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Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice p

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

jdrc 4y ago
yeah it is , but given this a lot of people are going to leave and some others will become very rabid. Smells like trump again . And perhaps it's for the best - this kind of service should be served by some decentralized protocol so that the chaos is warranted
orblivion 4y ago
I bet if I followed exclusively capybara accounts my blood pressure would drop 5-10 points.
4dahalibut 4y ago
Totally agree. It's incredibly easy for me to simply filter out ppl who rage-bait. I am more internet-native than most though? Maybe it's harder for the general populace than I might otherwise assume?
HikeThe46 4y ago
I have the same experience, I don't dive into trending "drama" I follow people I find funny, companies/athletes/celebrities that I am interested in, etc. I prune who I follow probably about twice a year to cut back on people I maybe followed because I saw one funny thing. If someone trolls me in a reply, I ignore them and move on. Having the last word means nothing on the internet.
ggepolja234411 4y ago
>> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over. Its like white people telling brown people that airport security isnt a toxic place and its all in their mind. Things are toxic...just not for everyone. Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is. The point of twitter isnt just to read, but also to engage. But engagement is hard when tiki-toting nationalists are sending death threads to anyone that doesnt want to turn the world into prison. Even technical (non political) conversations get all sorts of hate flung at PoC accounts.
- Veen 4y ago
  > Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is. Try being a white right-of-center man and see how toxic it is. Try being a Christian and see how how toxic it is. Try being a gender-critical feminist and see how toxic it is. Etc.
  - and0 4y ago
    There's a difference between receiving hate for merely existing and receiving hate for espousing harmful beliefs. If you got hate for having Christian imagery or references in your profile, that would be awful. But if "being a Christian" means quoting Leviticus 18:22 at homosexuals then that is an action you're taking and getting pushback for. I find people like yourself in traditional power structures genuinely believe the enforcement of the existing structure is a "neutral" act or position to hold. I think this delusion is how you come to think of politics you actively engage is as merely "being". It's not, and no on else is obligated to pretend it is.
  - weakfish 4y ago
    - raspberry1337 4y ago
      >the historically oppressed population Are we living in the past now, or what is your point? Not all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live privilieged lives
      - weakfish 4y ago
        > Not all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live privilieged lives And I didn't say that they did. I'm just saying that proclaiming that you're white and male doesn't give me any information that would lead me to assume that you are marginalized. That doesn't mean you can't be in some capacity or that you must be privileged, it just means that people who look like that typically are less marginalized than people who are, say, Black or Hispanic. There's a broad spectrum of marginalizations that exist, such as disability or economic - you can be marginalized as a disabled white guy! That's absolutely true! But when speaking purely about race or ethnicity, it's helpful to realize that people of color broadly experience far more racism.
burlesona 4y ago
I don’t really understand this defense. It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?” Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I mean some of the buildings in some major cities are starting to look like that.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    ...but we can agree that it's not good, right?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I would agree, but many people see it as just "part and parcel of what's necessary to have a city". I think this is the kind of fundamental disagreement that comes up; what is known and familiar is "normal" even if you admit it's "not great" but what is not great about things that are not known and familiar is "insanely bad how could anyone even think about living that way".
- floren 4y ago
  > It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?” Oh, so you've visited the Bay Area?
gabrielgio 4y ago
I also find twitter to be a nice place. I pretty much follow other developers and the option to order by datetime pretty much removes any attempt from twitter to control what I see. >> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? That is what I too think every time some says that.
bmelton 4y ago
Not at all just you. With the flexible content controls that Twitter already has in place, you can make Twitter to be just about as nice as you want it to be. If you mark your profile private, selectively follow, and either mute or block things / accounts that interfere with your worldview, it can be quite pleasant. The problem is that you have to be public to get virality, and that virality opens you up to people who disagree. Locking your account and developing your own content haven is an easy tradeoff for those people sane enough to not need internet likes from random people.
dmix 4y ago
> I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators I tried to do this for years but I’ve been unable to do this because everyone just tweets about politics (or Twitter finds a way to inject their recommendations into my feed). So I gave up and stopped trying to control that. Even when Twitter finally made the option to use ‘latest tweets’ instead of their feed, after a decade of making that difficult, it still seemed to be too far gone. Now I only use Twitter when I get linked to it from other sources.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
It's only nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team. Which currently works in a very mobster-like manner: for my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law. The rules seem to apply one to some, and many times without any evidence.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- and0 4y ago
  That simply isn't true. I'd love an example of how yourself or other you follow are censored. I'm deeply familiar with the platform and have not witnessed censorship outside of threats and direct hate speech, as well as extreme disinformation campaigns (ie Trump). (Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.) The only recent example I can think of is the Babylon Bee and, yeah, this was 100% warranted https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babylon-bees-twitter-account-was-suspended-but-that-made-its-story-go-viral/?sh=40b45bbd209d https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babyl...
  - angulardragon03 4y ago
    > (Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.) I think this is what I don’t understand about the general sentiment that Twitter is some kind of uber-censored platform. Sure, high profile accounts and tweets can sometimes be removed, but have you ever tried reporting tweets? 9 out of 10 times that I report tweets threatening violence or harm against someone, I get a notification a few hours later that the “moderation team” has reviewed that tweet and found it not to be in breach of any policies. Twitter’s reporting system is ineffective at best, and I almost wish I had seen the kind of heavy handed moderation that people prescribe to Twitter here.
