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I feel like I must be living in an alternative reality from the Twitter deriders in this thread, I've had almost the exact opposite experience. I've made more f

I feel like I must be living in an alternative reality from the Twitter deriders in this thread, I've had almost the exact opposite experience. I've made more friends and acquaintances on Twitter than any other social network. It's also easily the most intellectual social network. (If that sounds crazy, really compare it to the others. They're either not intellectual or [youtube] not really social.) If you care deeply about something, you will find other people on Twitter. If you work in public, people will find you. Someone right now I met from Maine is currently drawing up the plans to teach me to timber frame a structure I just got approved. About 20 people I met from twitter have been over my house (for dinner, etc) at different times. Far more people read my work because of Twitter. If you don't use it as a political mouthpiece it's incredible and there's nothing like it. And that's really up to the user.

brandrick 5y ago
This is largely my experience too.
babelfish 5y ago
Same. Social media is what you make it. If someone's experience with social media is that it's a highly toxic environment, the only person ultimately responsible for that is them.
_r0fz 5y ago
It's also very very funny to me the general tone of self-congratulatory nonparticipation all over this comment section about how superior we all are for not using social media or twitter or whatever. HN is social media too! I've heard the arguments why it's not but they aren't compelling to me; it is one. The main difference between here and twitter is the tone. On here there is a cultural expectation that you will perform dispassionate erudition but if you read beyond that at all very few comments are any more intellectually stimulating than an average tweet. Less, honestly, at least people on twitter still seem to value joy and humor and whimsy.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  counterpoint: 1) the difference is on hn, shitposting, trolling and straight up being offensive is strongly discouraged. 2) I have experienced joy, whimsicality and humor in here. We are people not machines. 3) i have learned about more new things than in any other place. I have frequently changed my mind because of the quality of the arguments 4) no matter what the subject is people with deep expertise seem to show up and it’s a joy to actually hear from them
  - _r0fz 5y ago
    Look I just really disagree sorry. The flavor is different but the beneath it's the same stuff. You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much. You can find joy on here sure but it's despite the culture here not because of it.
    - zemo 5y ago
      right, HN only cares about conforming to protocols. If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        Just to clarify - why would we ever not want that to be the case? If someone is making a well reasoned argument that's clearly wrong then I'm happy to read it - I have faith in myself and those on this forum that they'll be able to comprehend the statement and read out the same conclusion - if it's hidden or using underhanded conversation techniques those will generally be called out but there might be a few interesting nuggets in an otherwise incorrect argument.
        zemo 5y ago
        because if you have one party that is nice and polite and uses proper decorum and they are actively doing harm to another party, and that other party is upset because harm was done to them, and your response is "I will listen to the person that is behaving according to decorum", you are taking the wrong side. Bad actors -love- decorum, especially when access to understanding the rules of that decorum is itself a marker of class, tribe, or belonging in some way.
paulgb 5y ago
My experience is largely the same, but I have to concede with the haters on the point that Twitter has been doing what they can to make drama from the rest of the site leak into my feed. First the algorithmic timeline (and the dark pattern where if you switch to chronological it automatically switches back after time), then automatically suggesting tweets from topics outside my network with no way to turn it off. The whole blue check Stanford Prison Experiment of giving verified people/accounts additional privileges and boosted rankings also doesn’t help matters. What was supposed to be a security feature became a status symbol.
- dorkwood 5y ago
  I agree that the follow topic suggestions are awful. They don't even respect muted keywords. I can be browsing my timeline, peacefully looking at art and developer side-projects, and then out of nowhere I'll get hit with several political tweets from accounts that no one in my network even follows. I used to have the same opinion as the parent poster. I'd tell people that Twitter is actually really great if you curate your feed. Unfortunately, I can't tell people that anymore, because it's not possible to do.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    It is possible. The trick is to use lists, and never look at your timeline: https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/ https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/
    - godot 5y ago
      Nice, didn't know about this. For some background, I've only become a real user of Twitter this year (I've had an account for ages, but never used it much). Currently there is one topic of interest to me I'd like to follow the community closely. Independently (before reading this article), I've also found the timeline useless as well. Instead I follow a handful to a dozen of people by turning on notification for them in addition to follow. Every day I go to notification tab in my Twitter app, tap on the one for tweets from people I enabled notification for. This is a chronologically sorted list of tweets by these people. This has been the only way Twitter has been useful to me. It sounds like Lists is basically like that but allows me to follow multiple topics like that. It does however seem to require a different app than the official Twitter app, so I'll have to play around with it some more if there is another topic I care to follow on Twitter about.
CraigRood 5y ago
