's a cesspool where the biggest assholes win.

It certainly has this reputation. But nearly 100% of the political content on my feed is respectful and thoughtful—much moreso than most political content I see here. And my follows are definitely not an echo chamber, I’d estimate that at least 1/3 of my political follows are far more conservative than I am.

I've noticed this as well. I think it has to do with people self-sorting to different parts of Twitter based on what kind of political discussion they want. The people who just want to be loudly scornful of $OUTGROUP go to the places where that happens all the time, avoiding the parts of Twitter they'd find boringly calm; and people who'd rather talk about things calmly stick to the places where that's the norm, avoiding the parts of Twitter they'd find to be content-free sound and fury. (And if you ever look at the replies to a tweet that crossed the streams, you get a glimpse of a strange other world.)

Yeah! The only people who should feel emboldened are the ones who have the courage to agree with me!

I was giving an example, I'm not sure what your point is here other than to just mock a point I didn't make.

I actively try to not create an echo chamber, but sure. I suppose it's something that people do.

This doesn't apply exclusively to conservatives. The echo chambering is definitely a bipartisan issue. This is obvious on almost any platform.

Edit: Submitted this on an out-of-date page, not realizing so many people would respond the same. Not being a copycat.

i think that goes for any of the movements today... where its the silent majority, who dont want to say anything in face of backlash of small few with big voices.

not just conservatives

Here's a tip on how to make the best out of Twitter: unfollow anyone that makes you feel that way. Think about it, it's not Twitter per se, it's the people you follow, and that's under your control.

Until they start suggesting friends of friend's tweets. Or random trending/suggested tweets. Or you might like your friend's tweets but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out.

You can switch to the chronological timeline and it filters all of that out. The only “suggested” content is retweets and the usual ads. Historically Twitter was notorious for reverting this setting, but at least for the last year or so I haven’t had to reenable it.

> but get fed with all of their garbage "liked" content and can't filter that out.

I definitely filter those out.

About once every 6 months the tweets "liked" by people I follow pop up again, it's usually very noticable as the feeds quality turns down dramatically.

To get rid of those, I do the "..." > "I don't like this tweet" > "show fewer likes from XYZ" on 2 or 3 tweets, and they're all gone for another few months.

It's not ideal, a settings menu where you can disable those permanently would be far better, but it works.

A tip: This doesn’t seem to show up for me unless I scroll so long that Twitter runs out of things to show me.

If you’re seeing a lot of friends-of-friends content, you might be scrolling too long or not following enough people you actually want to hear from.

I did this, and in the end – I quit.

This is good advice generally.

I used to feel this way. Then I unfollowed all political/current events/venting Twitter and started following creators and retrocomputing types. It's very enjoyable now.

Twitter didn't make you feel anything, it's the people who uses twitter that made that to you.

Maybe we just should accept that we are not cognitively equipped to deal with all that comes with social media. It's just too much for our brains, and having a sane relationship with them requires an active effort to moderate who you follow.

Yes, they optimize por clicks and views, yet Twitter at least allows you total control of what are you consuming.

So if there's any social media out there that has both utility and allows control, it's Twitter.

FB it's another level of shady shit we can discuss another day.

I agree, but the format and limitations of twitter are unusually prone to degraded public discourse.

Twitter and largely social media encourages echo chambers. I try to be a contrarian on HN but in some threads, especially around social justice and political threads, it definitely has a tendency to become one.

When 10 people are agreeing vicariously and there is a sense that any dissent is crushed, time to be the person playing devil’s advocate and challenge them. This can happen in a small context and it usually is harmless. But on Twitter, you’re going to feel the weight of the world when you go against the grain. The mob will chase after you. They’ll become more powerful as bystanders join. You will be crushed. Others will take a note and feel the chilling effect.

It is entirely possible for the experiment of putting every user in the network into a giant echo chamber with relatively low walls, no real concept of "subtopics" or "forums," and no moderation but self-moderation (which does not scale when thousands of individuals choose to spend a scant five of their seconds haranguing you)...

... can fail. As in, there's no guarantee the system so designed is good, or healthy, or net-gain valuable.

I don't get it, isn't social media is an anarchic free for all compared to traditional media publications? Newspapers were infamous for excluding other points of view especially when drumming up panic and not including "here is why that is a load of crap" letters to the editor.

HN seems to be the least echo-chamber groupthink general population around excluding a few topics where one position is particularly popular. I think this is mostly because of the high quality moderation of dang and associated cultural norms here.

Agreed it’s probably the best discussion forum. My point was that even the best has the tendency to become an echo-chamber.

It’s worth reading Christakis’s 2009 book “Connected: Surprising power of social networks”. It’s mind blowing that social networks are not regulated to some form. I don’t mean censorship but meme-acceleration and propagation of information needs to be curbed. Unfortunately it goes against engagement metrics and will never happen.