    - edm0nd 4y ago
hooande 4y ago
I can't say that I've ever felt the emotion of rage when using twitter. People say things I don't agree with all the time, even here. It just doesn't warrant an emotional reaction. My experience with twitter is great. Things happen and the people that I follow react to them. I see news, machine learning papers and one liner jokes / pithy observations. I've no problems with freedom of speech or any other aspect of it.
Starlevel001 4y ago
The constant whining about Twitter on here makes more sense when you understand what the people here might be saying to solicit such a response.
- dymk 4y ago
  Twitter content is painful to read when interacting with it in a read-only mode. No solicitation needed.
derekdahmer 4y ago
An underrated feature of twitter is the muted words list. I added a bunch of political terms and the anger in my feed basically went away.
spike021 4y ago
I've said it on HN before. You need to be willing to spend some effort self-curating your feed. Only follow people you're interested in, use the settings feature to mute tweets containing certain words or phrases, and make heavy use of the lists feature. Once you've done all that it's much better. Of course you can't think of everything so some stuff slips through but that's a given for anything.
chapium 4y ago
I tend to agree. I've seen things turn bad on my feed pretty quickly, so you have to really take an active role in unfollowing / delisting content you don't want for the algorithm to work.
CydeWeys 4y ago
I find Twitter a generally enjoyable place. I mostly engage with local New Yorkers about YIMBY/transportation alternatives subjects, and then recently, with subject matter experts about the Russian-Ukraine War. Twitter is generally by far the best news source I've found; you'll hear about things way before it hits the major network. Admittedly it does require a more discriminating approach.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
People that are offended at tweets are looking for offense. It is an error in the dopamine addiction that compels them towards the quest of real justice.
dawnerd 4y ago
As long as you use latest and not the algorithm view and stay away from trending it is very calm and nontoxic. There’s a very very vocal minority of accounts that spam up every trending topic to make it as politically divisive as they can.
_23sd 4y ago
Same here, I only follow tech and creative people doing work that's relevant to my interests and unfollow at the first whiff of unrelated political topics. The only problem with this approach is that you do have to unfollow a lot of people to make it work (or be invested enough in the good stuff on Twitter to sift through a timeline full of garbage looking for it, which I am not). For some of my interests, like infosec, I can't really follow anyone because it's just the norm to use your professional account to broadcast your uninsightful pro/anti/smugly aloof views on the hot US political topic of the week. I doubt changes in Twitter leadership will change much for people who use Twitter this way. It's unlikely it would be in Twitter's interests or even widely popular but I do hope for better tools for configuring your feed, especially options to filter out politics and current events if that's not what you're on Twitter to read about.
- jdeaton 4y ago
  I've been disappointed after following scientists/engineers who's work I respect to find that they consistently tweet cynical, negative takes on inconsequential topics. For better or worse it really degrades my respect for them intellectually and has been one of those "don't meet you heroes" moments for me.
wraptile 4y ago
I've tried to like Twitter a million times over but "the algorithm" keeps spewing outrage spam at me through recommendations, notifications and basically every free piece of white space on the website. The whole social network looks like one of those ad-ridden top 5 things spam site - I really don't understand how can anyone tolerate this. Especially when clean, beautiful alternatives like Mastodon exist.
GordonS 4y ago
I use it to keep up to date on infosec stuff, and to hear about things some high-profile devs are doing etc - and I really like it! IMO, as long as you stay away from politics, Twitter is great; you can probably say the same for Reddit and other socials too. One thing that I do hate though, is the bizarre message threading model - it's just so confusing! All I want is messages in chronological order!
snarf21 4y ago
Agreed, I only use it for board game design and discussion. If you stay away from politics it is quite valuable and rarely toxic. They have recently even added explicit Communities and that has been good so far.
mrep 4y ago
I'm not on twitter but the Justine Sacco incident doesn't make it sound like a nice place to me.
rapfaria 4y ago
Problem is, even if you are careful about who you follow, they will eventually start tweeting about US politics, world views, etc. I follow mostly sports, but can't stand influencer devs, etc. One exception is wesbos of course, maybe I just like the guy since he not always tweets about programming and I still enjoy his content.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I've been active on Twitter for a while, but I haven't gone through the trouble of "curating" which is to say, using a third party client to avoid the (often propagandist) spam and blocking everyone who says insane shit. And it's not just a simple matter of "being careful about who you follow" since you can follow people who have reasonably well-articulated opinions, but whose followers (or others attracted to their Tweets) are toxic and may number into the tens or hundreds of thousands (e.g., Matt Yglesias posts a lot of interesting stuff, but the comments are often a shit-show). That's a lot of shit to wade through.
tuestuesday 4y ago
I tried that approach but was unable to achieve what you seem to have. I would constantly get "someone who ___ follows posted x" or likes y which meant that I was exposed constantly to vitriol and general ugliness. After a few years of trying (read clicking "stop showing me this" over and over) I gave up and deleted the account. Not sure why my experience was different but I was trying to make the site work in good faith and didn't feel politically targeted. I just was unable to keep anger and reactivity off my feed from accounts I didn't even follow.
dudul 4y ago
I tried to mostly follow tech people, but so far I haven't had any luck finding someone to follow who doesn't fill 50% of their feed with political tweets. I could probably make it work with a mute list or something, but I just don't care enough to spend the time to be honest.
honkycat 4y ago
I had the same thought. Twitter is a lot of jokes and is overall pretty chill.
kharak 4y ago
I have a hot take on this topic: Your feed says more about you than Twitter in general. If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. Don't follow these people. Here is a guideline for a good Twitter experience: 1. Everyone who is negative, irrational, too political and so on gets unfollowed. 2. Everyone who is interesting gets followed. 3. Unfollow is more important than follow, because negative Tweets are more attention grapping. The most difficult part about Twitter is to start out and curate your feed from nothing. But once you have that, it's one of the best social media tools out there.
