
On Using Twitter - polm23
https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/on-using-twitter-84fbd80c8919
======
mayankkaizen
Earlier I used to follow all sorts of famous twitter accounts and had joined
all sorts of (ugly debate). I really liked Twitter in comparison to FB in the
sense that it introduced me people of millions types from all over the world.
On FB, everyone was already known to me so there was no novelty in what I was
browsing.

However, later on I realized that Twitter is actually a "outrage generating
machine". Everyone is outraging over every trivial, even wrong, thing at every
chance. This was very toxic. And since I was addicted to Twitter, it was
affecting my mental sanity in very subtle ways.

Later on I unfollowed 90% accounts and stuck to those accounts which strictly
tweets only about programming, math, history and other such stuffs in robotic
manner (I.e. without any hidden agenda or connotations). I unfollowed everyone
who have even a slightest chance of tweeting about politics. Also I stopped
tweeting and replying to anybody.

Suddenly Twitter became a bit nicer place and now I only spend may be 5-10 min
there.

If you can discipline yourself and carefully choose whom to follow, Twitter is
great, otherwise it is a toxic hell.Just don't follow any political figure or
any people who outrages on daily basis. And don't even try to debate there. It
is not a debate plateform. It is broadcasting platform.

~~~
balaam
This is the best way to use twitter.

You get a clear stream of useful, relevant content. Unfortunately this also
gets framed as a "filter bubble".

I _want_ a filter bubble.

The problem in practice is that twitter actively fights you doing this. It
tries to pour raw sewage into your nice clean stream and you can't stop it.
You see what other people have liked, or what's popular or lots of other
things I don't want to see.

At this point in time the biggest value of twitter is it's userbase, it's
critical mass, people are on twitter, they're not on mastodon.

~~~
rgoulter
> ... Unfortunately this also gets framed as a "filter bubble". > I want a
> filter bubble.

I think describing a "topic-focused, outrage-free" curation strategy as
'filter bubble' is somewhat asinine.

"Filter bubble" is a dirty term because it suggests at best an isolated,
distorted view of how things actually are, at worst active exclusion of valid
dissent. The point is that important details aren't being noticed in the
domain of what has attention.

I understand a lot of outrage comes from righteous minds who want to make the
world a better place (or prevent it from becoming a worse place). -- All the
same, just excluding outrage feels more like it's (at worst) ignoring
'allegedly important, unrelated things', rather than ignoring 'important,
related things'.

~~~
searchableguy
Relevant from my old comment here:

 _I have thought about this before. I believe internet lacks enough echo
chambers. In real world, people automatically segregate based on their income
bracket, community, values, lifestyle, job, family (kids or not?), healthcare,
accessibility to various things, etc. People have all sorts of stereotypes and
things they expect other people to conform to based on visible factors. This
isn 't possible online. There is too little information and our stereotypes
will never be correct (too big number). It shocks people. In real life, oh
that's a catholic person. Of course I would expect them to say this. Too much
difference in opinions leads to defensiveness rather than acceptance. You
cannot accept 180 degrees but you can accept 10 degrees slightly left._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23937973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23937973)

------
duxup
>Cultivate a good set of accounts to follow

Man I'm so done with that. Even cultivating a group of accounts on say a topic
... they're still people so I get their angry rants about whatever issue. And
I respect their right to be a person and tweet about what they want, but
that's a double edged sword as far as my interest goes.

I really don't want to see a twitter spat, ever. Even if I AGREE with someone
I'm following I don't want to see them act like a child or sort of yell at me
/ the world whatever concerns them at the moment ... I just don't, it's not
helpful, I'm not learning anything, it's just yelling much of the time.

>Who has time for this?

Amen.