I kinda understand them. I love Twitter but I have had a period of time where I fell out of love. For me, the 'algo' is poor and tends to promote the 'wrong' content, rather than informative and meaningful posts. Once start following the right people, the value you can get out is incredible. If you follow political or even brands/celebrities, you are going to have a bad time. At that point Twitter is used as nothing more than a way for those to promote themselves. Follow positive, talented and creative folk, they will provide value back.
- jdasdf 5y ago
  Is there even an "Algo"? I always just see every post of the people who i follow, and posts they like or retweet, and absolutely nothing else (other than the occasional ad). Then again i keep a very tight leash on who i follow, and keep the number of follows very low, so i know exactly what sort of content will show up. Is that not how most people use twitter?
  - lovegoblin 5y ago
    > Is there even an "Algo"? There are two main twitter feeds: - Home: the algo one that twitter wants you to use. Mostly those you follow but not 100%; this will sometimes show very popular tweets or maybe something your followees liked (but didn't RT). - Latest: which is just the (imo, good) original "everything from those you follow, reverse chronologically".
paulpauper 5y ago
Most intellectual? Maybe if your niche is very narrowly focused like "string theory" or something technical like that.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  It's comparative, of all social media sites. Which other social media app/site would you consider to be more intellectual than Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? LinkedIn?
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    reddit
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      Maybe if your niche is very narrowly focused like "r/StringTheory" or something technical like that.
      - JW_00000 5y ago
        I find it much easier to find the subreddits for specific topics I'm interested in than to find the right people on Twitter for those topics. And it doesn't need to be as narrow as "/r/StringTheory", /r/science or /r/Physics are fine too.
      - Bjartr 5y ago
        A niche is narrowly focused by definition.
      - polynomial 5y ago
        I take your meaning but JTN r/StringTheory hasn't been active in over a year. (I will not succumb to the temptation to make that into a string theory joke.)
  - woopwoop 5y ago
    news.ycombinator.com
timdellinger 5y ago
I think what we're learning (or not learning...) about social media is that you have to aggressively self-curate your own feed. I, too, have a marvelous experience on Twitter, but I do have to cut out the people who post in ways that I'm not interested in seeing.
- hahahasure 5y ago
  If that person likes a political person, you have to see every detail. No thx.
thekyle 5y ago
The problem I have with Twitter is that it's too people centric. For example, I like to follow finance news, so I could probably find some Twitter accounts that post about that. But surely the people running those accounts would also post about other interests they have besides finance. I probably won't really care about their other interests so all of their non-finance related posts would just be noise in my feed. On the other hand, there are topic centric social networks like Reddit where it's a lot easier to find and follow just the news about a specific niche (like finance). I'm not totally against the people centric model. I think it can work well in social networks like Facebook and Instagram that are more friends and family focused, but I don't really get that vibe from Twitter.
- soperj 5y ago
  You can follow topics on twitter.
  - akiselev 5y ago
    Topics are "curated" at best and algorithmic garbage-in-garbage-out at worst. Subreddits are moderated, often by people with at least a passing familiarity in the subject matter. Moderation allows on topic discussion without putting a gatekeeper behind exposure, as long as posters follow the rules.
  - peq 5y ago
    I tried following the webdev topic and it's just interaction-baiting bullshit. Like loops vs reduce. Or "offend a webdev with 3 words".
- jdasdf 5y ago
  > The problem I have with Twitter is that it's too people centric. For example, I like to follow finance news, so I could probably find some Twitter accounts that post about that. But surely the people running those accounts would also post about other interests they have besides finance. I probably won't really care about their other interests so all of their non-finance related posts would just be noise in my feed. That's solved by being stingy with your follows and not being afraid to unfollow people. From my experience I have zero issues keeping my stream focused on finance (though i do follow one or two comedy accounts that post every once in a while)
nwsm 5y ago
This is how I feel. I unfollow or block users I don't want to see. I know which kinds of tweets from which kinds of authors are likely to have interesting discussion in the replies, and I only look at the replies for those. And generally I'm not on Twitter for deep nuanced discussion anyway- it's a platform specifically designed against that.
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I just think the possibility of being fired for something I wrote over 10 years ago when everyone thought that thing was benign is enough to make me skip on it for work
spike021 5y ago
Unfortunately, most people do not know how to self-filter. Twitter has always had a List function that makes it a lot easier to only follow tweets from a set list (or many lists) of people. Yeah, you'll still see retweets if they do happen to retweet something you're not in the mood to see. But you're more likely to be able to pick and choose people who won't do that. By self-curating, I rarely see toxic tweets unless I start drilling down into very political threads.
kache_ 5y ago
Counterpoint: I've attempted to prevent it from becoming a political shitshow by specifically following people only in my field, yet it somehow seems to bring up political bullshit to me. Youtube is far easier to make intellectual, there are tons of great educational channels & podcasts to watch and listen to.
- waheoo 5y ago
  This is a major understatement. My hobby channels have completely dominated every other form of content in my life at this point.
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  This is especially true if you are in tech, I have over 800 videos in my watch later that are all from technical conferences, individual contributors, meetups that were all interesting enough for me to want to watch (and save) but haven't seen yet. There's an immense amount of value out there.