- rockbruno 4y ago
  Do you happen to not receive Twitter's "recommendations"? I follow your steps religiously and I still get constantly bombarded by terrible "we think you'll like this" notifications that cannot be turned off.
  - crazypython 4y ago
    I don't receive them on my main account. I do receive them on a less active alt.
  - rsanheim 4y ago
    From what I’ve heard from people who use Twitter far more than me: the only way to avoid them is to use a 3rd party client for Twitter.
    - scioto 4y ago
      I use Tweetbot for both MacOS and iOS. All I see are tweets and retweets from people I follow. Occasionally someone will go on a rant or tweet incessantly about their fantasy football team, and I mute them for a while. I can also mute words, hashtags, or people. Now if Twitter removes 3rd party client access, well, yeah, I guess I'll see where my followees go. Or find another source of entertainment/news.
      - 4y ago
mikkergp 4y ago
It might be on me, but they're trying to build a public forum, not a niche community. If you want to attract the number of people that Twitter wants to attract, it can't be built on power users. Hell I'm a 'power user' and I don't want to be spending my time to figure out how to curate a community for my benefit, I'll just go to reddit or here for that.
bribri 4y ago
If you follow more than 100 people the signal to noise ratio becomes unbearable. I don’t know why there aren’t better features to curate/ filter feeds.
- fsloth 4y ago
  You can just unfollow people I think?
  - bribri 4y ago
    I think that’s right. But what if I want to follow more than 100 people?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wutbrodo 4y ago
It's like Reddit, or uh, a billion other things in life. People complain about it because they don't have the will or emotional health[1] to be disciplined about how they use it. Despite following a decent number of econ- and politics-adjacent accounts, my feed is high-quality because I keep an extremely high bar for intellectual honesty, and remove those who violated it, even when accounts were previously high quality[2]. Though to be fair, I do have to avoid reading the replies in every post. This feels like an actual loss, since they often contain thorough, intelligent rebuttals or supplements. It's just not worth wading through all the insane people. [1] I say this with empathy. I think outrage addiction is real. [2] eg Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias both turned into trolls at one point, though silver has since improved
fsloth 4y ago
I agree, my twitter view is very nice. Computer graphics, few authors, some dry political analysts, space stuff. If someone posts something irascible I just unfollow them (but might later refollow).
tonguez 4y ago
“Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest.” you sound completely braindead “I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?” no, it isn’t “Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.” no, it won’t
the_only_law 4y ago
Twitter so great, I get to see less political bullshit there than I do HN now. And I still get to interact and learn from very smart people.
rockostrich 4y ago
The same can be said of Reddit or any other generally popular social media site.
GuB-42 4y ago
Most social networks are nice places if you pick the right people/topics to follow, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, etc... I would place an exception on Facebook, or Facebook-like networks because you follow actual people, not public persona and ideas. For example I have some good friends that have some debatable political ideas, that's fine, we may have small and respectful arguments, but most of the times, we just avoid the subject and do things we both enjoy. But add them to Facebook and you get all the vomit, no only their posts, but others too, because Facebook thinks that if you like a person, you must share the same ideas. It makes my Facebook feed essentially worthless, as if being littered with ads wasn't enough.
seanw444 4y ago
For some things, Twitter can be cool. I don't subscribe as much to the "Twitter is entirely a cesspool" idea that a lot of critics have, but I dislike it because it encourages lack of context and nuance due to an artificial character limit. What are you gonna use up your space for in a tweet: detailed information, or something to grab someone's attention? Usually and most likely the latter. For this reason, I don't use Twitter at all. I prefer to stay on sites like HN or even Reddit. All of them have their issues and rage bait, but at least those two in particular generally have more long-form content. Reddit, when used for hobby-related content, is actually pretty great, even though it gets a lot of crap (granted, the crap is kinda deserved). Just don't use it for political stuff and you're fine.
asdfman123 4y ago
I got on twitter to follow COVID-19 and then election news, but accidentally stumbled across a great community. Lots of bright, interesting people -- very y-combinator and slate-star-codex-esque. People are starting to organize hangouts/parties with people in "this corner of twitter." I even met up with dudes from twitter last weekend and had a great time! @visakanv and @eigenrobot (among many others) seem to be some of the biggest community members. Even though it's probably more lib-right than I am there's a wide range of fascinating people who I pretty much consider internet friends.
megak1d 4y ago
Agree with this. Twitter is by far and away my favourite platform for consuming stuff from (mostly) others in my industry and OS intel on things like the Ukrainian war. I can’t remember blocking anyone in recent memory and follow ~350 people. I’ve also had some of my best customer service experiences there, typically from places that, without twitter, I’d have to phone and spend hours on hold. My simple rule for anything on my phone is that I’m extremely tight on what app I give notification rights to. I can count on one hand how many apps have that ability and twitter most definitely isn’t one of them.
grapescheesee 4y ago
Every time I tried to make a Twitter account it was locked and needed a phone or email. Never posted just followed, made accounts just for Conferences or a city I was going for travel.. . It was years ago and years before that as well. After getting locked out for just wanting a feed with personal data exploitation so many times .. I'll never understand how anyone defends Twitter. I would only use it if someone paid me at this point. Maybe I have a different experience than most. I just wanted an anon account for specific times and organic content. Guess if you do that you are evil and shouldn't have that right.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  Just put your phone / email in and it should get unlocked. It should take less than a minute. It isn't hard to do.
dundercoder 4y ago
I never got into twitter, but I feel that way about instagram. Took me a while, but carefully following and unfollowing, I have a nice, non-toxic, interesting pastime when I want it. I do occasionally get the random suggestion that is irrelevant, but that's a quick fix. Facebook however. I don't think there is any help for my feed. I've abandoned trying.
zrail 4y ago
