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Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old schoo

Just use Twitter's lists. I've been using them for a long time. I added to one of my lists only the accounts that I really want to see on my feed (no old school friends, acquaintances, nor random people that some of the accounts I follow just started following: only sources with added value). The result? Open your list, and you'll see all the tweets sorted chronologically, only from the accounts you really care to follow. The quality of the time I spend on Twitter has dramatically increased since this change. No more time wasted scrolling through whatever irrelevant tweets the platform wants me to see. Twitter for me has basically become like an RSS feed aggregator with a curated list of sources to follow, reported in chronological order. And that's exactly what I wanted. Fck their algorithmic sht: I know better than them what I want to read.

LinAGKar 5y ago
Myself I hardly ever open the Twitter front page. I get all my Twitter follows in my RSS reader through RSS-bridge, and then it doesn't matter how Twitter sorts them.
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  This sounds like the way to go. I'll keep this plan in my back pocket if/when the chronological feeds disappear.
SECProto 5y ago
Caveat: I immediately block anyone who adds me to a list (it's only happened 3 or 4 times and it seems spammy). And I've seen a number of other accounts with "don't add me to lists" or equivalent in their bio.
- thrower123 5y ago
  There's a difference between private and public lists. As far as I'm aware, adding someone to a private list does not notify them that they've been added, it just give you a filter and the chronological view of tweets from people you add to the list.
  - SECProto 5y ago
    Ah, that could very well be. As I don't use lists (I just sort my feed by chronological), my only connection with lists has been when I've received notifications of being added to them
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- drdec 5y ago
  Genuine question - why do you block people who are you to lists? I'm a relatively new Twitter user and I've been making heavy use of the list functionality. So what's the down side?
  - akuchling 5y ago
    Some trolls use the functionality for harassment: "here's a list of SJWs you can tweet abuse at." https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/how-trolls-use-twitter-lists-to-target-and-harass-other-users.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/how-trolls-use-twitter-lists...
- Sunspark 5y ago
  Interesting that you are so opposed to it. I like lists because it lets me follow topics without having to "follow" an individual, or just to have a subject-matter-focused feed without having to sort through the messy mishmash that is the main one. In fact, I don't even look at the main feed. I only look at my lists.
sneak 5y ago
Twitter censors the search bar, even hiding tweets that don't violate the TOS from logged in searchers searching for certain bad-PR hashtags, making it impossible to identify the scope or reach or growth rates of certain memes (eg qanon, antivax, war propaganda, etc). It is supremely disrespectful to tell other adults what they are and are not allowed to read. "Just" stop donating content and attention to abusive and disrespectful censorship platforms. You don't counter abuse with workarounds, you leave and stop being abused.
joegahona 5y ago
My fear is dutifully curating lists for this purpose -- which would take ages -- only for them to monkey with this feature. I see a lot of people on Twitter who say something like "if you put me in a list, I will block you," which makes me think there's some sort of list-spamming capability currently. (I can't figure out any other reason people wouldn't want to be added to lists...?) I use the reverse-chron feed almost exclusively. Product Management Twitter has devolved into people with 1-2 years of product experience vomiting out threads of "What I've learned" that have zero insight, and because I follow a lot of legit product people, Twitter thinks I want this other stuff. I hate it.
- vero2 5y ago
  https://nitter.net/handle1,handle2,handle3,handle4 https://nitter.net/handle1,handle2,handle3,handle4
- promalwop 5y ago
  Lists can be public or private. If they're public, the account being added gets notified. If they're private, there's no notification, and nobody else can see the list or its contents anyway. "if you put me in a list, I will block you" is almost certainly about public lists, either because the notifs are noisy or because the list may not be a flattering one.
Sunspark 5y ago
Be aware with lists you still need to select between show top tweets and latest tweets with the icon in the upper right. Chronological is not the default setting for lists.
dmix 5y ago
Lists are still a pain to constantly navigate to on mobile/desktop... unless you use TweekDeck which I haven't in years. You basically have to be a dedicated Twitter user to enjoy it.
nkuttler 5y ago
Interesting, thanks for the suggestion. Is there an easy way to create a list with everybody I follow?
- tauroid 5y ago
  I made a little tool a while back for splitting up your follows by their posting frequency, but setting "nlists" to 1 should accomplish what you asked for. You do unfortunately need a twitter developer account. Also fair warning, as far as I know I'm the only current user, but works on my machine™. https://github.com/tauroid/twitterlanes https://github.com/tauroid/twitterlanes
- wlonkly 5y ago
  I use the "t" cli thingy (https://github.com/sferik/t https://github.com/sferik/t) to pull a list of who I follow ("followings") and then create/update a list based on it.
Markoff 5y ago
why not just mute accounts you don't wanna see unless you ar elooking for them specifically and also disable retweets from people you are not interested in RT
- capableweb 5y ago
  Neither of those things would implement (for me is) the main feature of lists, chronological order.
- slazaro 5y ago
  Twitter "helpfully" shows suggestions, ads, tweets people you follow liked, tweets from people followed by people you follow, replies by people you follow that don't appear in their timeline, etc. etc., and the tweets are sorted however the app decides that day. None of those things happen in lists.
  - hobs 5y ago
    Yesterday I noticed twitter had 9+ "followed by an account you follow" "recommended topic" "utter bullshit nobody godamn wants" I think my other new favorite is having to click "more replies" after what, 8 tweets? Garbo.
    - RF_Savage 5y ago
      Thankfully "Tweak New Twitter" in chrome cleans all that up. Along with some select muted strings to suppress promoted tweets. Ofc it also helps that I don't use twitter on mobile at all and confine it's use to my desktop computer. Been a very good idea these past doomscrolly years.
      - Markoff 5y ago
        you can use web app on the phone, Kiwi Browser supports extensions, so I assume it should work the same
      - dmix 5y ago
nabajour 5y ago
It's probably also important from an information bubble point of view: you selected those accounts you follow and with time you start to know them, so you have an idea of their opinions and biases and you can probably better judge of trends of opinion in a specific context. With an algorithmic feed, it's probably easier to get biased into thinking that what is shown to you is representative of trends in the rest of the world. (even if we are conscious of the information bubble, our brain probably makes this construction).
- devmor 5y ago
  > you selected those accounts you follow and with time you start to know them If only Twitter had some mechanism like that from the start! It'd be so much more simple! I don't think anyone's ever made a website that you could just pick who's content you wanted to see though.
mohamez 5y ago
Good suggestion, thank you.
strogonoff 5y ago
The one feature I wish Twitter lists had is turning off retweets by account in a list. Currently, a retweet-generous account will pollute the entire list. You can turn off retweets only for accounts you actually follow, and it applies only to your main timeline, not the lists.
- drcongo 5y ago
  If you're on Apple devices, you can do this with Tweetbot.
  - techky 5y ago
    True for accounts you follow in Tweetbot, but unfortunately you can't disable retweets for individual members of a list inside Tweetbot. I really wish you could.
    - drcongo 5y ago
      Ahh right, I misunderstood the parent comment assuming that their lists were comprised of people they also follow.
- joegahona 5y ago
  Yes! Or even a global "turn off retweets." I took the time to nuke retweets on everyone and now do it one-by-one when I follow new people.