~~~
allenu
It's an interesting problem because it's akin to going to a cocktail party and
having idle chit chat and then someone brings up politics. Even if you agree
with the politics of the person, by introducing it into the discussion, you
have no choice but to "take a side" and agree with them on things (or not).
All of a sudden, some nice banter has turned into a serious discussion.
There's a time and place for those discussions, and the problem with twitter
is that the discussions are ALWAYS going on, rendering it useless as a place
for idle chat.

~~~
mc32
In person I think it’s easier to be oblique in your response so you don’t have
to agree or disagree, or you can agree and disagree in degrees.

~~~
allenu
That's true. In person conversation is much more fluid and easier to wrangle
back to a topic.

~~~
mc32
In the least you don’t usually have a column of people listening attentively
ready to pounce at any perceived false step. Usually 1:1 to 1:3, though it can
go up if your convo is “interesting”.

------
abdullahkhalids
My guide to using twitter:

1\. Follow people with high signal to noise ratio. These are people whose full
time job is creation, and no marketing. Eg. Scientists and engineers and
certain types of artists. Politicians not so much.

2\. Use the mute feature liberally. Go into settings and mute the name of
every major politician in your country, or politicians that are popular world
over. On every part of the political landscape. Go to their accounts and block
them too. Politics is a mind-killer.

3\. Some people tweet good stuff, but retweet crap. You can go to their page
and mute their retweets.

4\. Follow people you disagree with ideologically. Don't get trapped in echo-
chambers.

5\. Create lists of people for stuff you are interested in, but don't want to
pollute your main timeline with. There you can tolerate a bit lower SNR.

~~~
iamwpj
Echo chambers develop when you are only reading things you already know, not
things you agree with. It's about learning new things vs. keeping your
worldview narrow. Like if you have an opinion on climate change, reading
arguments from deniers doesn't expand your worldview. Reading about how
climate change affects different social classes can expand your worldview --
and all be from people you already agree with.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
That's not what I mean. Climate-change denial is a very specific issue, and
empirical in nature.

When I say ideological difference, I mean people who have different
fundamental values. Say socialism vs capitalism. People from both those camps
can disagree with each other, but still respect the arguments others make and
learn from those arguments.

Obviously, when I say arguments I mean academia level arguments, not party-
rally-slogan level arguments.

------
raziel2p
This article has good advice, but doesn't really help me. I actually really
want to use Twitter more, but I cannot get over the fact that most of the
people I find interesting post 20% interesting stuff, but 80% in-jokes, casual
conversations, or memes. This is fine for the people who post once a day, but
if there are 10s of them per day I get sick of it.

I don't know how I'm meant to deal with this other than just blindly trusting
Twitter's algorithm of what ends up on my home feed (which I don't really want
to). Maybe what I want is for Twitter to differentiate between
announcement/public style posts and posts that are intended for a smaller
community of followers, but that probably goes against the nature of the
medium.

I hold myself responsible for this whenever I tweet something as well, but it
seems like the only way to do it 100% is to make different accounts for
different topics (e.g. one account for tech/programming, one for politics, and
one for casual life stuff).

~~~
PikachuEXE
I am having a similar but different need.

I want multiple streams like circles from Google Plus (yes the dead Google
Plus). It was the only thing I found on Google+ which is missing from all
other social medias I am using.

~~~
twic
Lists? [https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-
lists](https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-lists)

------
katsume3
Interesting the author didn't mention lists which are my favorite way to
escape the firehose of Twitter. The trick is to add just /one/ account to a
list, and then you can visit that 'list' when you want, rather than that
account being forced upon you randomly when you fire up the app.

It's also a quick way to access an account without having to search for the
account each time. You're probably thinking that defeats the purpose of a
'list' if there's just one account in it, but it's been my go-to method for a
long time now, and I have bookmarked so many useful tweets, and I sometimes
even reference these _gems_ in blogposts, or share the tweet with friends on
other social media channels.

It's all about having the time to /mull/ and assimilate knowledge rather than
drinking from a firehose.

------
Zealotux
I have an honest question for Twitter users of HN: what's the net positive
value of Twitter to your life?

