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I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. Even if it was a like. It's just not worth it. For a

I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. Even if it was a like. It's just not worth it. For about a year or two my feed was great. Then the topics started coming in. First it was infosec and cybersecurity and they were fine for a bit so I tolerated it. But then it turned into just a bunch of hot women saying basically nothing. If before it was some random person talking about finding a bug in X with a fuzzer, next it was someone talking about completely non-technical things like graduating from a university and starting a career in cybersecurity. Later it of course turned into culture war nonsense. So I unsubscribed. I could reasonably see this being a foreign influence campaign it was such an obvious slide from sometimes useful to total nonsense. Then Twitter started flooding my account with topics and "based on your interests" and of course the feed turned to garbage again and I had to manually unsubscribe from all of them. Twitter. Please. I'm begging you. I follow arms control people, software people, and government accounts. I've got this figured out. Please leave me alone I was happy. Edit: I forgot about the inability to turn of "[Somebody you follow] follows" tweets. Can I disable these? Doesn't appear like I can.

viraptor 5y ago
Most of those extras disappear if you switch from the "home" view to "latest tweets". It's the top right icon on the web version, but I suspect the app has it somewhere as well. It gives you only the directly followed content and in timeline order.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  I just did that. Thanks for the hint. I'll see how it goes vs the other way. I don't mind Twitter selecting Tweet order from the people I follow, I want to see the most interesting content after all, I just want to be the one in control.
latexr 5y ago
Consider a third-party client. You’ll get a chronological view of tweets from people you follow, without ads. You do lose access to a few extras (like polls), but the tradeoff might be worth it to you.
- jks 5y ago
  Or don't follow anyone (or follow your friends if they think it's a nice social signal). Put all the interesting people in lists and view the lists in https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ instead of the usual UI.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    This is pretty much what I do, although tweetdeck can be a little overwhelming at times if you are a casual viewer. Scrolling through this thread it seems that lists are an underrated feature.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
serial_dev 5y ago
I use Twitter to learn about tech, promote my stuff occasionally and nothing else. I have a similar rule for muting accounts that post things that upset me, or otherwise bore me. Same goes for anyone who retweets and likes those posts and it ends up in my feed. When I am on Twitter, I don't care about US culture war stuff, I don't want to join you deplatforming everyone you dislike, I am not going to send you and your cat good vibes because you need a day longer to finish your Jira ticket. If I see posts like that, I automatically mute to keep me focused on things that matter. I prefer the mute over unfollowing. I don't want to make a statement about you by unfollowing you (it can be tracked), I just decided that reading some of your tweets cause me more stress than the positive effect your other tweets bring. I don't dislike you, I just don't want to see you moan on Twitter. It works well enough, but of course, there are some stuff that slip through.
crims0n 5y ago
I really hate what is happening to infosec/cybersecurity. There is this huge push to get anyone and everyone into the field due to the talent shortage, and now it is near impossible to find a signal in all of the noise that is marketing, hot takes, politics, "career building", and memes. Twitter is especially terrible.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  100% agree, but there has "always" been that push. What is sad is now there is no creativity, no exploration, no true fun. the example the original poster in this thread said about "hot girls" in netsec.' On Twitter, status, identity and gender play a big role vs just knowing content, or actually knowing how a computer "works." Then if you have enough followers, it seems your voice is that big . I don't know if it's always been "like" that, or not. But, the more accessible something is, the more it seems to be diluted. I played and broke operating systems and electronic devices, posted about my experiences online, and then it was magical when someone would take my info, add on to it and said they could do x, y, etc - jtag exploration, eprom copying (lol that old), finding root accounts on embedded devices and just breaking stuff. So that's why I deleted my twitter account a couple of years ago, I never understood it, and I still don't. I just see screenshots of crypto scams and people stating opinions and then having to apologize for their opinions.
  - lokalfarm 5y ago
    I think this is just the current state of the job market today, though. In order to "be successful", it requires an almost constant engagement with your curated social/online identity. And for many fields, being an attractive candidate for employment means you should have: a blog promoting your side-projects; a Twitter account engaged in networking & self-promotion; a GitHub account linked to your identity; maybe even a YouTube channel; and, of course, a highly polished LinkedIn account. Sure, if you have 20 years of experience and plenty of industry connections, this might not apply. But for anyone else? Hustle, hustle, hustle + Promote, promote, promote. Personally, I find it pretty gross...
leephillips 5y ago
Your problem is that you are looking at your feed. Do it this way: https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/ https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/
- skmurphy 5y ago
  Thanks this is helpful. I have been fortunate to have figured a few of these out on my own and kept twitter a source of useful insights. This article outlines solid holistic approach, adding lists was a particularly useful suggestion.
- danuker 5y ago
  > In addition, the tweets will appear in chronological order, with no interpolated advertising nor any other junk, unlike in your timeline. This is just another step in the rat-race that is fighting the platform itself. It merely prolongs the period before inevitable monetization and signal decay.
