7 ms·

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

by 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.
    - greedo 4y ago
      I use Tweetbot after trying Twitterrific for awhile. My only complaint is that sometimes a thread won't work in Tweetbot, and I'll have to open it in the website. If I had to use the website, or the official Twitter client, I'd stop using Twitter completely.
- cronix 4y ago
  Nope, you don't see those while using nitter.net, an alternative Twitter front end. You only see the tweets, and you don't even have to be forced to login to see them.
- delecti 4y ago
  The app and website both have "latest" feeds. You don't get that kind of recommendation in that feed. The closest to that kind of thing that I see are the trending topics on the right bar, which aren't in the feed.
reedjosh 4y ago
> too political and so on gets unfollowed. What's too political for you? Taken too far, this can be putting your head in the sand.
snek_case 4y ago
My impression is that twitter has algorithms to try to maximize "engagement", and by "engagement", I mean conflict. I follow very few people, and the people I follow post things that are tech-related... But twitter will regularly try to show me inflammatory political tweets. These tweets are not coming from people I follow. I'm careful not to take the bait, but twitter definitely does try to bait you.
- j4yav 4y ago
  I think the other half of the equation is using the recent tweets view. Whenever I accidentally end up in the algorithm view I can tell right away because of how much irrelevant BS appears.
dragontamer 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. But a major source of toxic tweets is buying up all of Twitter. $420 funding secured, "Thailand guy is a Pedo", constant attention-seeking, COVID19-conspiracy theories, etc. etc. Elon Musk's Twitter Account is one of the worst. To see that this man is about to become the owner of Twitter really doesn't strike much confidence in me.
- reedjosh 4y ago
  > ...COVID19-conspiracy theories... Lab leak was a conspiracy _theory_ a year ago. Today it's _very_ much a serious contender for the source. If people are _crazy_ and blocked or censored for theorizing about conspiracy, then conspiracies will happen. The best solution to bad speech is more good speech.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960 > Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April >> 5:38 PM · Mar 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone ------ Musk was constantly marginalizing COVID19 statistics and downplaying the effects. There's more than one COVID19 conspiracy. Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists.
    - reedjosh 4y ago
      > Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists. How is that a conspiracy theory? That's an opinion. Everyone has them. Why would you label him a conspiracy theorist for having an opinion you disagree with? edit: why also is conspiracy theorist considered a pejorative? Conspiracy turns out to be the stuff of history.
      - 4y ago
thelettere 4y ago
Agreed save for the last line - the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense. Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish praise.
- JoshCole 4y ago
  Brevity isn't incomposability. If it was, your argument applies to sentences. If it did, humans wouldn't be able to successfully discuss anything complex.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  > the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense. Definitely not my experience, or that of anybody I know who curates their feed carefully. It certainly promotes shallower conversation, and forces irritating kludges like threads. But it's simply not true that it categorically precludes complexity or depth.
munificent 4y ago
I agree with you very strongly. My Twitter feed, which I cull carefully, is deeply rewarding and enriching for me. At the same time, doing that feed management feels increasingly like swimming upstream against Twitter's desires. First, they started showing tweets that people I follow simply liked. Now they suggest "topics" all the time. I have to spend more and more time reminding Twitter not to do that garbage. But, overall, I still find the time spent is worth it in return for the quality of conversation and education I get in return. Reddit is like this for me 10x, with very little effort required to maintain my feed. Spend a few minutes picking a handful of healthy subreddits and unsubscribing from the giant ones and Reddit easily becomes one of the best sites out there.
- dash2 4y ago
  In my experience, many subreddits that should be healthy are too small to engage a serious community. For example, r/statistics ends up with teenagers posting homework questions. OTOH the big ones are indeed trash. The only thing to do is to follow fashion. Wallstreetbets was funny and insightful, then funny, now neither. NonCredibleDefense is funny and relevant at the moment. Nothing lasts.
  - munificent 4y ago
    Yes, subreddits really are communities: unique spaces populated by real humans and cultivated by actual human moderators. Each has its own microclimate and culture. While in principle, you might assume certain topics should have a community of a certain size and caliber, there's no guarantee that such a community exists if the right set of humans haven't happened to coalesce around it. That's just the nature of human group behavior. You might live in a city that has enough disco fans to support a thriving disco night every Saturday, but there's no guarantee that the right DJs and nightclub will get together to make it happen.
  - pid-1 4y ago
    That's a moderation problem, not scale problem. Subs like /r/sysadmin ban this sort of question and tend to be mostly populated by working professionals. Communities where all the top 10 hottest posts are made by newbies generally never grow into great subs. That sort of thing should be prob reserved to /r/askfoo or something.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets Or you follow people who post (relatively innocuous) things that enrage the sorts of people who post angry comments in response to opinion points.
- runarberg 4y ago
  For me positive reactions are way more prominent then negative ones—at least for me. Negative reactions are often hidden under a “Show more replies” button, or relegated quite far down the scroll. And then there is always the block feature, which can do wonders in cleaning up your feed.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
> that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets You need to be really brutal with muting anyone who creeps into your timeline and posts something you dislike, and turning off the retweets or just unfollowing people who bring the people you find yourself muting into your timeline. Like straight away see something you don't like then hit mute.
- delecti 4y ago