It feels like using Twitter or not has been an uninterrupted argument for
years, even on HN, as if on one end your rational brain knows Twitter is
detrimental to your mental health, but on the other end: it's a great
dopamine, and outrage dispenser.

~~~
esperent
It's the place where most of the people in my industry (WebGl) seem to gather
and showcase their work. Hanging out there too lets me connect with them and
has gotten me a considerable amount of work over the last couple of years and
allowed me to make professional connection that I would have otherwise missed.
I also showcase and advertise my own work there.

I'm extremely careful not to engage in anything related to identity or
politics on Twitter. I've added a big list of muted words and accounts (trump,
politics, gender, queer, republican, democrat, sanders, etc.). Many of these
are topics I find interesting and discussion worthy, but the twitter format
doesn't allow space for anyone to formulate actual cohesive thoughts so the
result of discussing anything contentious is just people shouting at each
other. Once I avoid these topics and stick to discussing tech, twitter is
fine.

~~~
catacombs
> I've added a big list of muted words and accounts (trump, politics, gender,
> queer, republican, democrat, sanders, etc.).

Muting is makes using Twitter much easier, when it's working. Sometimes muted
words and phrases find their way through the cracks.

------
tarkin2
Twitter is mob media.

It is only social in the most twisted sense of the word. Rarely do you
interact in a positive way.

~~~
bob33212
That is by design. I follow a security researcher who generally get 10-20
comments/likes on his posts. He and his girlfriend broke up. She has 50
follows on Twitter and posted something vaguely implying the break-up was
because he was intimidated by her intelligence. He responded saying that it
was more complicated than that. That generated thousands of comments. A lot of
the comments were related to the me-too movement. The twitter algorithm must
had know this would get people engaged and showed it to a lot of people. From
a hundred words I have no idea if he was guilty of some sort of sexism or not,
and I have no idea how anyone else could come to a conclusion either. But
Twitter algorithm doesn't care about the quality of the conversation, only the
fact that it keeps people engaged.

------
johnnujler
My advice would be to create your own echo chamber, not the bad ideologically
biased one, but the one that helps you put yourself and your work out there
while being able to stay updated on the developments within the community. I
feel that twitter is a far better platform to learn than quora, reddit, and
what not because of its mainstream nature and authenticity where you can
interact with real experts without falling into the linkedin trap(networking
for the sake of it and spamming people). The only thing is you will have to
excercise at least a little bit of caution and restraint on the side of
meandering around mindlessly.

------
jpistell
> First, social address: I’m a white, cis, female, straight, abled

Stopped reading there

~~~
pjc50
Why?

~~~
jimbokun
How is it relevant to the topic she is discussing?

~~~
shuntress
Because a significant portion of the article relates to using Twitter as a
tool to help understand people who are different from yourself. An important
aspect of that is being aware of how you differ from them.

------
flippinburgers
My advice: don't use twitter. It is a terrible way to communicate.

PS I'm old school in the sense that I don't have any inclination to tell you
about who I am, but rather delight in the simple act of sharing ideas.

------
softwaredoug
I recently wrote about how political twitter is actually the _opposite_ of
activism[1].

In short, political twitter gives us false sense of agency. Really we're
draining themselves of energy needed to do the real work in their lives. And
frankly, we have so little control over political events in the end...

1 - [https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2020/08/06/political-
twitter-o...](https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2020/08/06/political-twitter-
opposite-of-activism.html)

------
eertami
One thing this article doesn't mention is that it is worth remembering Twitter
has no meaning or importance on the real world. The only people who care about
what happens on twitter are other people on twitter. Regular people simply
don't care (nor are aware) about twitter.

Think of it like any other social network feed and try not to take it
seriously.

~~~
dakiol
Exactly. Around 75% of the people I know (teenagers, youngsters, adults) from
a variety of backgrounds (tech, health, no education, etc) don't have a
Twitter account nor check Twitter.