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    And the house always wins. There is no self-respecting, intelligent way to use Twitter.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  > You don’t follow an account because you want to read their tweets. Twitter is “social media”, and following is a social signal. When you follow someone you are declaring that you approve of that person. Whether or not this is what you intended, this is how your decision to follow someone will be interpreted. This is horrifying. Believable, and understandable, but truly disturbing.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I don't care if people choose to interpret it that way. I can follow people or institutions I want to keep updated on, regardless of my approval of their actions. A more realistic interpretation is that your followers range from detractors to loyal supporters.
benrapscallion 5y ago
I have found that the three best ways to use twitter are: - use Tweetbot or Twitterrific - subscribe to the feed in NewsBlur - use nitter.net In other words, don’t use twitter’s own website or app.
- ascagnel_ 5y ago
  If you're on iOS/macOS, the new, open-source NetNewsWire[0] supports adding your whole follow feed, individual user feeds, mentions, and searches on specific terms. https://netnewswire.com https://netnewswire.com https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire
CountDrewku 5y ago
>I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. I'm not sure this is a good thing. I agree that you shouldn't be constantly hammering yourself with upsetting things but I don't think the polar opposite of avoiding anything you disagree with or get upset about it mentally healthy either. I think this could lead to you just being overly sensitive to anything that makes you a little emotional. Although, maybe you get enough "disagreement" in you regular life to balance it out. The best option is to learn how to better deal with you emotions. For younger generations that aren't going to be able to avoid social media as well this might be the only option for them since that IS their entire social interaction in many cases. It's definitely harder though and the way social media berates you constantly maybe our minds aren't able to handle such a barrage.
captainmuon 5y ago
> I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. Even if it was a like. For me, that is actually one of the biggest annoyances with twitter. People who threaten to unfollow me or to block me if I follow or give a like to somebody who they don't like. Granted, it's not a practical problem yet because I only have very few followers, but it still annoys me. One of the reasons I have two accounts is that I want to follow "mutually exclusive" people. Maybe twitter shouldn't even show to other people what I liked or who I follow. Or the culture has to be changed to be more relaxed. Another thing that is related is that everybody is in their own cozy bubble, and when something from outside seeps in they get worked up. For those reasons I think the "feed" model of social media is broken, and the "cozy filter bubble feed" even more so. I want the old "social network" model from early Facebook and MySpace back, where you have a page, you can present youself there, and you can see who knows whom IRL.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  I understand you feel that way, but unfortunately the political spectrum has gotten too large and too dumb for me to tolerate it any more. I'm a centre leftist who thinks for himself and comes to right wing conclusions here and there. But when a non-trival number of people hold such obviously hostile or ill thought out opinions I'm going to filter them away. Twitter should let people have their likes as likes instead of making them a soft retweet based on data science, or at least let us mute it on a case-by-case basis.
  - lariati 5y ago
    For me it is even more than this. I don't care about people's politics on literally any level. I don't hold strong beliefs either way on anything. If I want to think about politics I will read an old political science book. There isn't even any discussion of politics on twitter anyway. It is a weird type of recreational negative infotainment. I really want to make a profile that I don't delete in a few days but it is impossible. The platform is basically unusable unless one thinks starting the day off with a flood of negativity is a good idea.
shawncampbell 5y ago
I recently learned that much of the unwanted "suggested" tweet noise can be mitigated by muting the following terms: suggest_recycled_tweet_inline suggest_activity_tweet suggest_who_to_follow suggest_recap suggest_recycled_tweet suggest_pyle_tweet suggest_ranked_timeline_tweet source: https://twitter.com/stillnotsam/status/1490169409024892928?s=21 https://twitter.com/stillnotsam/status/1490169409024892928?s...
dcchambers 5y ago
Anecdotally, I've found that in virtually every social media platform I have used, if I actually make use of the feed preferences like "unsubscribe," "show me less of this," "this doesn't interest me," etc, I agree that eventually I just get flooded with useless content as their algorithms desperately try to find some new fresh content to put in front of my eyes. As a result, the overall quality goes way down and I spend less and less time looking at it. The completely opposite reaction that they were hoping for. Social Media Companies: It's OK to not have any new content to show me every few seconds. It's OK if I see the same things for a while until new, meaningful content comes my way. Shoving content I don't want down my throat just makes me want to leave altogether.
- mindslight 5y ago
  > Social Media Companies: It's OK to not have any new content to show me every few seconds. It's OK if I see the same things for a while until new, meaningful content comes my way You are not the one who decides whether it is "OK". Every dopamine microhit they give out reinforces dependence, and is another chance to backhaul surveillance telemetry and show ads. It may fail on you personally, but it seemingly works on the majority of people. Your (our) problem is allowing third party software, bound to its own incentives, to mediate our attention in the first place.
- fsflover 5y ago
  You should try Mastodon, it's exactly how it works.
  - madnuttah 5y ago
    Thank you, I'll check out Mastodon. Scrolling through and accidentially touching saying a sponsored Tweet will mark it as an interest of yours so I look into the Interests quite frequently to dispose rubbish I'm not interested in even if they think so.
renewiltord 5y ago
Same here. Got annoying enough I uninstalled the app. I was able to block Trending and You Should Follow using ublock origin but the ones inserted in my stream are shit. Same opinion.