  Turning off retweets is really a killer feature.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. False; Twitter’s algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't directly follow and is very clearly heavily driven by subject categorization (which is often also hilariously bad), as well as stylistic categorization (or maybe instead of it, as I see very little indication that the latter plays a role.) So, if you see toxic posts, it probably means you engage with tweets ON SUBJECTS on which some people post toxic takes, or follow people who post tweets on such topics. It doesn't require any direct interaction with toxic tweets or individuals.
- FranzFerdiNaN 4y ago
  I never see this? All I see are posts and retweets made by the people I decided to follow.
- eropple 4y ago
  This depends on how you interact with Twitter too, though. I use TweetDeck and I don't see any of that.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    Well, yeah, if you don't use the official client, you don't necessarily see Twitter’s feed at all.
    - whynotkeithberg 4y ago
      I use the official client and don't have any of the issues you describe. I'm pretty sure the crowd you follow & engage with is the issue.
    - kristofferR 4y ago
      TweetDeck is an official Twitter client. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
- javajosh 4y ago
mjhagen 4y ago
Twitter is the embodiment of “If everyone around you is an asshole then you’re the asshole.”
nullc 4y ago
One bummer is that you then need to cut off people who were perfectly reasonable folks but failed to follow advice like yours and fell victim to twitter brain worms-- now spewing toxic hot takes themselves because that's all their feed was full of. Your answer isn't complete because twitter's toxicity tends to be contagious and when someone I know falls to it, I suffer too even when I've successfully avoided it myself. I don't even use twitter but I've lost friends because they became intolerable after being radicalized by the twitter hot-take feed. It sucks. Also ignoring it or even avoiding the platform completely doesn't solve the problem when toxic twitter traffic has made you a target.
bredren 4y ago
It is similar to the constant pruning of unwanted email list subscriptions. If you recognize the need to immediately unsubscribe from lists and have a practice of doing it, you can keep your inbox functional and sane. If you don’t, the thing gets hard to use or downright unpleasant to work with.
0xCMP 4y ago
1. you literally can not control everything in your twitter feed if using twitter's apps. it will make things appear there which it thinks you'll like (this is obviously ignoring ads as that's not something you should expect to really control) 2. the toxicity is primarily in replies and interactions not always in posts. the posts which are toxic can still appear in your feed via RTs and simply looking at trending topics. I agree you can do a lot to control your experience on twitter, but it simply isn't that simple unless you have a small <500 follower account.
tootie 4y ago
I've only been on Twitter for less than year. I mostly follow journalists, some publications and a few industry experts. They are mostly rational people who post insightful things, but a few will dip their toes into nonsense takes on society or just feeding trolls who bark at them. I just unfollow. I found that my follows list topped out a little over 100 and just stopped because I would delete as quickly as I added. I never post and have no followers. As someone who deleted Facebook after maybe two years on the platform and never took up anything else, I find Twitter to be slightly useful. I get insight from a handful of people for whom Twitter is their best outlet. I use it very much as source of information. It sucks as much as anything else when it comes to discourse. For my usage, I would see Twitter moderate content much, much more strictly than they do now. The most valuable creators don't come within 100 miles of violating any ethical boundaries and I'd reckon the vast majority of readers (and ad clickers) don't post much at all and will be completely unaffected by any moderation rules.
matt123456789 4y ago
I would be extremely careful about making introspective judgments based on an algorithm that somebody else wrote. It can change at any time, and you don’t know how it works (unless you work at Twitter). You might have some idea about the basics, but it can decide to show you crazy shit at any time, and it might not be related at all to who you are as a person.
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
I agree. Most of twitter requires self curation. Before following anyone I: - check their liked items. Is this something I agree with or want on my timeline? Are they being consistent with their online persona? (Is a Christian account going out and liking pics of scantily clad people?) - check their replies for how they talk to others. Ctrl+f for words or topics I just don’t want to see (and already have muted). - check their following list. Who are the following? Do I want to see their 3p retweets in my feed? Regarding the “topics” feature, I almost always click “I don’t want to see this” and I’m at the point where I never see that feature. It’s related to what you “like” so ymmv on how accurate it is for you. Additionally, I never follow tags or trends. That’s just asking for noise. I’ve effectively created a twitter account that is isolated to “homesteading/gardening/farm twitter” and I’m pretty pleased with the experience. It’s everything I want and nothing I don’t. It didn’t come without some online weed pulling though ;)
jasonlotito 4y ago
I wonder if you use the default Twitter client. Also, what you put there is not how Twitter suggests you use Twitter. Which says more about Twitter than you.
slg 4y ago
> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. This only works if you treat Twitter as read only. Any Tweet that reaches a sizable enough audience will have people interact with it and its author in a toxic way. The level of the toxicity will often depend on the specific author and certain types of people definitely receive more toxicity than others.
RDaneel0livaw 4y ago
I agree with most of this except: On the desktop browser I still get recommendations in the sidebar for celebrity / politics / news bullshit despite not following any accounts close to these topics. I hate it. In the mobile official app I get just a shitload of ads I hate for all the same style stuff. It's just seemingly impossible to get rid of the outrage machine fully.
- hidden-spyder 4y ago
  Consider using the "Minimal Twitter" browser extension. That solved for me the issue you're dealing with. Or try element picker from ublock origin.
zo1 4y ago
That only works if the prevalent and approved opinions make Twitter a happy place for you. For the rest of us though, it's a very political and sometimes evil place.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
My own personal suggestion is to additionally use an add-on such as Tweak New Twitter, which (by default at least) results in: 1. you only see direct tweets and commented retweets from people you follow 2. no trending 3. no suggested
jdasdf 4y ago
This. I've started using twitter heavily over the past year, and honestly as long as you keep it focused and immediately unfollow anyone who starts tweeting unrelated things it's a pretty decent experience. Just pick a theme, and follow people who tweet about that theme. If they go off track, just unfollow them.