My twitter feed got infinitely better after I blocked lazy retweets and suggested tweets[1]. Now I only see things from people that I care to follow and the tweets they care enough about to quote tweet. [1]: mute the following forever, all without quotes: "RT @", "suggest_activity_tweet", "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline"
blululu 4y ago
Not by default though and this is terrible UX. Everyone who claims that they have a good feed also makes a point of stating something like 'you need to curate your feed'. It takes active intervention to prevent the app from disintegrating into a toxic maelstrom - this is a serious problem. And sometimes it is hard to unfollow people you are close with in person but are obnoxious online (it can be awkward). The app's default behavior is not the responsibility of the users, it belongs to the company.
manquer 4y ago
The problem is twitter doesn’t have multiple channels for a single user[2], very few people create multiple accounts to keep their interests separate, inevitably people start posting politics social or simply not relevant stuff [1] to their accounts. [1] I may follow someone for their tech content, that person may also be a big American football fan a sport I have no interest in. [2] hashtags are not the same and people don’t use them consistently
yodsanklai 4y ago
> I'm careful about who I follow I'm following exactly one person (a mathematician). A significant number of the tweets I get to read are still political. I also get some stupid recommendation (tabloid type of content). It's entertaining, probably not toxic, but addictive, noisy and overall not a very productive activity. I get much more from HN.
fjabre 4y ago
You mean you find your feed to be a nice place. To feign ignorance on the subject is silly and side steps the main criticisms. No one is talking about your personal twitter feed here. They are referencing Twitter as a whole and its culture. Censorship doesnt seem like a big deal if you agree with the side that is censoring.
sebow 4y ago
>I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Most complains about twitter aren't really about it's "toxicity", which is about how the user who browses twitter perceives the content, like you said. The main issue with Twitter is differential treatment and straight out censorship in some cases. This is not something the "user can fix" by changing his perception or views.
ryanSrich 4y ago
Well of course not; but generally speaking, Twitter is an outrage factory as soon as you venture outside of your curated experience.
brailsafe 4y ago
Ya, you might actually be the only one. I quit years ago when all of the mostly interesting web design ppl I followed started unironically outrage baiting their followers. People I had largely met in real life. After I unfollowed them, I found that Twitter decided it was ok to fill the gaps with content from people I didn't follow, but were maybe at best tertiary connections, and also embodied the same crap. Every day I'd check, and some bullshit would be telling me I don't feel bad enough for X or I'm not mad enough about some world issue
pid-1 4y ago
+1 I have a decent experience. That said I'm really diligent with who I follow. If ppl start tweeting random drama, they get no second chances.
rubslopes 4y ago
It's not that simple with the new algorithms. e.g. I just saw a tweet from someone I don't follow in my feed -- let's say, Lisa. Above it, it said "You are seeing this because Bob liked it". But I don't follow Lisa, nor Bob! Why am I seeing this??? I swear this has just happened, and it happens all the time.
brightball 4y ago
I think 99.99% of the issue with Twitter is how it seems to be the single place that news media, blogs and numerous other platforms use to cite and spread inflammatory content. Nobody I follow ever bothers me and I certainly don't post much, but it's the internet flame factory in terms of how much other nonsense gets posted because the content is public by default. That's almost the point. News stories like, "One user on Twitter thinks..." that shows a tweet showing the inflammatory thing they want to pretend is a trend, even though the tweet itself has virtually no likes were the beginning of a trend that got us to the news cycle we are today. IMO it's the root cause of the "everybody is terrible" news cycle that people have been trying to live in for the past 10 years. IMO it's all been a media driven attempt to polarize people and it's self reinforcing because Twitter becomes the reference point to determine if people are polarized.
bromuro 4y ago
I love Twitter! I follow tech stuff there and it’s interesting and entertaining. Just follow some basic “netiquette”.
speedyb 4y ago
Completely agree, you're very much in control of what you see, and who you interact with. There's plenty of features in place to aid with not seeing things you don't want to.
jdrc 4y ago
i believe it becomes a shitshow if you start twitting. Thats because twitter will notify you of replies to your posts (it shouldn't maybe). there are mobs of political trolls that trigger each other and it can become pretty funny. if you can ignore it , fine, but most of them are being deliberately provocative twitter should be for top-most posts only.
hintymad 4y ago
I also find Twitter a nice place, as I mainly follow science and engineering topics. As for occasional stray into politics and culture wars, I simply try to get information and analysis but ignore opinions. Take the controversy on the "don't say gay" bill, I simply tried to get answers to questions like what the bill says, does it target any specific group, was what Disney said true, why some people were angry that the bill forbids teaching any sex orientation before 3rd grade, why sex education is such a divisive topic in the US, and etc. As long as I focus on getting information and ignore those who consistently gave doctored information, Twitter is awesome.
sytelus 4y ago
No matter how careful you are, you will eventually still end up following some new media like New York Times or CNN or Fox News or US president or some celebrity. And then it's only a slippery slop because for many stories, there are two sides and you will identify with one of them. I did not become regular Twitter user until I meticulously cleaned up who I follow. I removed every single news media, every political personality including US president and every non-technical celebrity. Now I only follow ML/Ai researchers and scientists and my feed couldn't be better. However, Twitter still recommands me to follow celebrity or new media once in a while and I have to carefully ignore that.
porcoda 4y ago
The problem is when you follow people for topic X and then they decide to use their audience to talk about unrelated topic Y. I hate that. If I follow someone because they talk about some tech topic, I really could care less what their opinion is on some social or political topic. I found heavy handed use of muted keywords and muting people helps A LOT.
oxplot 4y ago
> Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I sure read a lot more junk here on HN than I do on my twitter feed, mostly because I have a lot more control on what comes my way there. However, keep in mind that by having such control, one is very prone to ending up in an echo chamber whereas on HN, I learn to think differently once in a while because of someone who disagrees with me and puts up a civilized response. I'd like to have both environments. Each have their pros and cons.

