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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

I effectively shut down my Twitter account a while ago, best thing I did for my mental health in the past year. There are interesting people on Twitter but the algorithm just works like a slot machine that tries to keep you on the site no matter the cost, it's not optimized to serve you but to make you view more ads. In addition it's almost impossible to have a civilized discussion, it often feels more like two people standing in different corners of a public space screaming insults at each other, and various crowds cheering them on.

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> but the algorithm just works like a slot machine

I'm always surprised that people, especially on HN, complain so much about twitter's algorithms that are so easy to bypass. I use Twidere as a client, and my feed doesn't have any of twitter's algorithms - it's simply a reverse chronological feed. Even the website and twitter's official app have a button right on the feed page that allows you to switch to a reverse chronological feed

> In addition it's almost impossible to have a civilized discussion

Just don't use it for discussion then. I use it to read opinions of people all across the ideological spectrum and form my own. You don't need to engage if you don't want to! Also, it's very easy to mute/block accounts that you find are being abusive or uncivilized

It's an invaluable tool to gather peoples' opinions and what they really think.

Or just use lists. Create list, add people you want to follow. Bam, done. Reverse chronological order with zero ads.

But then you only get opinions of those ppl that engage in the sort of "discussions" OP talks about. You really aren't exposed to real ppl opinions, only the opinions of the most crazy and or manipulative.

Actually I've seen that if you're following accounts that get on average a few hundreds-low thousands of RTs/likes (vs 10s of thousands of RTs/likes), the discussions are pretty good. They're also easy to quickly scan and follow and are most likely real opinions of real people.

Another option is https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ with an ad blocker. No ads, feed in order. I mostly follow people I know and my feed is very decent and for the most part positive.

To see the loons, I typically have to find a popular account and read replies, and the Tweetdeck URL even hides most of those (which is fine by me - makes me realising I'm wasting my life reading rubbish).

Even if you're using a different client (which is already a strike against Twitter as a social network, along with the need to manually block users because it has no effective moderation) the content you're reading will have been written by users targeting the default algorithm.

> which is already a strike against Twitter as a social network

How? The value of the twitter's social network comes from the recommendations of the people I follow, not twitter's recommendation

> along with the need to manually block users because it has no effective moderation

I wouldn't want it any other way! I want to be in control of who I block - I don't want anyone else deciding that for me

> will have been written by users targeting the default algorithm

That doesn't matter, since I'm not using their algorithm anyway

> How? The value of the twitter's social network comes from the recommendations of the people I follow, not twitter's recommendation

It's an admission that the platform is broken. If you have to rely on workarounds to have an acceptable experience, you should probably just choose a different platform that doesn't have an adversarial relationship with its users.

>I wouldn't want it any other way! I want to be in control of who I block - I don't want anyone else deciding that for me

Individuals blocking each other does nothing to address problems with the community.

>That doesn't matter, since I'm not using their algorithm anyway

The content will be worse for targeting their algorithm regardless of how you access it.

"It's an invaluable tool to gather peoples' opinions and what they really think."

Or, is it a tool to get the most knee-jerk reactions out of people as fast as possible? How much thought did actually go into that tweet?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33503943

> There are interesting people on Twitter but the algorithm just works like a slot machine that tries to keep you on the site no matter the cost, it's not optimized to serve you but to make you view more ads.

Yes. I don't know if it wants us to see more ads or be more "engaged". I'm currently fascinated by generative art and find a lot of interesting posts about this on Twitter.

Yet Twitter keeps showing me posts about politics that upset me; I can't help but "liking" some of those, which feeds the feedback machine.

I never follow any political poster but liking is enough. I could certainly block or mute all of them but that feels wrong, esp. people I fundamentally agree with.

I'm not sure what to do. Not use Twitter seems the best solution.

I tried Twitter many times but always stopped using it after reading a lot of upsetting materials. Like you follow favorite musician and beside music announcements, there are political rants. I returned to Twitter when I learned to use Mute function liberally. Maybe in your case, you'd feel better on more art related sites like Tumblr or DeviantArt?

Have you seen https://genart.social/? Unfortunataly it looks like registration is closed right now. You could follow users you like using RSS and join when registrations open again, or maybe someone you know on twitter has an account there can send you an invite.