viraptor 5y ago

Most of those extras disappear if you switch from the "home" view to "latest tweets". It's the top right icon on the web version, but I suspect the app has it somewhere as well. It gives you only the directly followed content and in timeline order.

3pt14159 5y ago
I just did that. Thanks for the hint. I'll see how it goes vs the other way. I don't mind Twitter selecting Tweet order from the people I follow, I want to see the most interesting content after all, I just want to be the one in control.

latexr 5y ago

Consider a third-party client. You’ll get a chronological view of tweets from people you follow, without ads. You do lose access to a few extras (like polls), but the tradeoff might be worth it to you.

jks 5y ago
Or don't follow anyone (or follow your friends if they think it's a nice social signal). Put all the interesting people in lists and view the lists in https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ instead of the usual UI.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  This is pretty much what I do, although tweetdeck can be a little overwhelming at times if you are a casual viewer. Scrolling through this thread it seems that lists are an underrated feature.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

serial_dev 5y ago

I use Twitter to learn about tech, promote my stuff occasionally and nothing else. I have a similar rule for muting accounts that post things that upset me, or otherwise bore me. Same goes for anyone who retweets and likes those posts and it ends up in my feed. When I am on Twitter, I don't care about US culture war stuff, I don't want to join you deplatforming everyone you dislike, I am not going to send you and your cat good vibes because you need a day longer to finish your Jira ticket. If I see posts like that, I automatically mute to keep me focused on things that matter. I prefer the mute over unfollowing. I don't want to make a statement about you by unfollowing you (it can be tracked), I just decided that reading some of your tweets cause me more stress than the positive effect your other tweets bring. I don't dislike you, I just don't want to see you moan on Twitter. It works well enough, but of course, there are some stuff that slip through.