by kharak 4y ago

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.
  - greedo 4y ago
    I use Tweetbot after trying Twitterrific for awhile. My only complaint is that sometimes a thread won't work in Tweetbot, and I'll have to open it in the website. If I had to use the website, or the official Twitter client, I'd stop using Twitter completely.
cronix 4y ago
Nope, you don't see those while using nitter.net, an alternative Twitter front end. You only see the tweets, and you don't even have to be forced to login to see them.
delecti 4y ago
The app and website both have "latest" feeds. You don't get that kind of recommendation in that feed. The closest to that kind of thing that I see are the trending topics on the right bar, which aren't in the feed.

reedjosh 4y ago

> too political and so on gets unfollowed. What's too political for you? Taken too far, this can be putting your head in the sand.

snek_case 4y ago

My impression is that twitter has algorithms to try to maximize "engagement", and by "engagement", I mean conflict. I follow very few people, and the people I follow post things that are tech-related... But twitter will regularly try to show me inflammatory political tweets. These tweets are not coming from people I follow. I'm careful not to take the bait, but twitter definitely does try to bait you.

j4yav 4y ago
I think the other half of the equation is using the recent tweets view. Whenever I accidentally end up in the algorithm view I can tell right away because of how much irrelevant BS appears.

dragontamer 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. But a major source of toxic tweets is buying up all of Twitter. $420 funding secured, "Thailand guy is a Pedo", constant attention-seeking, COVID19-conspiracy theories, etc. etc. Elon Musk's Twitter Account is one of the worst. To see that this man is about to become the owner of Twitter really doesn't strike much confidence in me.

reedjosh 4y ago
> ...COVID19-conspiracy theories... Lab leak was a conspiracy _theory_ a year ago. Today it's _very_ much a serious contender for the source. If people are _crazy_ and blocked or censored for theorizing about conspiracy, then conspiracies will happen. The best solution to bad speech is more good speech.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960 > Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April >> 5:38 PM · Mar 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone ------ Musk was constantly marginalizing COVID19 statistics and downplaying the effects. There's more than one COVID19 conspiracy. Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists.
  - reedjosh 4y ago
    > Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists. How is that a conspiracy theory? That's an opinion. Everyone has them. Why would you label him a conspiracy theorist for having an opinion you disagree with? edit: why also is conspiracy theorist considered a pejorative? Conspiracy turns out to be the stuff of history.
    - 4y ago

thelettere 4y ago

Agreed save for the last line - the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense. Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish praise.