- nsonha 5y ago
  youtube videos at least take efforts to make. Tweets are cheap as dirt. I have my own thoughts, opinions and ideas, I'm not impressed to hear that other people have them too.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    The problem is not that other people have political thoughts, it's that this despicable platform constantly tries to push them in your face even if you're not interested in them with things like the algorithmic timeline (that "accidentally" re-enables itself every so often) and showing tweets from people you don't follow.
    - nsonha 5y ago
      I think the problem with current recommendation systems is lack of user's ability to customize them. I don't like youtube's algorithm either. However, I do not want to just tell them what I like and let them indulge my addictions forever and put me into some sort of echo chamber. Recommendation is hard.
jborichevskiy 5y ago
Yep: I've met/dated/worked/traveled/written with people from there. It's a magical people-finder if you avoid the incendiary accounts and just approach it with good faith and open curiosity.
leviathant 5y ago
What I like about Twitter above other social networks is that it's actually pretty easy to self-moderate. Only follow who you want to follow. Are they retweeting too much garbage into your timeline? Turn off retweets for that person. See an ad you don't want to ever see again? Block the advertising Twitter account. You can go even further in your curation through the use of lists. I feel like the people who complain about how awful Twitter is are telling me about the company they choose to keep. I know that's not the reality of the situation, but Twitter really can be what you make of it. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean you have to follow them on Twitter.
sixothree 5y ago
I found twitter has a high barrier to entry. Until you have a pretty good follow list, the usefulness of twitter is almost zero.
connorkrowland 5y ago
Yes! The best use of technology is always grounded in reality. The only time I get excited online is when I might make a friend.
colllectorof 5y ago
You are smugly describing your personal benefits from the system that is also used to spread massive amounts of propaganda, organize campaigns to socially ruin people and to coordinate political violence.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  All systems meet that description. You should see radio broadcasting.
- popinman322 5y ago
  You could just as well be describing a bulletin board in a physical space, like a community center. Or even an SMS/WhatsApp group. The problems you're describing are endemic to social spaces and won't be resolved by removing _one_ social space.
  - colllectorof 5y ago
    This is a horseshit reply that tries to counter an observation about how something actually works with a contrived hypothetical about how something else could work in theory. It ignores the impact of how a medium is organized on the messaging that goes through that medium.
gambler 5y ago
You're literally describing living in a filter bubble. Given how often this community talks about things like privilege and bias, it's highly ironic (or maybe telling) that a comment like that rises to the top here. It would be one thing if the negative stuff from Twitter was just internet drama and stayed on Twitter. Then anyone could "opt out". But it doesn't stay there. You can't opt out of things that spill into your life, your downtown, your company, your country.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  How is OP describing a filter bubble? OP is describing apolitical things as far as I can tell.
  - throwawaynow76 5y ago
    Ignoring politics is an indulgence of the privileged class. If you curate your feed to avoid it then you are perpetuating harm. This is at least the argument that you will hear. On the one hand completely shutting out political content does seem like a let them eat cake attitude. But of course it isn’t binary. The problem is that the political content is everywhere now and it’s toxic. I don’t want to ignore the problems of the world and I also cannot allow the endless yelling to drag me into depression.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      If you ignored twitter and chose to be active in local politics you would be doing more actual good than 10 people tweeting 20x a day.
      - drusepth 5y ago
        10 people tweeting 20x a day is a pretty low bar. I'd wager to say anyone that's active in local politics is doing more good than 90% of politics-tweeters.
  - gambler 5y ago
d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago
Same I deleted FB 3 years ago and miss nothing about it Twitter on the other hand, when used properly is indispensable
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I have the opposite experience. Ditched twitter and miss nothing, but ocassionally there is a sporting event that only streams on Facebook or there is a coffeeshop that requires a facebook login to work. Hence a fake facebook name. Facebook appears much more indispensible to me.
ameminator 5y ago
As an aside, the Shelter Institute is amazing (which I'm assuming is the place in Maine you were talking about).
mcspiff 5y ago
What blows me away is how often a reporter/author/expert will reply. Sometimes even super informally — I’ve gotten great restaurants recommendations from people I’ve just respected from afar previously. Extremely humanizing experience.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  I emailed Jean-Yves Girard -- just to ask this question on whether he was aware of Deleuze (since he's becoming a "continental" type philosopher in old life, after a lifetime of great achievements in logic) once and he replied. It was a great reply too.
elliotbnvl 5y ago
Can confirm — I’ve had awesome conversations with Simon on Twitter. I’ve also had really negative experiences with Twitter. My conclusion is that Twitter is frequently derided but really it does nothing more than act as a megaphone for human nature. If you don’t like Twitter, you’re probably just following the wrong humans.
vmception 5y ago
Twitter + Clubhouse really is pretty fantastic, too bad I cant stand either
sanderjd 5y ago
Yep you hit the nail on the head. Twitter sucks for politics and is good for other things.
- atulatul 5y ago
