I went on Twitter years ago and almost exclusively followed people interested in programming language research, functional programming, and various hard science

I went on Twitter years ago and almost exclusively followed people interested in programming language research, functional programming, and various hard sciences - tried to stay well away from the political nonsense. A year or two later many of those same people started posting as much about things like heteronormativity and trans issues as much as they did computer science. The authors I followed started talking mostly about how JK Rowling is the devil. Such discussions aren't what I was there for so I was very disappointed that everyone got sucked into the echo chamber and spent all their time talking about that instead. Twitter/X is optimized for zingers and gotcha responses about emotionally charged topics, not thoughtful and nuanced discussions about deeper topics. I think in the past it was legitimately a left wing echo chamber and now it's Elon's echo chamber.