JoshCole 4y ago
Brevity isn't incomposability. If it was, your argument applies to sentences. If it did, humans wouldn't be able to successfully discuss anything complex.
wutbrodo 4y ago
> the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense. Definitely not my experience, or that of anybody I know who curates their feed carefully. It certainly promotes shallower conversation, and forces irritating kludges like threads. But it's simply not true that it categorically precludes complexity or depth.

munificent 4y ago

I agree with you very strongly. My Twitter feed, which I cull carefully, is deeply rewarding and enriching for me. At the same time, doing that feed management feels increasingly like swimming upstream against Twitter's desires. First, they started showing tweets that people I follow simply liked. Now they suggest "topics" all the time. I have to spend more and more time reminding Twitter not to do that garbage. But, overall, I still find the time spent is worth it in return for the quality of conversation and education I get in return. Reddit is like this for me 10x, with very little effort required to maintain my feed. Spend a few minutes picking a handful of healthy subreddits and unsubscribing from the giant ones and Reddit easily becomes one of the best sites out there.

dash2 4y ago
In my experience, many subreddits that should be healthy are too small to engage a serious community. For example, r/statistics ends up with teenagers posting homework questions. OTOH the big ones are indeed trash. The only thing to do is to follow fashion. Wallstreetbets was funny and insightful, then funny, now neither. NonCredibleDefense is funny and relevant at the moment. Nothing lasts.
- munificent 4y ago
  Yes, subreddits really are communities: unique spaces populated by real humans and cultivated by actual human moderators. Each has its own microclimate and culture. While in principle, you might assume certain topics should have a community of a certain size and caliber, there's no guarantee that such a community exists if the right set of humans haven't happened to coalesce around it. That's just the nature of human group behavior. You might live in a city that has enough disco fans to support a thriving disco night every Saturday, but there's no guarantee that the right DJs and nightclub will get together to make it happen.
- pid-1 4y ago
  That's a moderation problem, not scale problem. Subs like /r/sysadmin ban this sort of question and tend to be mostly populated by working professionals. Communities where all the top 10 hottest posts are made by newbies generally never grow into great subs. That sort of thing should be prob reserved to /r/askfoo or something.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets Or you follow people who post (relatively innocuous) things that enrage the sorts of people who post angry comments in response to opinion points.

runarberg 4y ago
For me positive reactions are way more prominent then negative ones—at least for me. Negative reactions are often hidden under a “Show more replies” button, or relegated quite far down the scroll. And then there is always the block feature, which can do wonders in cleaning up your feed.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

> that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets You need to be really brutal with muting anyone who creeps into your timeline and posts something you dislike, and turning off the retweets or just unfollowing people who bring the people you find yourself muting into your timeline. Like straight away see something you don't like then hit mute.

delecti 4y ago
Turning off retweets is really a killer feature.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. False; Twitter’s algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't directly follow and is very clearly heavily driven by subject categorization (which is often also hilariously bad), as well as stylistic categorization (or maybe instead of it, as I see very little indication that the latter plays a role.) So, if you see toxic posts, it probably means you engage with tweets ON SUBJECTS on which some people post toxic takes, or follow people who post tweets on such topics. It doesn't require any direct interaction with toxic tweets or individuals.

FranzFerdiNaN 4y ago
I never see this? All I see are posts and retweets made by the people I decided to follow.
eropple 4y ago
This depends on how you interact with Twitter too, though. I use TweetDeck and I don't see any of that.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  Well, yeah, if you don't use the official client, you don't necessarily see Twitter’s feed at all.
  - whynotkeithberg 4y ago
    I use the official client and don't have any of the issues you describe. I'm pretty sure the crowd you follow & engage with is the issue.
  - kristofferR 4y ago
    TweetDeck is an official Twitter client. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
javajosh 4y ago

mjhagen 4y ago

Twitter is the embodiment of “If everyone around you is an asshole then you’re the asshole.”

nullc 4y ago

One bummer is that you then need to cut off people who were perfectly reasonable folks but failed to follow advice like yours and fell victim to twitter brain worms-- now spewing toxic hot takes themselves because that's all their feed was full of. Your answer isn't complete because twitter's toxicity tends to be contagious and when someone I know falls to it, I suffer too even when I've successfully avoided it myself. I don't even use twitter but I've lost friends because they became intolerable after being radicalized by the twitter hot-take feed. It sucks. Also ignoring it or even avoiding the platform completely doesn't solve the problem when toxic twitter traffic has made you a target.

bredren 4y ago

It is similar to the constant pruning of unwanted email list subscriptions. If you recognize the need to immediately unsubscribe from lists and have a practice of doing it, you can keep your inbox functional and sane. If you don’t, the thing gets hard to use or downright unpleasant to work with.