~~~
onion2k
I don't know a single person on TikTok. I don't know any YouTubers. 95% of the
people I'm friends with have left Facebook. That says far more about me than
it does about the popularity or reach of those platforms.

Anyone who uses themself and their own social reach as an example of why a
platform is irrelevant doesn't understand basic demographics.

------
vlucas
Weird timing. I recently just quit Twitter and deleted everything. I wrote
about it:

[https://vancelucas.com/blog/scorched-earth-quitting-
twitter-...](https://vancelucas.com/blog/scorched-earth-quitting-twitter-and-
deleting-everything/)

------
Scea91
> Snitch tagging: You may come across a conversation where people are
> discussing someone else and be tempted to reply by tagging the person
> discussed. This is snitch tagging and it’s frowned upon. [...]

Hearing about 'snitch tagging' for the first time (I have to admit I am not a
frequent twitter user). Is it really frowned upon? I know the act of 'talking
about someone and not tagging them' is called subtweeting and it is also
frowned upon isn't it?

The takeaway for me is to stay away from threads like this.

Also the advice to 'let the third party know about the conversation privately'
is interesting. I can see how it may help you evade backslash but from game-
theoretical point of view it seems to me to be worse for the 'subtweeters' as
it provides them with less information.

~~~
pjc50
X tweeting about Y without naming them is doing so because they wish to avoid
a fight. Doubly so when Y has a known angry set of followers. One may even
have the other blocked. By snitch tagging you're trying to start a fight
between X and Y and potentially Y's followers. Snitch-tagging is for people
who want X to be sent death threats but aren't willing to put their own name
on them.

Subtweeting is usually just venting about someone or something. And by its
nature it's ambiguous.

> The takeaway for me is to stay away from threads like this.

Correct. There's enough fighting on twitter already.

------
pratio
I was about start complaining about how an article on using twitter is posted
on medium and it will have the usual discussion about the influence of social
media platforms. But it is a surprisingly well written how-to document. I
would suggest others to give it a glance. Most of us are probably aware of the
topics discussed but i still enjoyed it.

------
twic
> My field (#NLProc) is working to maintain fully anonymous review. In such
> conditions, it’s important to be careful when tweeting about work (your own
> or others) that is under review.

Interesting! I wasn't aware that anyone was doing double-anonymous peer
review. I would love to know how that is working out.

~~~
probably_wrong
I have been reviewer in this field (ACL-related conferences) for a couple
years now. Based on the results of the yearly surveys:

One of the biggest challenges was to decide what to do about ArXiv and pre-
prints in general - most researchers keep track of new papers on their area,
and therefore it is likely that they will be assigned as reviewers for a paper
that they have already seen (and for which they already know who the authors
are). This issue came up for a vote a couple years ago, and the chosen answer
was to not disqualify papers for this outright but to kindly ask authors to
refer from doing so.

At the same time, "88% consider double-blind reviewing at ACL conferences to
be important", and only 14% of reviewers would penalize a paper for not
including a relevant pre-print. This seems to me like a fair compromise. There
is also work in progress to either talk to ArXiv to allow for author masking,
and/or to create a new pre-print server that allows it. There is a very
detailed report on the results of the survey in [1].

A second issue is whether the reviews should be made public, because it could
compromise the double-blind process. The general result of the survey [2] was
against it, where "support for public review tended to be inversely correlated
with reviewing experience (and) female respondents were less likely to support
public review than male respondents".

[1]
[https://www.aclweb.org/portal/sites/default/files/SurveyRepo...](https://www.aclweb.org/portal/sites/default/files/SurveyReport2017.pdf)

[2] [http://acl2019pcblog.fileli.unipi.it/wp-
content/uploads/2019...](http://acl2019pcblog.fileli.unipi.it/wp-
content/uploads/2019/07/ReportACL2019ReviewingSurvey.pdf)

------
tristor
I have a Twitter account. I think I've logged into it on average about once
every year for all of 5 minutes. It's actually surprising to me how much
engagement I have on Twitter, I guess people find me organically because I
gave a talk at a conference or something. I usually have quite a few mentions
from months before when I check it.