  Any idea how you can mute/ opt out of topics like politics? Many of my trending topics are about politics even when I do not follow people around politics, have blocked words like Trump, Boris Johnson, and corresponding local variations, tell twitter I am 'not interested in this', and actively modify my twitter 'interests' once in a while. https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_interests https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_inter...
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    Just don't use Twitter. :) That worked better for me. Got more time to spend on HN and personal projects. My best experience was using RSS to follow specific profiles. Still not worth it.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    Adblock the trending pane, it’s algorithmic garbage that ignores your preferences.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Twitter "sucks" for politics from a user point of view, but politics and other "inflammatory" topics (including fake news and misinformation) are fundamental to this company's survival, at least until they change their ways and move fully to a subscription service. Politics is a proven source of infinite "engagement" which is how this disgusting company (and similar competitors) make their money on, which is why it's so hard to "opt out" of it - opting out of politics (and other potentially inflammatory topics) would decrease your "engagement" which while good for your time and sanity is absolutely against the company's business model.
gentleman11 5y ago
My Twitter experience was to be banned for life for no reason 24 hours after making my account and following two people. Support said they would never reply to one of my support requests
nimvlaj30 5y ago
I never got the opportunity to get involved in Twitter because of these experiences: 1. Few people outside the politics sphere use Twitter in Australia. It's all politicians, public relations specialists, and journos. I could create an account and try and interact, but I'm unlikely be interacting with people who have any influence in my hemisphere of the world. 2. I once made an account anyway, out of curiosity, and was immediately defamed by someone I hadn't even met. To the point of having to delete the service, scorched earth. 3. Eventually I had to create an account to use the Twitter API as part of a big data assignment. However, every time I tried to verify my account, no email or text message would make its way to me. I contacted support for months, with no replies. Ended up having to use the tutor's Twitter account (which I'm sure would have breached ToS). It's been over a year, and I still haven't received a reply from Twitter. Maybe they just don't want me to have an account? Why would I get involved after all this? Seems like more trouble than its worth, to be honest.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Twitter fails to send messages to some networks like Aldi Mobile so that’s probably the issue you had. No way around this.
  - nimvlaj30 5y ago
    There is a way around this. Twitter should not be relying on phone numbers to verify identity or intent.
- nsonha 5y ago
  the devs here, like elsewhere, rely on twitter to discover new ideas, tools and projects though. Hackernews is broader and not customizable
miked85 5y ago
> About 20 people I met from twitter have been over my house (for dinner, etc) at different times. I think this would be considered extremely out of the norm. Your experiences with Twitter are definitely not typical.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  I've met so many people through web forums and whatnot. People think I'm absolutely insane when I mention that, I forget that it's not normal.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    What's weird to me - even though I grew up in BBS-land, ran forums, and met lots of people from online - is the degree to which normie youth culture has now made this the main way of engaging and meeting. If you observe any girl/boy interaction at any random bar now, it seems there's a 90% chance they're just meeting IRL for the first time. It feels like the pandemic has upped this. What I see as the downside is that it's a supermarket - you really don't see a lot of couples who've been together or are together for any length of time going out and enjoying each other's company. That seems to have diminished, along with other social skills that aren't mediated by a platform.
- onion2k 5y ago
  I've met lots of people I first connected with on Twitter. In the early days "tweetups" were very common. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29045/tweetup https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29045/tweetup
- tomhoward 5y ago
  No, it’s common - particularly among people who were on Twitter in its earlier days; 2007-11. A whole lot of people I know came together during those years via Twitter, as well as blogs and offline meetups, but Twitter was the glue that kept people interacting day-to-day, and plenty of those people remain good friends. Indeed I pretty much met my partner over Twitter in 2010, we got together after group social gatherings in 2011 and now we have a wonderful son together. Things are very different now that it’s so dominated by politically-charged rhetoric and piling on, and I can understand that new social connections would more likely get drowned out these days.
stakkur 5y ago
You just described what Reddit is for me.
watwut 5y ago
I had some experience. For me it was the best place for low key getting info about side interests.
tomduncalf 5y ago
> If you don't use it as a political mouthpiece it's incredible and there's nothing like it. This matches my experience too. I’ve connected with a lot of interesting people in a reasonably niche field (audio software dev) who I would otherwise never have had the opportunity to. I’ve subsequently had the pleasure of meeting a few of these people in real life at conferences etc. However anything political quickly turns into a dumpster fire. I can kind of see why people get sucked in to arguing on there, but it’s better to just ignore that side of Twitter IMO. I’ve definitely unfollowed people who have too high a ratio of political type content vs. what I’m actually following them for!
gameswithgo 5y ago
it is possible to use twitter in a nice way. twitter is also a cesspool that is destroying the world. both can be true
forgotpwd16 5y ago
What intellectual is supposed to even mean? It depends on the people you follow similar to any other social media site. If rather the people you follow you check the trends it's similarly horrible as any other social media site.