0xCMP 4y ago

1. you literally can not control everything in your twitter feed if using twitter's apps. it will make things appear there which it thinks you'll like (this is obviously ignoring ads as that's not something you should expect to really control) 2. the toxicity is primarily in replies and interactions not always in posts. the posts which are toxic can still appear in your feed via RTs and simply looking at trending topics. I agree you can do a lot to control your experience on twitter, but it simply isn't that simple unless you have a small <500 follower account.

tootie 4y ago

I've only been on Twitter for less than year. I mostly follow journalists, some publications and a few industry experts. They are mostly rational people who post insightful things, but a few will dip their toes into nonsense takes on society or just feeding trolls who bark at them. I just unfollow. I found that my follows list topped out a little over 100 and just stopped because I would delete as quickly as I added. I never post and have no followers. As someone who deleted Facebook after maybe two years on the platform and never took up anything else, I find Twitter to be slightly useful. I get insight from a handful of people for whom Twitter is their best outlet. I use it very much as source of information. It sucks as much as anything else when it comes to discourse. For my usage, I would see Twitter moderate content much, much more strictly than they do now. The most valuable creators don't come within 100 miles of violating any ethical boundaries and I'd reckon the vast majority of readers (and ad clickers) don't post much at all and will be completely unaffected by any moderation rules.

matt123456789 4y ago

I would be extremely careful about making introspective judgments based on an algorithm that somebody else wrote. It can change at any time, and you don’t know how it works (unless you work at Twitter). You might have some idea about the basics, but it can decide to show you crazy shit at any time, and it might not be related at all to who you are as a person.

no-dr-onboard 4y ago

I agree. Most of twitter requires self curation. Before following anyone I: - check their liked items. Is this something I agree with or want on my timeline? Are they being consistent with their online persona? (Is a Christian account going out and liking pics of scantily clad people?) - check their replies for how they talk to others. Ctrl+f for words or topics I just don’t want to see (and already have muted). - check their following list. Who are the following? Do I want to see their 3p retweets in my feed? Regarding the “topics” feature, I almost always click “I don’t want to see this” and I’m at the point where I never see that feature. It’s related to what you “like” so ymmv on how accurate it is for you. Additionally, I never follow tags or trends. That’s just asking for noise. I’ve effectively created a twitter account that is isolated to “homesteading/gardening/farm twitter” and I’m pretty pleased with the experience. It’s everything I want and nothing I don’t. It didn’t come without some online weed pulling though ;)

jasonlotito 4y ago

I wonder if you use the default Twitter client. Also, what you put there is not how Twitter suggests you use Twitter. Which says more about Twitter than you.

slg 4y ago

> If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets. This only works if you treat Twitter as read only. Any Tweet that reaches a sizable enough audience will have people interact with it and its author in a toxic way. The level of the toxicity will often depend on the specific author and certain types of people definitely receive more toxicity than others.

RDaneel0livaw 4y ago

I agree with most of this except: On the desktop browser I still get recommendations in the sidebar for celebrity / politics / news bullshit despite not following any accounts close to these topics. I hate it. In the mobile official app I get just a shitload of ads I hate for all the same style stuff. It's just seemingly impossible to get rid of the outrage machine fully.

hidden-spyder 4y ago
Consider using the "Minimal Twitter" browser extension. That solved for me the issue you're dealing with. Or try element picker from ublock origin.

zo1 4y ago

That only works if the prevalent and approved opinions make Twitter a happy place for you. For the rest of us though, it's a very political and sometimes evil place.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

My own personal suggestion is to additionally use an add-on such as Tweak New Twitter, which (by default at least) results in: 1. you only see direct tweets and commented retweets from people you follow 2. no trending 3. no suggested

jdasdf 4y ago

This. I've started using twitter heavily over the past year, and honestly as long as you keep it focused and immediately unfollow anyone who starts tweeting unrelated things it's a pretty decent experience. Just pick a theme, and follow people who tweet about that theme. If they go off track, just unfollow them.