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Same here. Besides author wise block I desperately need topic wise block. For instance this Will Smith slapgate has totally screwed up my carefully curated time

Same here. Besides author wise block I desperately need topic wise block. For instance this Will Smith slapgate has totally screwed up my carefully curated timeline. My only option is to take a two week Twitter sabbatical and hope it dies down.

oefrha 5y ago
This is the social graph vs interest graph problem. With an interest graph you should only see content on topics you’re interested in. With Twitter’s social graph however, which is only a poor approximation of an interest graph, once you follow someone you also get all of their political hot takes, sports and other shit you don’t care about.
- pbowyer 5y ago
  That's a great framing of it. I'm a good example, interested in many things so my tweets are about multiple topics. It must drive my followers nuts. And the accounts I like to follow are focused on a single topic. I've thought about running half a dozen accounts with a focus on each, but be far easier if I could curate my output by topic and people can subscribe to only those they want (religion, ML, funny, politics, arty photography, steam trains)
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  Indeed! My purpose to follow someone is to get their insights into a specific topic. If they go off topic beyond my acceptable threshold (which is set to very low) I just unfollow them; the noise isn't worth it. However once in a while stuff like slap gate happens to mess up with my timeline. So sabbatical it is.
EricE 5y ago
Third party clients are a must if you are going to screw with Twitter. You can filter out all the noise and topics that aren't of interest. That people use the native Twitter interface at all constantly amazes me.
cpncrunch 5y ago
You can already hide tweets containing phrases in your Twitter settings.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Might be a bit of a challenge with two generic names such as 'Will' and 'Smith'. Even in combination these offer a good chance of occurring in non-actor related phrases (e.g., “Will Smith's new paper offer valuable insights into ML-research applied to Twitter threads?”).
  - Aissen 5y ago
    If one's ready to take a two weeks sabbatical, hiding tweets with common words for 7/30 days is probably an acceptable compromise anyway.

oefrha 5y ago

This is the social graph vs interest graph problem. With an interest graph you should only see content on topics you’re interested in. With Twitter’s social graph however, which is only a poor approximation of an interest graph, once you follow someone you also get all of their political hot takes, sports and other shit you don’t care about.

pbowyer 5y ago
That's a great framing of it. I'm a good example, interested in many things so my tweets are about multiple topics. It must drive my followers nuts. And the accounts I like to follow are focused on a single topic. I've thought about running half a dozen accounts with a focus on each, but be far easier if I could curate my output by topic and people can subscribe to only those they want (religion, ML, funny, politics, arty photography, steam trains)
vishnugupta 5y ago
Indeed! My purpose to follow someone is to get their insights into a specific topic. If they go off topic beyond my acceptable threshold (which is set to very low) I just unfollow them; the noise isn't worth it. However once in a while stuff like slap gate happens to mess up with my timeline. So sabbatical it is.

EricE 5y ago

Third party clients are a must if you are going to screw with Twitter. You can filter out all the noise and topics that aren't of interest. That people use the native Twitter interface at all constantly amazes me.

cpncrunch 5y ago

You can already hide tweets containing phrases in your Twitter settings.

Freak_NL 5y ago
Might be a bit of a challenge with two generic names such as 'Will' and 'Smith'. Even in combination these offer a good chance of occurring in non-actor related phrases (e.g., “Will Smith's new paper offer valuable insights into ML-research applied to Twitter threads?”).
- Aissen 5y ago
  If one's ready to take a two weeks sabbatical, hiding tweets with common words for 7/30 days is probably an acceptable compromise anyway.