brandrick 5y ago

This is largely my experience too.

babelfish 5y ago

Same. Social media is what you make it. If someone's experience with social media is that it's a highly toxic environment, the only person ultimately responsible for that is them.

_r0fz 5y ago

It's also very very funny to me the general tone of self-congratulatory nonparticipation all over this comment section about how superior we all are for not using social media or twitter or whatever. HN is social media too! I've heard the arguments why it's not but they aren't compelling to me; it is one. The main difference between here and twitter is the tone. On here there is a cultural expectation that you will perform dispassionate erudition but if you read beyond that at all very few comments are any more intellectually stimulating than an average tweet. Less, honestly, at least people on twitter still seem to value joy and humor and whimsy.

rantwasp 5y ago
counterpoint: 1) the difference is on hn, shitposting, trolling and straight up being offensive is strongly discouraged. 2) I have experienced joy, whimsicality and humor in here. We are people not machines. 3) i have learned about more new things than in any other place. I have frequently changed my mind because of the quality of the arguments 4) no matter what the subject is people with deep expertise seem to show up and it’s a joy to actually hear from them
- _r0fz 5y ago
  Look I just really disagree sorry. The flavor is different but the beneath it's the same stuff. You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much. You can find joy on here sure but it's despite the culture here not because of it.
  - zemo 5y ago
    right, HN only cares about conforming to protocols. If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      Just to clarify - why would we ever not want that to be the case? If someone is making a well reasoned argument that's clearly wrong then I'm happy to read it - I have faith in myself and those on this forum that they'll be able to comprehend the statement and read out the same conclusion - if it's hidden or using underhanded conversation techniques those will generally be called out but there might be a few interesting nuggets in an otherwise incorrect argument.
      - zemo 5y ago
        because if you have one party that is nice and polite and uses proper decorum and they are actively doing harm to another party, and that other party is upset because harm was done to them, and your response is "I will listen to the person that is behaving according to decorum", you are taking the wrong side. Bad actors -love- decorum, especially when access to understanding the rules of that decorum is itself a marker of class, tribe, or belonging in some way.

paulgb 5y ago

My experience is largely the same, but I have to concede with the haters on the point that Twitter has been doing what they can to make drama from the rest of the site leak into my feed. First the algorithmic timeline (and the dark pattern where if you switch to chronological it automatically switches back after time), then automatically suggesting tweets from topics outside my network with no way to turn it off. The whole blue check Stanford Prison Experiment of giving verified people/accounts additional privileges and boosted rankings also doesn’t help matters. What was supposed to be a security feature became a status symbol.

dorkwood 5y ago
I agree that the follow topic suggestions are awful. They don't even respect muted keywords. I can be browsing my timeline, peacefully looking at art and developer side-projects, and then out of nowhere I'll get hit with several political tweets from accounts that no one in my network even follows. I used to have the same opinion as the parent poster. I'd tell people that Twitter is actually really great if you curate your feed. Unfortunately, I can't tell people that anymore, because it's not possible to do.
- leephillips 5y ago
  It is possible. The trick is to use lists, and never look at your timeline: https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/ https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/
  - godot 5y ago
    Nice, didn't know about this. For some background, I've only become a real user of Twitter this year (I've had an account for ages, but never used it much). Currently there is one topic of interest to me I'd like to follow the community closely. Independently (before reading this article), I've also found the timeline useless as well. Instead I follow a handful to a dozen of people by turning on notification for them in addition to follow. Every day I go to notification tab in my Twitter app, tap on the one for tweets from people I enabled notification for. This is a chronologically sorted list of tweets by these people. This has been the only way Twitter has been useful to me. It sounds like Lists is basically like that but allows me to follow multiple topics like that. It does however seem to require a different app than the official Twitter app, so I'll have to play around with it some more if there is another topic I care to follow on Twitter about.

CraigRood 5y ago

I kinda understand them. I love Twitter but I have had a period of time where I fell out of love. For me, the 'algo' is poor and tends to promote the 'wrong' content, rather than informative and meaningful posts. Once start following the right people, the value you can get out is incredible. If you follow political or even brands/celebrities, you are going to have a bad time. At that point Twitter is used as nothing more than a way for those to promote themselves. Follow positive, talented and creative folk, they will provide value back.