LinAGKar 5y ago

Myself I hardly ever open the Twitter front page. I get all my Twitter follows in my RSS reader through RSS-bridge, and then it doesn't matter how Twitter sorts them.

aceazzameen 5y ago
This sounds like the way to go. I'll keep this plan in my back pocket if/when the chronological feeds disappear.

SECProto 5y ago

Caveat: I immediately block anyone who adds me to a list (it's only happened 3 or 4 times and it seems spammy). And I've seen a number of other accounts with "don't add me to lists" or equivalent in their bio.

thrower123 5y ago
There's a difference between private and public lists. As far as I'm aware, adding someone to a private list does not notify them that they've been added, it just give you a filter and the chronological view of tweets from people you add to the list.
- SECProto 5y ago
  Ah, that could very well be. As I don't use lists (I just sort my feed by chronological), my only connection with lists has been when I've received notifications of being added to them
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
drdec 5y ago
Genuine question - why do you block people who are you to lists? I'm a relatively new Twitter user and I've been making heavy use of the list functionality. So what's the down side?
- akuchling 5y ago
  Some trolls use the functionality for harassment: "here's a list of SJWs you can tweet abuse at." https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/how-trolls-use-twitter-lists-to-target-and-harass-other-users.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/how-trolls-use-twitter-lists...
Sunspark 5y ago
Interesting that you are so opposed to it. I like lists because it lets me follow topics without having to "follow" an individual, or just to have a subject-matter-focused feed without having to sort through the messy mishmash that is the main one. In fact, I don't even look at the main feed. I only look at my lists.

sneak 5y ago

Twitter censors the search bar, even hiding tweets that don't violate the TOS from logged in searchers searching for certain bad-PR hashtags, making it impossible to identify the scope or reach or growth rates of certain memes (eg qanon, antivax, war propaganda, etc). It is supremely disrespectful to tell other adults what they are and are not allowed to read. "Just" stop donating content and attention to abusive and disrespectful censorship platforms. You don't counter abuse with workarounds, you leave and stop being abused.