jdrc 4y ago

yeah it is , but given this a lot of people are going to leave and some others will become very rabid. Smells like trump again . And perhaps it's for the best - this kind of service should be served by some decentralized protocol so that the chaos is warranted

orblivion 4y ago

I bet if I followed exclusively capybara accounts my blood pressure would drop 5-10 points.

4dahalibut 4y ago

Totally agree. It's incredibly easy for me to simply filter out ppl who rage-bait. I am more internet-native than most though? Maybe it's harder for the general populace than I might otherwise assume?

HikeThe46 4y ago

I have the same experience, I don't dive into trending "drama" I follow people I find funny, companies/athletes/celebrities that I am interested in, etc. I prune who I follow probably about twice a year to cut back on people I maybe followed because I saw one funny thing. If someone trolls me in a reply, I ignore them and move on. Having the last word means nothing on the internet.

ggepolja234411 4y ago

>> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over. Its like white people telling brown people that airport security isnt a toxic place and its all in their mind. Things are toxic...just not for everyone. Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is. The point of twitter isnt just to read, but also to engage. But engagement is hard when tiki-toting nationalists are sending death threads to anyone that doesnt want to turn the world into prison. Even technical (non political) conversations get all sorts of hate flung at PoC accounts.

Veen 4y ago
> Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is. Try being a white right-of-center man and see how toxic it is. Try being a Christian and see how how toxic it is. Try being a gender-critical feminist and see how toxic it is. Etc.
- and0 4y ago
  There's a difference between receiving hate for merely existing and receiving hate for espousing harmful beliefs. If you got hate for having Christian imagery or references in your profile, that would be awful. But if "being a Christian" means quoting Leviticus 18:22 at homosexuals then that is an action you're taking and getting pushback for. I find people like yourself in traditional power structures genuinely believe the enforcement of the existing structure is a "neutral" act or position to hold. I think this delusion is how you come to think of politics you actively engage is as merely "being". It's not, and no on else is obligated to pretend it is.
- weakfish 4y ago
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    >the historically oppressed population Are we living in the past now, or what is your point? Not all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live privilieged lives
    - weakfish 4y ago
      > Not all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live privilieged lives And I didn't say that they did. I'm just saying that proclaiming that you're white and male doesn't give me any information that would lead me to assume that you are marginalized. That doesn't mean you can't be in some capacity or that you must be privileged, it just means that people who look like that typically are less marginalized than people who are, say, Black or Hispanic. There's a broad spectrum of marginalizations that exist, such as disability or economic - you can be marginalized as a disabled white guy! That's absolutely true! But when speaking purely about race or ethnicity, it's helpful to realize that people of color broadly experience far more racism.

burlesona 4y ago

I don’t really understand this defense. It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?” Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.

bombcar 4y ago
I mean some of the buildings in some major cities are starting to look like that.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  ...but we can agree that it's not good, right?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I would agree, but many people see it as just "part and parcel of what's necessary to have a city". I think this is the kind of fundamental disagreement that comes up; what is known and familiar is "normal" even if you admit it's "not great" but what is not great about things that are not known and familiar is "insanely bad how could anyone even think about living that way".
floren 4y ago
> It seems a bit like saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don’t more people just do that?” Oh, so you've visited the Bay Area?

gabrielgio 4y ago

I also find twitter to be a nice place. I pretty much follow other developers and the option to order by datetime pretty much removes any attempt from twitter to control what I see. >> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? That is what I too think every time some says that.

bmelton 4y ago

Not at all just you. With the flexible content controls that Twitter already has in place, you can make Twitter to be just about as nice as you want it to be. If you mark your profile private, selectively follow, and either mute or block things / accounts that interfere with your worldview, it can be quite pleasant. The problem is that you have to be public to get virality, and that virality opens you up to people who disagree. Locking your account and developing your own content haven is an easy tradeoff for those people sane enough to not need internet likes from random people.

dmix 4y ago

> I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators I tried to do this for years but I’ve been unable to do this because everyone just tweets about politics (or Twitter finds a way to inject their recommendations into my feed). So I gave up and stopped trying to control that. Even when Twitter finally made the option to use ‘latest tweets’ instead of their feed, after a decade of making that difficult, it still seemed to be too far gone. Now I only use Twitter when I get linked to it from other sources.

bufferoverflow 4y ago

It's only nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team. Which currently works in a very mobster-like manner: for my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law. The rules seem to apply one to some, and many times without any evidence.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
and0 4y ago
That simply isn't true. I'd love an example of how yourself or other you follow are censored. I'm deeply familiar with the platform and have not witnessed censorship outside of threats and direct hate speech, as well as extreme disinformation campaigns (ie Trump). (Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.) The only recent example I can think of is the Babylon Bee and, yeah, this was 100% warranted https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babylon-bees-twitter-account-was-suspended-but-that-made-its-story-go-viral/?sh=40b45bbd209d https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babyl...
- angulardragon03 4y ago
  > (Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.) I think this is what I don’t understand about the general sentiment that Twitter is some kind of uber-censored platform. Sure, high profile accounts and tweets can sometimes be removed, but have you ever tried reporting tweets? 9 out of 10 times that I report tweets threatening violence or harm against someone, I get a notification a few hours later that the “moderation team” has reviewed that tweet and found it not to be in breach of any policies. Twitter’s reporting system is ineffective at best, and I almost wish I had seen the kind of heavy handed moderation that people prescribe to Twitter here.
  - edm0nd 4y ago

hooande 4y ago

I can't say that I've ever felt the emotion of rage when using twitter. People say things I don't agree with all the time, even here. It just doesn't warrant an emotional reaction. My experience with twitter is great. Things happen and the people that I follow react to them. I see news, machine learning papers and one liner jokes / pithy observations. I've no problems with freedom of speech or any other aspect of it.