crims0n 5y ago

I really hate what is happening to infosec/cybersecurity. There is this huge push to get anyone and everyone into the field due to the talent shortage, and now it is near impossible to find a signal in all of the noise that is marketing, hot takes, politics, "career building", and memes. Twitter is especially terrible.

rootsudo 5y ago
100% agree, but there has "always" been that push. What is sad is now there is no creativity, no exploration, no true fun. the example the original poster in this thread said about "hot girls" in netsec.' On Twitter, status, identity and gender play a big role vs just knowing content, or actually knowing how a computer "works." Then if you have enough followers, it seems your voice is that big . I don't know if it's always been "like" that, or not. But, the more accessible something is, the more it seems to be diluted. I played and broke operating systems and electronic devices, posted about my experiences online, and then it was magical when someone would take my info, add on to it and said they could do x, y, etc - jtag exploration, eprom copying (lol that old), finding root accounts on embedded devices and just breaking stuff. So that's why I deleted my twitter account a couple of years ago, I never understood it, and I still don't. I just see screenshots of crypto scams and people stating opinions and then having to apologize for their opinions.
- lokalfarm 5y ago
  I think this is just the current state of the job market today, though. In order to "be successful", it requires an almost constant engagement with your curated social/online identity. And for many fields, being an attractive candidate for employment means you should have: a blog promoting your side-projects; a Twitter account engaged in networking & self-promotion; a GitHub account linked to your identity; maybe even a YouTube channel; and, of course, a highly polished LinkedIn account. Sure, if you have 20 years of experience and plenty of industry connections, this might not apply. But for anyone else? Hustle, hustle, hustle + Promote, promote, promote. Personally, I find it pretty gross...

leephillips 5y ago

Your problem is that you are looking at your feed. Do it this way: https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/ https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/

skmurphy 5y ago
Thanks this is helpful. I have been fortunate to have figured a few of these out on my own and kept twitter a source of useful insights. This article outlines solid holistic approach, adding lists was a particularly useful suggestion.
danuker 5y ago
> In addition, the tweets will appear in chronological order, with no interpolated advertising nor any other junk, unlike in your timeline. This is just another step in the rat-race that is fighting the platform itself. It merely prolongs the period before inevitable monetization and signal decay.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  And the house always wins. There is no self-respecting, intelligent way to use Twitter.
mandmandam 5y ago
> You don’t follow an account because you want to read their tweets. Twitter is “social media”, and following is a social signal. When you follow someone you are declaring that you approve of that person. Whether or not this is what you intended, this is how your decision to follow someone will be interpreted. This is horrifying. Believable, and understandable, but truly disturbing.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  I don't care if people choose to interpret it that way. I can follow people or institutions I want to keep updated on, regardless of my approval of their actions. A more realistic interpretation is that your followers range from detractors to loyal supporters.

benrapscallion 5y ago

I have found that the three best ways to use twitter are: - use Tweetbot or Twitterrific - subscribe to the feed in NewsBlur - use nitter.net In other words, don’t use twitter’s own website or app.

ascagnel_ 5y ago
If you're on iOS/macOS, the new, open-source NetNewsWire[0] supports adding your whole follow feed, individual user feeds, mentions, and searches on specific terms. https://netnewswire.com https://netnewswire.com https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire

CountDrewku 5y ago

>I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. I'm not sure this is a good thing. I agree that you shouldn't be constantly hammering yourself with upsetting things but I don't think the polar opposite of avoiding anything you disagree with or get upset about it mentally healthy either. I think this could lead to you just being overly sensitive to anything that makes you a little emotional. Although, maybe you get enough "disagreement" in you regular life to balance it out. The best option is to learn how to better deal with you emotions. For younger generations that aren't going to be able to avoid social media as well this might be the only option for them since that IS their entire social interaction in many cases. It's definitely harder though and the way social media berates you constantly maybe our minds aren't able to handle such a barrage.