I've never written a tweet. I avoid comments too much. I do use it to follow reading lists from a few journalists, writers, academics, and artists. There are much better ways, but twitter is what everyone uses.

Comments are often terrible. You know the kind of comment where you have absolutely no idea what is being discussed or why, only that it has made someone very angry? Twitter is the land of such comments, devoid of anything other than hostility or snark (for a mile example, a gif of "double face palm, when one face palm isn't enough" kind of thing - you really have no idea that the person is responding to or what their thought are).

It's hilarious to me that people actually put up with a social network like this. Everyone in this thread is talking about how all you need to do is unfollow half of people you see tweets from, never read comments, put in a ton of work to get your feed exactly how you want it, etc.. and only then does Twitter become bearable. Yet people still defend it, even after admitting to all that.

It's like getting a 5 course meal of poison food, and defending the meal because the dessert was delicious, and "all you have to do" is not eat the rest of the meal.

If they put their objections in words, they run the risk of entering an actual discussion, which would force them to defend their view. Much easier to just post a meme or an emoticon as a sort of a dog-whistle. Can't argue with a double-facepalm!

I think Twitter can amplify what we seek (whether consciously or not). I found the complete opposite: it built tremendous confidence as I went from 0 to thousands of followers who were interested in my parenting+comedy niche.

Cool. It mostly made me happy

If I had to include happiness emotions... I guess getting some of the videos made me feel valued a bit, maybe thankful now and again? Maybe feeling successful if I pwned a pleb, but these are empty thrills.

I feel none of these, because I use Twitter as an RSS feed of companies/websites I’m interested in seeing updates from.

I don’t post, and I don’t follow people.

If anyone is feeling any of what the OP has felt, strongly encourage changing how you use it.

Nothing is worth this.

May I ask why you used it then?

Why do political junkies keep the outrage drip going? Some combination of philosophical purpose, self-flattery, comfort amid chaos, and sometimes enlightenment.

I couldn't know what it produced at the time. Keyword is "used".

Sounds like you had the political/current events Twitter experience. It's pretty much tailor-made to evoke all of those emotions.

What I did was stop following tech people and started following comedy people. It really made Twitter a much more fun place.

Sounds like you follow crappy pages.

Does an individual voter have a responsibility to know also the disgusting events of modern times or only the happy ones? Twitter seemed to overweight discuss-ting events and angry events. Maybe cuz I avoid such things on other platforms, I used twitter to stay informed on the darker side. Sure, my fault. Disregard this whole thread! Lol.

Intentionally

That was Instagram for me. Twitter has been much less frustating and mucho mire useful for me.

Honestly kind of curious: are furious and infuriated not synonyms for you?

Feelings wheel, my friend. Jealous and Furious are similar, jealous is when you want someone else to not have something, and furious is when they come for your stuff. Infuriated and annoyed are linked, and infuriated is when you get so annoyed you start yelling back. I'm trying to make all the emotional categories more distinct in my philosphy, recently posted a video as such https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfZwxLUrlrk

Interesting! I don't really relate to those definitions - furious and jealous don't seem similar to me, nor do infuriated and annoyed seem particularly similar - but thanks for the explanation.

Most of the time people say they're curious on the internet, they're actually feeling dismissive, but just need more ammo to be able to dismiss the person. Which makes it skepticism, not curiosity.

I was both curious and skeptical about this. I appreciated the explanation which successfully sated my curiosity, though I remain skeptical. But I also have a new interesting thing to consider, to compare and contrast my thinking against. Moving forward I'll be wondering whether any fury I feel is more akin to jealousy or annoyance and that will be a new and interesting lens to look at things through.

I really was curious! But that isn't mutually exclusive with skepticism.

Sounds good. I'm still dialing in the categories. The goal is to have a complete list of all the distinct emotions a person can have, with simple definitions and (for lack of a better word) distinctions. Every event in a life should be able to be categorized into the categories, without unused categories, in a way that feels satisfyingly granular.

I think "furious", the more I think of it, is an anger regarding lack (ie if someone's house gets vandalized and the feel a loss in property value). Curiosity could culminate with inquisitiveness, which functionally feels like adopting new beliefs. Skepticism can culminate with dismissiveness. So as long as you're open to the possibility that your mind could be changed, it counts as curiosity, I suppose.

In many ways, Twitter is as life itself.

i agree with this, and it's not a hot take. It just describes what twitter does to people.

sounds like facebook

this in, man that engages with toxicity finds a toxic feed

Made you, you mean like, forced you? In any case you can't voluntarily join an emotional rollecoaster and then complain that it's moving too fast

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make#English

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