Starlevel001 4y ago

The constant whining about Twitter on here makes more sense when you understand what the people here might be saying to solicit such a response.

dymk 4y ago
Twitter content is painful to read when interacting with it in a read-only mode. No solicitation needed.

derekdahmer 4y ago

An underrated feature of twitter is the muted words list. I added a bunch of political terms and the anger in my feed basically went away.

spike021 4y ago

I've said it on HN before. You need to be willing to spend some effort self-curating your feed. Only follow people you're interested in, use the settings feature to mute tweets containing certain words or phrases, and make heavy use of the lists feature. Once you've done all that it's much better. Of course you can't think of everything so some stuff slips through but that's a given for anything.

chapium 4y ago

I tend to agree. I've seen things turn bad on my feed pretty quickly, so you have to really take an active role in unfollowing / delisting content you don't want for the algorithm to work.

CydeWeys 4y ago

I find Twitter a generally enjoyable place. I mostly engage with local New Yorkers about YIMBY/transportation alternatives subjects, and then recently, with subject matter experts about the Russian-Ukraine War. Twitter is generally by far the best news source I've found; you'll hear about things way before it hits the major network. Admittedly it does require a more discriminating approach.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

People that are offended at tweets are looking for offense. It is an error in the dopamine addiction that compels them towards the quest of real justice.

dawnerd 4y ago

As long as you use latest and not the algorithm view and stay away from trending it is very calm and nontoxic. There’s a very very vocal minority of accounts that spam up every trending topic to make it as politically divisive as they can.

_23sd 4y ago

Same here, I only follow tech and creative people doing work that's relevant to my interests and unfollow at the first whiff of unrelated political topics. The only problem with this approach is that you do have to unfollow a lot of people to make it work (or be invested enough in the good stuff on Twitter to sift through a timeline full of garbage looking for it, which I am not). For some of my interests, like infosec, I can't really follow anyone because it's just the norm to use your professional account to broadcast your uninsightful pro/anti/smugly aloof views on the hot US political topic of the week. I doubt changes in Twitter leadership will change much for people who use Twitter this way. It's unlikely it would be in Twitter's interests or even widely popular but I do hope for better tools for configuring your feed, especially options to filter out politics and current events if that's not what you're on Twitter to read about.

jdeaton 4y ago
I've been disappointed after following scientists/engineers who's work I respect to find that they consistently tweet cynical, negative takes on inconsequential topics. For better or worse it really degrades my respect for them intellectually and has been one of those "don't meet you heroes" moments for me.

wraptile 4y ago

I've tried to like Twitter a million times over but "the algorithm" keeps spewing outrage spam at me through recommendations, notifications and basically every free piece of white space on the website. The whole social network looks like one of those ad-ridden top 5 things spam site - I really don't understand how can anyone tolerate this. Especially when clean, beautiful alternatives like Mastodon exist.

GordonS 4y ago

I use it to keep up to date on infosec stuff, and to hear about things some high-profile devs are doing etc - and I really like it! IMO, as long as you stay away from politics, Twitter is great; you can probably say the same for Reddit and other socials too. One thing that I do hate though, is the bizarre message threading model - it's just so confusing! All I want is messages in chronological order!

snarf21 4y ago

Agreed, I only use it for board game design and discussion. If you stay away from politics it is quite valuable and rarely toxic. They have recently even added explicit Communities and that has been good so far.

mrep 4y ago

I'm not on twitter but the Justine Sacco incident doesn't make it sound like a nice place to me.

rapfaria 4y ago

Problem is, even if you are careful about who you follow, they will eventually start tweeting about US politics, world views, etc. I follow mostly sports, but can't stand influencer devs, etc. One exception is wesbos of course, maybe I just like the guy since he not always tweets about programming and I still enjoy his content.

throwaway894345 4y ago

I've been active on Twitter for a while, but I haven't gone through the trouble of "curating" which is to say, using a third party client to avoid the (often propagandist) spam and blocking everyone who says insane shit. And it's not just a simple matter of "being careful about who you follow" since you can follow people who have reasonably well-articulated opinions, but whose followers (or others attracted to their Tweets) are toxic and may number into the tens or hundreds of thousands (e.g., Matt Yglesias posts a lot of interesting stuff, but the comments are often a shit-show). That's a lot of shit to wade through.

tuestuesday 4y ago

I tried that approach but was unable to achieve what you seem to have. I would constantly get "someone who ___ follows posted x" or likes y which meant that I was exposed constantly to vitriol and general ugliness. After a few years of trying (read clicking "stop showing me this" over and over) I gave up and deleted the account. Not sure why my experience was different but I was trying to make the site work in good faith and didn't feel politically targeted. I just was unable to keep anger and reactivity off my feed from accounts I didn't even follow.

dudul 4y ago

I tried to mostly follow tech people, but so far I haven't had any luck finding someone to follow who doesn't fill 50% of their feed with political tweets. I could probably make it work with a mute list or something, but I just don't care enough to spend the time to be honest.

honkycat 4y ago

I had the same thought. Twitter is a lot of jokes and is overall pretty chill.

kharak 4y ago

I have a hot take on this topic: Your feed says more about you than Twitter in general. If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. Don't follow these people. Here is a guideline for a good Twitter experience: 1. Everyone who is negative, irrational, too political and so on gets unfollowed. 2. Everyone who is interesting gets followed. 3. Unfollow is more important than follow, because negative Tweets are more attention grapping. The most difficult part about Twitter is to start out and curate your feed from nothing. But once you have that, it's one of the best social media tools out there.