captainmuon 5y ago

> I fixed my twitter feed by unfollowing anyone the first time something they did resulted in me being upset. Even if it was a like. For me, that is actually one of the biggest annoyances with twitter. People who threaten to unfollow me or to block me if I follow or give a like to somebody who they don't like. Granted, it's not a practical problem yet because I only have very few followers, but it still annoys me. One of the reasons I have two accounts is that I want to follow "mutually exclusive" people. Maybe twitter shouldn't even show to other people what I liked or who I follow. Or the culture has to be changed to be more relaxed. Another thing that is related is that everybody is in their own cozy bubble, and when something from outside seeps in they get worked up. For those reasons I think the "feed" model of social media is broken, and the "cozy filter bubble feed" even more so. I want the old "social network" model from early Facebook and MySpace back, where you have a page, you can present youself there, and you can see who knows whom IRL.

3pt14159 5y ago
I understand you feel that way, but unfortunately the political spectrum has gotten too large and too dumb for me to tolerate it any more. I'm a centre leftist who thinks for himself and comes to right wing conclusions here and there. But when a non-trival number of people hold such obviously hostile or ill thought out opinions I'm going to filter them away. Twitter should let people have their likes as likes instead of making them a soft retweet based on data science, or at least let us mute it on a case-by-case basis.
- lariati 5y ago
  For me it is even more than this. I don't care about people's politics on literally any level. I don't hold strong beliefs either way on anything. If I want to think about politics I will read an old political science book. There isn't even any discussion of politics on twitter anyway. It is a weird type of recreational negative infotainment. I really want to make a profile that I don't delete in a few days but it is impossible. The platform is basically unusable unless one thinks starting the day off with a flood of negativity is a good idea.

shawncampbell 5y ago

I recently learned that much of the unwanted "suggested" tweet noise can be mitigated by muting the following terms: suggest_recycled_tweet_inline suggest_activity_tweet suggest_who_to_follow suggest_recap suggest_recycled_tweet suggest_pyle_tweet suggest_ranked_timeline_tweet source: https://twitter.com/stillnotsam/status/1490169409024892928?s=21 https://twitter.com/stillnotsam/status/1490169409024892928?s...

dcchambers 5y ago

Anecdotally, I've found that in virtually every social media platform I have used, if I actually make use of the feed preferences like "unsubscribe," "show me less of this," "this doesn't interest me," etc, I agree that eventually I just get flooded with useless content as their algorithms desperately try to find some new fresh content to put in front of my eyes. As a result, the overall quality goes way down and I spend less and less time looking at it. The completely opposite reaction that they were hoping for. Social Media Companies: It's OK to not have any new content to show me every few seconds. It's OK if I see the same things for a while until new, meaningful content comes my way. Shoving content I don't want down my throat just makes me want to leave altogether.

mindslight 5y ago
> Social Media Companies: It's OK to not have any new content to show me every few seconds. It's OK if I see the same things for a while until new, meaningful content comes my way You are not the one who decides whether it is "OK". Every dopamine microhit they give out reinforces dependence, and is another chance to backhaul surveillance telemetry and show ads. It may fail on you personally, but it seemingly works on the majority of people. Your (our) problem is allowing third party software, bound to its own incentives, to mediate our attention in the first place.
fsflover 5y ago
You should try Mastodon, it's exactly how it works.
- madnuttah 5y ago
  Thank you, I'll check out Mastodon. Scrolling through and accidentially touching saying a sponsored Tweet will mark it as an interest of yours so I look into the Interests quite frequently to dispose rubbish I'm not interested in even if they think so.

renewiltord 5y ago

Same here. Got annoying enough I uninstalled the app. I was able to block Trending and You Should Follow using ublock origin but the ones inserted in my stream are shit. Same opinion.