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Twitter could've been so much better if people could post into different channels instead of dumping everything into one feed. Humans are multi-faceted beings a

Twitter could've been so much better if people could post into different channels instead of dumping everything into one feed. Humans are multi-faceted beings and their communication is multi-faceted too. Not supporting it in communication software is just poor abstraction. I want to be able to choose which facet of a person I'm interested in, and which not. Instead, Twitter proposes the "all or nothing" approach. Either you follow everything, or nothing. No wonder we have strong social polarization and social bubbles.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Twitter could've been so much better if people could post into different channels instead of dumping everything into one feed. Twitter has posting tools for that which could be better, but they exist, are simple, and are widely used) with hashtags and mentions. What it doesn't do is surface a UI that makes it convenient to set up a list of such channels to view and to set one as your default channel instead of the basic feed. That is, as I understand, a common tool of third-party clients, though.
rconti 6y ago
Completely agree. One feed, driven by "engagement" (read: outrage). I tried to follow experts in a field, but the content was 90% about things NOT in their field that I don't care about. The algorithm drives toxicity in a way that is ALSO true about (say) Facebook news article comments; however, my usage of Facebook is not to consume THAT content, but to consume the ACTUAL content of my ACTUAL friends. I'm not "important" enough on Twitter to get any engagement, which I don't really care about, because I'm not trying to be a personality or an influencer, or overuse hashtags for attention and clicks. But then on those rare occasions when you WOULD get value from a large circle, you don't have it. Facebook's drive to require "real names" some years ago, for what it's worth today, has also made it more "familiar. And I'm seeing my friends' content, and, at worse, their off-color or vaguely toxic friends. Some of that stuff sucks to see, but it's far better than the algo-driven firehouse of content from random people I get on Twitter. And on Twitter and IG, the people who I DO know that I follow, are generally a subset of IRL friends, and I'll probably see their content on FB. And anyway, half of them are using generic made-up monikers that change each week and I can't keep track of, or don't care to.
konjin 6y ago
You can have multiple accounts, it's not very hard.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Twitter could've been so much better if people could post into different channels instead of dumping everything into one feed. Twitter has posting tools for that which could be better, but they exist, are simple, and are widely used) with hashtags and mentions. What it doesn't do is surface a UI that makes it convenient to set up a list of such channels to view and to set one as your default channel instead of the basic feed. That is, as I understand, a common tool of third-party clients, though.

rconti 6y ago

Completely agree. One feed, driven by "engagement" (read: outrage). I tried to follow experts in a field, but the content was 90% about things NOT in their field that I don't care about. The algorithm drives toxicity in a way that is ALSO true about (say) Facebook news article comments; however, my usage of Facebook is not to consume THAT content, but to consume the ACTUAL content of my ACTUAL friends. I'm not "important" enough on Twitter to get any engagement, which I don't really care about, because I'm not trying to be a personality or an influencer, or overuse hashtags for attention and clicks. But then on those rare occasions when you WOULD get value from a large circle, you don't have it. Facebook's drive to require "real names" some years ago, for what it's worth today, has also made it more "familiar. And I'm seeing my friends' content, and, at worse, their off-color or vaguely toxic friends. Some of that stuff sucks to see, but it's far better than the algo-driven firehouse of content from random people I get on Twitter. And on Twitter and IG, the people who I DO know that I follow, are generally a subset of IRL friends, and I'll probably see their content on FB. And anyway, half of them are using generic made-up monikers that change each week and I can't keep track of, or don't care to.

konjin 6y ago

You can have multiple accounts, it's not very hard.