rockbruno 4y ago
Do you happen to not receive Twitter's "recommendations"? I follow your steps religiously and I still get constantly bombarded by terrible "we think you'll like this" notifications that cannot be turned off.
- crazypython 4y ago
  I don't receive them on my main account. I do receive them on a less active alt.
- rsanheim 4y ago
  From what I’ve heard from people who use Twitter far more than me: the only way to avoid them is to use a 3rd party client for Twitter.
  - scioto 4y ago
    I use Tweetbot for both MacOS and iOS. All I see are tweets and retweets from people I follow. Occasionally someone will go on a rant or tweet incessantly about their fantasy football team, and I mute them for a while. I can also mute words, hashtags, or people. Now if Twitter removes 3rd party client access, well, yeah, I guess I'll see where my followees go. Or find another source of entertainment/news.
    - 4y ago

mikkergp 4y ago

It might be on me, but they're trying to build a public forum, not a niche community. If you want to attract the number of people that Twitter wants to attract, it can't be built on power users. Hell I'm a 'power user' and I don't want to be spending my time to figure out how to curate a community for my benefit, I'll just go to reddit or here for that.

bribri 4y ago

If you follow more than 100 people the signal to noise ratio becomes unbearable. I don’t know why there aren’t better features to curate/ filter feeds.

fsloth 4y ago
You can just unfollow people I think?
- bribri 4y ago
  I think that’s right. But what if I want to follow more than 100 people?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wutbrodo 4y ago

It's like Reddit, or uh, a billion other things in life. People complain about it because they don't have the will or emotional health[1] to be disciplined about how they use it. Despite following a decent number of econ- and politics-adjacent accounts, my feed is high-quality because I keep an extremely high bar for intellectual honesty, and remove those who violated it, even when accounts were previously high quality[2]. Though to be fair, I do have to avoid reading the replies in every post. This feels like an actual loss, since they often contain thorough, intelligent rebuttals or supplements. It's just not worth wading through all the insane people. [1] I say this with empathy. I think outrage addiction is real. [2] eg Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias both turned into trolls at one point, though silver has since improved

fsloth 4y ago

I agree, my twitter view is very nice. Computer graphics, few authors, some dry political analysts, space stuff. If someone posts something irascible I just unfollow them (but might later refollow).

tonguez 4y ago

“Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest.” you sound completely braindead “I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?” no, it isn’t “Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.” no, it won’t

the_only_law 4y ago

Twitter so great, I get to see less political bullshit there than I do HN now. And I still get to interact and learn from very smart people.

rockostrich 4y ago

The same can be said of Reddit or any other generally popular social media site.

GuB-42 4y ago

Most social networks are nice places if you pick the right people/topics to follow, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, etc... I would place an exception on Facebook, or Facebook-like networks because you follow actual people, not public persona and ideas. For example I have some good friends that have some debatable political ideas, that's fine, we may have small and respectful arguments, but most of the times, we just avoid the subject and do things we both enjoy. But add them to Facebook and you get all the vomit, no only their posts, but others too, because Facebook thinks that if you like a person, you must share the same ideas. It makes my Facebook feed essentially worthless, as if being littered with ads wasn't enough.

seanw444 4y ago

For some things, Twitter can be cool. I don't subscribe as much to the "Twitter is entirely a cesspool" idea that a lot of critics have, but I dislike it because it encourages lack of context and nuance due to an artificial character limit. What are you gonna use up your space for in a tweet: detailed information, or something to grab someone's attention? Usually and most likely the latter. For this reason, I don't use Twitter at all. I prefer to stay on sites like HN or even Reddit. All of them have their issues and rage bait, but at least those two in particular generally have more long-form content. Reddit, when used for hobby-related content, is actually pretty great, even though it gets a lot of crap (granted, the crap is kinda deserved). Just don't use it for political stuff and you're fine.

asdfman123 4y ago

I got on twitter to follow COVID-19 and then election news, but accidentally stumbled across a great community. Lots of bright, interesting people -- very y-combinator and slate-star-codex-esque. People are starting to organize hangouts/parties with people in "this corner of twitter." I even met up with dudes from twitter last weekend and had a great time! @visakanv and @eigenrobot (among many others) seem to be some of the biggest community members. Even though it's probably more lib-right than I am there's a wide range of fascinating people who I pretty much consider internet friends.

megak1d 4y ago

Agree with this. Twitter is by far and away my favourite platform for consuming stuff from (mostly) others in my industry and OS intel on things like the Ukrainian war. I can’t remember blocking anyone in recent memory and follow ~350 people. I’ve also had some of my best customer service experiences there, typically from places that, without twitter, I’d have to phone and spend hours on hold. My simple rule for anything on my phone is that I’m extremely tight on what app I give notification rights to. I can count on one hand how many apps have that ability and twitter most definitely isn’t one of them.

grapescheesee 4y ago

Every time I tried to make a Twitter account it was locked and needed a phone or email. Never posted just followed, made accounts just for Conferences or a city I was going for travel.. . It was years ago and years before that as well. After getting locked out for just wanting a feed with personal data exploitation so many times .. I'll never understand how anyone defends Twitter. I would only use it if someone paid me at this point. Maybe I have a different experience than most. I just wanted an anon account for specific times and organic content. Guess if you do that you are evil and shouldn't have that right.

charcircuit 4y ago
Just put your phone / email in and it should get unlocked. It should take less than a minute. It isn't hard to do.

dundercoder 4y ago

I never got into twitter, but I feel that way about instagram. Took me a while, but carefully following and unfollowing, I have a nice, non-toxic, interesting pastime when I want it. I do occasionally get the random suggestion that is irrelevant, but that's a quick fix. Facebook however. I don't think there is any help for my feed. I've abandoned trying.