Nonetheless, I thought Twitter was doomed to create terrible outcomes from the
moment it was born. You cannot share any new, meaningful, and serious thought
in 140 characters. Every single one of my experiences and attempts to use it
afterwards just confirmed my initial belief. I would much rather interact with
people on IRC, via mailing lists, or on HN than do so via Twitter. Twitter is
a cesspool.

~~~
catacombs
> I would much rather interact with people on IRC

Which servers do you prefer?

~~~
tristor
Most of the networks I used to hang out on no longer exist, but I am still
primarily on Rizon. I can be found on some other smaller specialty networks as
well. I will eventually make the effort to set Matrix up again to see if it's
gotten better because at least one of the networks I used to hang on has been
revived on Matrix.

~~~
catacombs
> some other smaller specialty networks as well

Like what?

------
justinzollars
I deleted Twitter. 2020 has made it a very very dark place. I'm immediately
less anxious.

------
nfriedly
I tend to use Twitter as a write-only medium. If there's something I want to
share with the world, I might tweet about it. But I almost never log in and
just start scrolling.

I guess I also use it for occasionally for 1-on-1 communication via DM's and
@mentions.

------
ecoled_ame
twitter is for scene kids like myspace was; it's ruined by adults with
opinions and their job descriptions in their bios.

------
henrik_w
I am using Twitter instead of a bookmarking service: I tweet links I find
interesting. If I ever want to find it again, I search my own twitter user for
a relevant key-word. I also tweet out e.g. git or bash tips that I like (and
similarly can search for them afterwards).

It's not my only use of Twitter, but I like how this way both stores the link
and shares them at the same time.

(btw, @henrikwarne)

------
whywhywhywhy
Copy this article into a text editor, search replace "Twitter" for "Reddit"
and look at how absurd the whole thing reads.

They're both internet forums with 330M Active users, both have basically the
same content and same level of discussion. Think we need to start being more
honest about what Twitter actually is and stop pretending it's the real world.

------
jpindar
For those who use Tweetdeck, you should know that there is a browser add-on
called Better TweetDeck that makes it, well, better.

------
AzzieElbab
I have a private account, I follow people by private lists only, and never
participate. People on twitter are best source of information(hint; do not
follow more than two journalists), but Twitter as a discussion platform failed
miserably.

------
prophesi
Unless your business revolves around social media, there's absolutely no
reason to use Twitter. You gain nothing but addiction and frustration,
tailoring all of your tweets to the whims of the Algorithm and potential
audience.

------
tinyhouse
The fact that the social justice conversation in America talks only about
black people, as this post does as well, shows the majority of people only
care about social justice issues when the minority group becomes big and loud
enough.

I just skimmed through the article (it's long, I don't have time to read the
entire thing). I completely disagree about her overall statement. I prefer not
to talk politics in my public twitter account that is used to follow people on
topics I'm interested in (politics is not one of them). That doesn't mean I
don't comment on issues like police brutality, human rights, sexual
harassment, etc. But for me those things have nothing to do with politics.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Just FYI, that's not fact. The social justice movement talks a lot about trans
people for instance. It's hard to go to a black lives matter event and not see
black trans lives matter signs. And then literally, the post does mention
gender and trans.

~~~
faitswulff
Right. GP is factually incorrect. The blog post notes a few axes (hence the
term intersectionality) commonly under consideration in social justice
spheres, most of which are not solely about black people (though there are
black people who experience all of the variations along these axes):

> I’m a white, cis, female, straight, abled (currently; this can change) US
> citizen with a PhD, raised by parents with advanced degrees.

Gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, citizenship,
education, and affluence, respectively. Another notable one would be
incarceration status, at least in the USA.

