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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

>Over time, Twitter ceased to be interesting as it turned into people affirming their positions on things they usually didn’t understand

The trick is to follow experts who do understand what they are on about, eg a top general on Ukraine, top scientist on covid. Having done that I find it disappointing going back to reading mainstream journalists who post with less understanding.

You have to fight a little with the recommendation algos pushing random nonsense at you but it's doable.

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I don't know, I have too little faith for even that. For your "top general" on Ukraine example, do you really think a top general is actually going on Twitter and writing tweets telling you the honest truth about what's happening, vs. just writing what they're expected to in order to maintain the wartime propaganda message they're supposed to be pushing? For your covid example do you think a "top scientist" would go on Twitter and really risk being cancelled and having their career and life destroyed if they write what they believe to be true, if it goes against the narrative they're supposed to agree with?

Well even the top guys have bias so you have to choose who you like to follow but personally on Ukraine I like @general_ben who was Commanding General of the US Army Europe and also Mike Martin @ThreshedThought who wasn't a general but was an officer fighting in Afghanistan and has a PhD in War Studies, teaches at Kings London and written various books.

There are also a bunch of scientist on twitter. Personally I followed the lab leak stuff and pro lab leak you have @R_H_Ebright Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers and anti you have @MichaelWorobey, Professor and Head of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Both pretty outspoken, especially Ebright. I guess they have tenure.

It's sometimes interesting to follow both sides a bit when there's an argument going on.

This was my great frustration with Twitter the last time I tried it. Even when I carefully curated my followers, random crap would constantly sneak into my feed. It was annoying enough that I started just manually navigating to a few bookmarked profiles periodically to read their latest tweets.

publicly traded companies in the social media space need to get clicks. so do influencers and pundits.

no surprise that economic forces push them together, to the detriment of your feed.

I find clicking "not interested" followed by "show fewer tweets from..." kinda works. But yeah it's a battle.

But why? The current top reply sums it up so well: "All of it is actually useless, and it does nothing but eat time."

Better info? In my case it's mostly a hobby interest so you could debate if it's worth while.

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