zrail 4y ago

My twitter feed got infinitely better after I blocked lazy retweets and suggested tweets[1]. Now I only see things from people that I care to follow and the tweets they care enough about to quote tweet. [1]: mute the following forever, all without quotes: "RT @", "suggest_activity_tweet", "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline"

blululu 4y ago

Not by default though and this is terrible UX. Everyone who claims that they have a good feed also makes a point of stating something like 'you need to curate your feed'. It takes active intervention to prevent the app from disintegrating into a toxic maelstrom - this is a serious problem. And sometimes it is hard to unfollow people you are close with in person but are obnoxious online (it can be awkward). The app's default behavior is not the responsibility of the users, it belongs to the company.

manquer 4y ago

The problem is twitter doesn’t have multiple channels for a single user[2], very few people create multiple accounts to keep their interests separate, inevitably people start posting politics social or simply not relevant stuff [1] to their accounts. [1] I may follow someone for their tech content, that person may also be a big American football fan a sport I have no interest in. [2] hashtags are not the same and people don’t use them consistently

yodsanklai 4y ago

> I'm careful about who I follow I'm following exactly one person (a mathematician). A significant number of the tweets I get to read are still political. I also get some stupid recommendation (tabloid type of content). It's entertaining, probably not toxic, but addictive, noisy and overall not a very productive activity. I get much more from HN.

fjabre 4y ago

You mean you find your feed to be a nice place. To feign ignorance on the subject is silly and side steps the main criticisms. No one is talking about your personal twitter feed here. They are referencing Twitter as a whole and its culture. Censorship doesnt seem like a big deal if you agree with the side that is censoring.

sebow 4y ago

>I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Most complains about twitter aren't really about it's "toxicity", which is about how the user who browses twitter perceives the content, like you said. The main issue with Twitter is differential treatment and straight out censorship in some cases. This is not something the "user can fix" by changing his perception or views.

ryanSrich 4y ago

Well of course not; but generally speaking, Twitter is an outrage factory as soon as you venture outside of your curated experience.

brailsafe 4y ago

Ya, you might actually be the only one. I quit years ago when all of the mostly interesting web design ppl I followed started unironically outrage baiting their followers. People I had largely met in real life. After I unfollowed them, I found that Twitter decided it was ok to fill the gaps with content from people I didn't follow, but were maybe at best tertiary connections, and also embodied the same crap. Every day I'd check, and some bullshit would be telling me I don't feel bad enough for X or I'm not mad enough about some world issue

pid-1 4y ago

+1 I have a decent experience. That said I'm really diligent with who I follow. If ppl start tweeting random drama, they get no second chances.

rubslopes 4y ago

It's not that simple with the new algorithms. e.g. I just saw a tweet from someone I don't follow in my feed -- let's say, Lisa. Above it, it said "You are seeing this because Bob liked it". But I don't follow Lisa, nor Bob! Why am I seeing this??? I swear this has just happened, and it happens all the time.

brightball 4y ago

I think 99.99% of the issue with Twitter is how it seems to be the single place that news media, blogs and numerous other platforms use to cite and spread inflammatory content. Nobody I follow ever bothers me and I certainly don't post much, but it's the internet flame factory in terms of how much other nonsense gets posted because the content is public by default. That's almost the point. News stories like, "One user on Twitter thinks..." that shows a tweet showing the inflammatory thing they want to pretend is a trend, even though the tweet itself has virtually no likes were the beginning of a trend that got us to the news cycle we are today. IMO it's the root cause of the "everybody is terrible" news cycle that people have been trying to live in for the past 10 years. IMO it's all been a media driven attempt to polarize people and it's self reinforcing because Twitter becomes the reference point to determine if people are polarized.

bromuro 4y ago

I love Twitter! I follow tech stuff there and it’s interesting and entertaining. Just follow some basic “netiquette”.

speedyb 4y ago

Completely agree, you're very much in control of what you see, and who you interact with. There's plenty of features in place to aid with not seeing things you don't want to.

jdrc 4y ago

i believe it becomes a shitshow if you start twitting. Thats because twitter will notify you of replies to your posts (it shouldn't maybe). there are mobs of political trolls that trigger each other and it can become pretty funny. if you can ignore it , fine, but most of them are being deliberately provocative twitter should be for top-most posts only.

hintymad 4y ago

I also find Twitter a nice place, as I mainly follow science and engineering topics. As for occasional stray into politics and culture wars, I simply try to get information and analysis but ignore opinions. Take the controversy on the "don't say gay" bill, I simply tried to get answers to questions like what the bill says, does it target any specific group, was what Disney said true, why some people were angry that the bill forbids teaching any sex orientation before 3rd grade, why sex education is such a divisive topic in the US, and etc. As long as I focus on getting information and ignore those who consistently gave doctored information, Twitter is awesome.

sytelus 4y ago

No matter how careful you are, you will eventually still end up following some new media like New York Times or CNN or Fox News or US president or some celebrity. And then it's only a slippery slop because for many stories, there are two sides and you will identify with one of them. I did not become regular Twitter user until I meticulously cleaned up who I follow. I removed every single news media, every political personality including US president and every non-technical celebrity. Now I only follow ML/Ai researchers and scientists and my feed couldn't be better. However, Twitter still recommands me to follow celebrity or new media once in a while and I have to carefully ignore that.

porcoda 4y ago

The problem is when you follow people for topic X and then they decide to use their audience to talk about unrelated topic Y. I hate that. If I follow someone because they talk about some tech topic, I really could care less what their opinion is on some social or political topic. I found heavy handed use of muted keywords and muting people helps A LOT.

oxplot 4y ago

> Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I sure read a lot more junk here on HN than I do on my twitter feed, mostly because I have a lot more control on what comes my way there. However, keep in mind that by having such control, one is very prone to ending up in an echo chamber whereas on HN, I learn to think differently once in a while because of someone who disagrees with me and puts up a civilized response. I'd like to have both environments. Each have their pros and cons.