You can also create an account on any mastodon server and follow users from genart.social, but it's more fun to be in the middle of it.

> I never follow any political poster but liking is enough.

I suspect that clicking, or perhaps even pausing is enough. The only time I look at Twitter is when running my organization's Twitter account. I try to follow technical people and organizations, and am mostly looking for something of a pulse on what's going on in the Linux / FLOSS crowd on Twitter. Since I'm representing my project, not myself, I never click 'like' on anything political; and I'm pretty sure my predecessor in the role never did either.

And yet, here I am every day, wading through loads of political posts which mysteriously mostly align with my preferences.

Edited for clarity.

> In addition it's almost impossible to have a civilized discussion, it often feels more like two people standing in different corners of a public space screaming insults at each other, and various crowds cheering them on.

It's depressing seeing friends fall down conspiracy theory rabbit holes, or publicly wallow in their racism.

It’s the “x who you followed liked this” that did me in. Turns out a lot of the smart people I followed followed complete tools. Twitter gave me no options to ignore, so I just deleted instead.

There is a "block" and a "mute" function.

So force the user to block and mute users they never followed in the first place? No.

Never e-meet your heroes I suppose. But you know, your mind is your own, you can just literally ignore or make peace with parts of reality you find unpleasant.

It seems quite strange to me how people clamor for push button blinders on what is actual life. You are not a horse to be led around by an app.

What a pretentious response. Bad art exists, twitter showing people you don’t follow in your feed is bad software art.

Who needs blinders when the feature could just work? Follow someone; see them. Don’t follow; don’t see.

> a lot of the smart people I followed followed complete tools

There is no technological solution to this. It isn't bad software art. Sometimes life is disappointing.

Maybe I like Harry Potter and enjoy fan fiction of a certain flavor on twitter and follow the author only to discover she doesn't share my politics (via her tweets and retweets). That is not the fault of Twitter. Well, if I didn't find certain views held by JK Rowling's disagreeable everything would actually be working as it should and there would be no complaints.

You can't pick and choose only the things you like about the people you are interested in. Having those books in common doesn't guarantee fellow fans are agreeable - same thing would happen if I were to attend a book reading in the olden days before twitter and overhear people expressing views that upset me.

I can of course demand everybody at the venue accommodate me on everything since we all enjoy Harry Potter and I am very special but that might not fly. I could compartmentalize and stick to the the things we have in common. Or I could excuse myself.

I honestly can’t work out if I’m arguing with a bot or not. There is literally a single solution: the main stream is purely a stream of tweets from who you follow. I realise this is an existential threat to machine learning engineers who just love to build recommender systems, but that’s it, that’s all it is.

Dude that is exactly how it works in most Twitter clients. On the website you click on "Lists" and curate away, no ML or recommender systems are involved.

Most people don't bother, they sign up and follow JK Rowlling or whatever and she tweets once a year or something so there's nothing to show you so it treats her as a subject not an individual. Bad UX and terminology for sure but most of the complaints are not about that.

Do you also get mad at reddit for whatever the hell the weirdos post in the default sub-reddits when you login?

Good analogies!

It also kinda follows from your "public space" analogy, that the loudest people screaming the most obnoxious and entertaining insults, will dominate this space.

Extending your analogy a bit further, this "public space" is really more of a "public bathroom" wall, where people scribble hot takes, and others react to those with more hot takes of their own.

I'm happy for you that you shut down your account a while ago -- I haven't used mine in months, and should probably do the same right now.

I find Twitter teaching me to stand my ground in terms of my boundaries and what I enjoy. If I talk to somebody and they start insulting me, I mute. I mute people who insult others too. Difference between physical public space is that if some people are screaming at each other, you'd have to engage somehow (like break them off) or disengage by walking away. In Twitter you can mute them. Let them fight between themselves.

Twitter is the least taxing of the social media sites to use and I actually get useful info from it. Just curate who you follow to keep the SNR up. I don't have any other social media accounts. The rest is just trash

Exactly, since 2016, it's been a cesspit. One can argue the world would be better off without Twitter, even keeping in mind The Arab Spring, and during Covid outbreak (was that net positive? I would say initially during the outbreak it was very useful, and then later more misinformation came about.)

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