joegahona 5y ago

My fear is dutifully curating lists for this purpose -- which would take ages -- only for them to monkey with this feature. I see a lot of people on Twitter who say something like "if you put me in a list, I will block you," which makes me think there's some sort of list-spamming capability currently. (I can't figure out any other reason people wouldn't want to be added to lists...?) I use the reverse-chron feed almost exclusively. Product Management Twitter has devolved into people with 1-2 years of product experience vomiting out threads of "What I've learned" that have zero insight, and because I follow a lot of legit product people, Twitter thinks I want this other stuff. I hate it.

vero2 5y ago
https://nitter.net/handle1,handle2,handle3,handle4 https://nitter.net/handle1,handle2,handle3,handle4
promalwop 5y ago
Lists can be public or private. If they're public, the account being added gets notified. If they're private, there's no notification, and nobody else can see the list or its contents anyway. "if you put me in a list, I will block you" is almost certainly about public lists, either because the notifs are noisy or because the list may not be a flattering one.

Sunspark 5y ago

Be aware with lists you still need to select between show top tweets and latest tweets with the icon in the upper right. Chronological is not the default setting for lists.

dmix 5y ago

Lists are still a pain to constantly navigate to on mobile/desktop... unless you use TweekDeck which I haven't in years. You basically have to be a dedicated Twitter user to enjoy it.

nkuttler 5y ago

Interesting, thanks for the suggestion. Is there an easy way to create a list with everybody I follow?

tauroid 5y ago
I made a little tool a while back for splitting up your follows by their posting frequency, but setting "nlists" to 1 should accomplish what you asked for. You do unfortunately need a twitter developer account. Also fair warning, as far as I know I'm the only current user, but works on my machine™. https://github.com/tauroid/twitterlanes https://github.com/tauroid/twitterlanes
wlonkly 5y ago
I use the "t" cli thingy (https://github.com/sferik/t https://github.com/sferik/t) to pull a list of who I follow ("followings") and then create/update a list based on it.

Markoff 5y ago

why not just mute accounts you don't wanna see unless you ar elooking for them specifically and also disable retweets from people you are not interested in RT

capableweb 5y ago
Neither of those things would implement (for me is) the main feature of lists, chronological order.
slazaro 5y ago
Twitter "helpfully" shows suggestions, ads, tweets people you follow liked, tweets from people followed by people you follow, replies by people you follow that don't appear in their timeline, etc. etc., and the tweets are sorted however the app decides that day. None of those things happen in lists.
- hobs 5y ago
  Yesterday I noticed twitter had 9+ "followed by an account you follow" "recommended topic" "utter bullshit nobody godamn wants" I think my other new favorite is having to click "more replies" after what, 8 tweets? Garbo.
  - RF_Savage 5y ago
    Thankfully "Tweak New Twitter" in chrome cleans all that up. Along with some select muted strings to suppress promoted tweets. Ofc it also helps that I don't use twitter on mobile at all and confine it's use to my desktop computer. Been a very good idea these past doomscrolly years.
    - Markoff 5y ago
      you can use web app on the phone, Kiwi Browser supports extensions, so I assume it should work the same
    - dmix 5y ago

nabajour 5y ago

It's probably also important from an information bubble point of view: you selected those accounts you follow and with time you start to know them, so you have an idea of their opinions and biases and you can probably better judge of trends of opinion in a specific context. With an algorithmic feed, it's probably easier to get biased into thinking that what is shown to you is representative of trends in the rest of the world. (even if we are conscious of the information bubble, our brain probably makes this construction).

devmor 5y ago
> you selected those accounts you follow and with time you start to know them If only Twitter had some mechanism like that from the start! It'd be so much more simple! I don't think anyone's ever made a website that you could just pick who's content you wanted to see though.

mohamez 5y ago

Good suggestion, thank you.

strogonoff 5y ago

The one feature I wish Twitter lists had is turning off retweets by account in a list. Currently, a retweet-generous account will pollute the entire list. You can turn off retweets only for accounts you actually follow, and it applies only to your main timeline, not the lists.

drcongo 5y ago
If you're on Apple devices, you can do this with Tweetbot.
- techky 5y ago
  True for accounts you follow in Tweetbot, but unfortunately you can't disable retweets for individual members of a list inside Tweetbot. I really wish you could.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    Ahh right, I misunderstood the parent comment assuming that their lists were comprised of people they also follow.
joegahona 5y ago
Yes! Or even a global "turn off retweets." I took the time to nuke retweets on everyone and now do it one-by-one when I follow new people.