jdasdf 5y ago
Is there even an "Algo"? I always just see every post of the people who i follow, and posts they like or retweet, and absolutely nothing else (other than the occasional ad). Then again i keep a very tight leash on who i follow, and keep the number of follows very low, so i know exactly what sort of content will show up. Is that not how most people use twitter?
- lovegoblin 5y ago
  > Is there even an "Algo"? There are two main twitter feeds: - Home: the algo one that twitter wants you to use. Mostly those you follow but not 100%; this will sometimes show very popular tweets or maybe something your followees liked (but didn't RT). - Latest: which is just the (imo, good) original "everything from those you follow, reverse chronologically".

paulpauper 5y ago

Most intellectual? Maybe if your niche is very narrowly focused like "string theory" or something technical like that.

sangnoir 5y ago
It's comparative, of all social media sites. Which other social media app/site would you consider to be more intellectual than Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? LinkedIn?
- paulpauper 5y ago
  reddit
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    Maybe if your niche is very narrowly focused like "r/StringTheory" or something technical like that.
    - JW_00000 5y ago
      I find it much easier to find the subreddits for specific topics I'm interested in than to find the right people on Twitter for those topics. And it doesn't need to be as narrow as "/r/StringTheory", /r/science or /r/Physics are fine too.
    - Bjartr 5y ago
      A niche is narrowly focused by definition.
    - polynomial 5y ago
      I take your meaning but JTN r/StringTheory hasn't been active in over a year. (I will not succumb to the temptation to make that into a string theory joke.)
- woopwoop 5y ago
  news.ycombinator.com

timdellinger 5y ago

I think what we're learning (or not learning...) about social media is that you have to aggressively self-curate your own feed. I, too, have a marvelous experience on Twitter, but I do have to cut out the people who post in ways that I'm not interested in seeing.

hahahasure 5y ago
If that person likes a political person, you have to see every detail. No thx.

thekyle 5y ago

The problem I have with Twitter is that it's too people centric. For example, I like to follow finance news, so I could probably find some Twitter accounts that post about that. But surely the people running those accounts would also post about other interests they have besides finance. I probably won't really care about their other interests so all of their non-finance related posts would just be noise in my feed. On the other hand, there are topic centric social networks like Reddit where it's a lot easier to find and follow just the news about a specific niche (like finance). I'm not totally against the people centric model. I think it can work well in social networks like Facebook and Instagram that are more friends and family focused, but I don't really get that vibe from Twitter.

soperj 5y ago
You can follow topics on twitter.
- akiselev 5y ago
  Topics are "curated" at best and algorithmic garbage-in-garbage-out at worst. Subreddits are moderated, often by people with at least a passing familiarity in the subject matter. Moderation allows on topic discussion without putting a gatekeeper behind exposure, as long as posters follow the rules.
- peq 5y ago
  I tried following the webdev topic and it's just interaction-baiting bullshit. Like loops vs reduce. Or "offend a webdev with 3 words".
jdasdf 5y ago
> The problem I have with Twitter is that it's too people centric. For example, I like to follow finance news, so I could probably find some Twitter accounts that post about that. But surely the people running those accounts would also post about other interests they have besides finance. I probably won't really care about their other interests so all of their non-finance related posts would just be noise in my feed. That's solved by being stingy with your follows and not being afraid to unfollow people. From my experience I have zero issues keeping my stream focused on finance (though i do follow one or two comedy accounts that post every once in a while)

nwsm 5y ago

This is how I feel. I unfollow or block users I don't want to see. I know which kinds of tweets from which kinds of authors are likely to have interesting discussion in the replies, and I only look at the replies for those. And generally I'm not on Twitter for deep nuanced discussion anyway- it's a platform specifically designed against that.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

I just think the possibility of being fired for something I wrote over 10 years ago when everyone thought that thing was benign is enough to make me skip on it for work

spike021 5y ago

Unfortunately, most people do not know how to self-filter. Twitter has always had a List function that makes it a lot easier to only follow tweets from a set list (or many lists) of people. Yeah, you'll still see retweets if they do happen to retweet something you're not in the mood to see. But you're more likely to be able to pick and choose people who won't do that. By self-curating, I rarely see toxic tweets unless I start drilling down into very political threads.

kache_ 5y ago

Counterpoint: I've attempted to prevent it from becoming a political shitshow by specifically following people only in my field, yet it somehow seems to bring up political bullshit to me. Youtube is far easier to make intellectual, there are tons of great educational channels & podcasts to watch and listen to.

waheoo 5y ago
This is a major understatement. My hobby channels have completely dominated every other form of content in my life at this point.
hardwaresofton 5y ago
This is especially true if you are in tech, I have over 800 videos in my watch later that are all from technical conferences, individual contributors, meetups that were all interesting enough for me to want to watch (and save) but haven't seen yet. There's an immense amount of value out there.
nsonha 5y ago
youtube videos at least take efforts to make. Tweets are cheap as dirt. I have my own thoughts, opinions and ideas, I'm not impressed to hear that other people have them too.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The problem is not that other people have political thoughts, it's that this despicable platform constantly tries to push them in your face even if you're not interested in them with things like the algorithmic timeline (that "accidentally" re-enables itself every so often) and showing tweets from people you don't follow.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    I think the problem with current recommendation systems is lack of user's ability to customize them. I don't like youtube's algorithm either. However, I do not want to just tell them what I like and let them indulge my addictions forever and put me into some sort of echo chamber. Recommendation is hard.

