Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

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> 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 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.

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 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?

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