jborichevskiy 5y ago

Yep: I've met/dated/worked/traveled/written with people from there. It's a magical people-finder if you avoid the incendiary accounts and just approach it with good faith and open curiosity.

leviathant 5y ago

What I like about Twitter above other social networks is that it's actually pretty easy to self-moderate. Only follow who you want to follow. Are they retweeting too much garbage into your timeline? Turn off retweets for that person. See an ad you don't want to ever see again? Block the advertising Twitter account. You can go even further in your curation through the use of lists. I feel like the people who complain about how awful Twitter is are telling me about the company they choose to keep. I know that's not the reality of the situation, but Twitter really can be what you make of it. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean you have to follow them on Twitter.

sixothree 5y ago

I found twitter has a high barrier to entry. Until you have a pretty good follow list, the usefulness of twitter is almost zero.

connorkrowland 5y ago

Yes! The best use of technology is always grounded in reality. The only time I get excited online is when I might make a friend.

colllectorof 5y ago

You are smugly describing your personal benefits from the system that is also used to spread massive amounts of propaganda, organize campaigns to socially ruin people and to coordinate political violence.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
All systems meet that description. You should see radio broadcasting.
popinman322 5y ago
You could just as well be describing a bulletin board in a physical space, like a community center. Or even an SMS/WhatsApp group. The problems you're describing are endemic to social spaces and won't be resolved by removing _one_ social space.
- colllectorof 5y ago
  This is a horseshit reply that tries to counter an observation about how something actually works with a contrived hypothetical about how something else could work in theory. It ignores the impact of how a medium is organized on the messaging that goes through that medium.

gambler 5y ago

You're literally describing living in a filter bubble. Given how often this community talks about things like privilege and bias, it's highly ironic (or maybe telling) that a comment like that rises to the top here. It would be one thing if the negative stuff from Twitter was just internet drama and stayed on Twitter. Then anyone could "opt out". But it doesn't stay there. You can't opt out of things that spill into your life, your downtown, your company, your country.

tunesmith 5y ago
How is OP describing a filter bubble? OP is describing apolitical things as far as I can tell.
- throwawaynow76 5y ago
  Ignoring politics is an indulgence of the privileged class. If you curate your feed to avoid it then you are perpetuating harm. This is at least the argument that you will hear. On the one hand completely shutting out political content does seem like a let them eat cake attitude. But of course it isn’t binary. The problem is that the political content is everywhere now and it’s toxic. I don’t want to ignore the problems of the world and I also cannot allow the endless yelling to drag me into depression.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    If you ignored twitter and chose to be active in local politics you would be doing more actual good than 10 people tweeting 20x a day.
    - drusepth 5y ago
      10 people tweeting 20x a day is a pretty low bar. I'd wager to say anyone that's active in local politics is doing more good than 90% of politics-tweeters.
- gambler 5y ago

d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago

Same I deleted FB 3 years ago and miss nothing about it Twitter on the other hand, when used properly is indispensable

rsj_hn 5y ago
I have the opposite experience. Ditched twitter and miss nothing, but ocassionally there is a sporting event that only streams on Facebook or there is a coffeeshop that requires a facebook login to work. Hence a fake facebook name. Facebook appears much more indispensible to me.

ameminator 5y ago

As an aside, the Shelter Institute is amazing (which I'm assuming is the place in Maine you were talking about).

mcspiff 5y ago

What blows me away is how often a reporter/author/expert will reply. Sometimes even super informally — I’ve gotten great restaurants recommendations from people I’ve just respected from afar previously. Extremely humanizing experience.

prionassembly 5y ago
I emailed Jean-Yves Girard -- just to ask this question on whether he was aware of Deleuze (since he's becoming a "continental" type philosopher in old life, after a lifetime of great achievements in logic) once and he replied. It was a great reply too.

elliotbnvl 5y ago

Can confirm — I’ve had awesome conversations with Simon on Twitter. I’ve also had really negative experiences with Twitter. My conclusion is that Twitter is frequently derided but really it does nothing more than act as a megaphone for human nature. If you don’t like Twitter, you’re probably just following the wrong humans.

vmception 5y ago

Twitter + Clubhouse really is pretty fantastic, too bad I cant stand either

sanderjd 5y ago

Yep you hit the nail on the head. Twitter sucks for politics and is good for other things.

atulatul 5y ago
Any idea how you can mute/ opt out of topics like politics? Many of my trending topics are about politics even when I do not follow people around politics, have blocked words like Trump, Boris Johnson, and corresponding local variations, tell twitter I am 'not interested in this', and actively modify my twitter 'interests' once in a while. https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_interests https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_inter...
- lobocinza 5y ago
  Just don't use Twitter. :) That worked better for me. Got more time to spend on HN and personal projects. My best experience was using RSS to follow specific profiles. Still not worth it.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  Adblock the trending pane, it’s algorithmic garbage that ignores your preferences.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Twitter "sucks" for politics from a user point of view, but politics and other "inflammatory" topics (including fake news and misinformation) are fundamental to this company's survival, at least until they change their ways and move fully to a subscription service. Politics is a proven source of infinite "engagement" which is how this disgusting company (and similar competitors) make their money on, which is why it's so hard to "opt out" of it - opting out of politics (and other potentially inflammatory topics) would decrease your "engagement" which while good for your time and sanity is absolutely against the company's business model.

gentleman11 5y ago

My Twitter experience was to be banned for life for no reason 24 hours after making my account and following two people. Support said they would never reply to one of my support requests

nimvlaj30 5y ago

I never got the opportunity to get involved in Twitter because of these experiences: 1. Few people outside the politics sphere use Twitter in Australia. It's all politicians, public relations specialists, and journos. I could create an account and try and interact, but I'm unlikely be interacting with people who have any influence in my hemisphere of the world. 2. I once made an account anyway, out of curiosity, and was immediately defamed by someone I hadn't even met. To the point of having to delete the service, scorched earth. 3. Eventually I had to create an account to use the Twitter API as part of a big data assignment. However, every time I tried to verify my account, no email or text message would make its way to me. I contacted support for months, with no replies. Ended up having to use the tutor's Twitter account (which I'm sure would have breached ToS). It's been over a year, and I still haven't received a reply from Twitter. Maybe they just don't want me to have an account? Why would I get involved after all this? Seems like more trouble than its worth, to be honest.

quickthrower2 5y ago
Twitter fails to send messages to some networks like Aldi Mobile so that’s probably the issue you had. No way around this.
- nimvlaj30 5y ago
  There is a way around this. Twitter should not be relying on phone numbers to verify identity or intent.
nsonha 5y ago
the devs here, like elsewhere, rely on twitter to discover new ideas, tools and projects though. Hackernews is broader and not customizable

miked85 5y ago

> About 20 people I met from twitter have been over my house (for dinner, etc) at different times. I think this would be considered extremely out of the norm. Your experiences with Twitter are definitely not typical.

staticassertion 5y ago
I've met so many people through web forums and whatnot. People think I'm absolutely insane when I mention that, I forget that it's not normal.
- noduerme 5y ago
  What's weird to me - even though I grew up in BBS-land, ran forums, and met lots of people from online - is the degree to which normie youth culture has now made this the main way of engaging and meeting. If you observe any girl/boy interaction at any random bar now, it seems there's a 90% chance they're just meeting IRL for the first time. It feels like the pandemic has upped this. What I see as the downside is that it's a supermarket - you really don't see a lot of couples who've been together or are together for any length of time going out and enjoying each other's company. That seems to have diminished, along with other social skills that aren't mediated by a platform.
onion2k 5y ago
I've met lots of people I first connected with on Twitter. In the early days "tweetups" were very common. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29045/tweetup https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29045/tweetup
tomhoward 5y ago
No, it’s common - particularly among people who were on Twitter in its earlier days; 2007-11. A whole lot of people I know came together during those years via Twitter, as well as blogs and offline meetups, but Twitter was the glue that kept people interacting day-to-day, and plenty of those people remain good friends. Indeed I pretty much met my partner over Twitter in 2010, we got together after group social gatherings in 2011 and now we have a wonderful son together. Things are very different now that it’s so dominated by politically-charged rhetoric and piling on, and I can understand that new social connections would more likely get drowned out these days.

stakkur 5y ago

You just described what Reddit is for me.

watwut 5y ago

I had some experience. For me it was the best place for low key getting info about side interests.

tomduncalf 5y ago

> If you don't use it as a political mouthpiece it's incredible and there's nothing like it. This matches my experience too. I’ve connected with a lot of interesting people in a reasonably niche field (audio software dev) who I would otherwise never have had the opportunity to. I’ve subsequently had the pleasure of meeting a few of these people in real life at conferences etc. However anything political quickly turns into a dumpster fire. I can kind of see why people get sucked in to arguing on there, but it’s better to just ignore that side of Twitter IMO. I’ve definitely unfollowed people who have too high a ratio of political type content vs. what I’m actually following them for!

gameswithgo 5y ago

it is possible to use twitter in a nice way. twitter is also a cesspool that is destroying the world. both can be true

forgotpwd16 5y ago

What intellectual is supposed to even mean? It depends on the people you follow similar to any other social media site. If rather the people you follow you check the trends it's similarly horrible as any other social media site.