
List of Twitter mute words for your timeline - rmason
https://gist.github.com/IanColdwater/88b3341a7c4c0cf71c73ac56f9bd36ec
======
bluetidepro
I would love to see this list updated with example screenshots of what each
one actually mutes.

Either way, I had no idea Twitter muting worked like this, where you could
actually mute TYPES of tweets, and not just content IN the tweets. I don't
think they go over this in their docs: [https://help.twitter.com/en/using-
twitter/advanced-twitter-m...](https://help.twitter.com/en/using-
twitter/advanced-twitter-mute-options) \- I wonder if they will block this or
break this if it picks up steam since it would lower their engagement numbers
some (half the reason they stuff all this extra junk in your timeline, to
begin with).

I can't imagine this is something that's intended or expected, but I could be
wrong. I'm guessing OP is going to end up regretting posting this awesome
little "hack" once they change it so it no longer works. haha

~~~
fossuser
Yeah it looks like something that accidentally works because of their
implementation rather than something they actually want to be possible.

~~~
shawnz
Maybe it's a "backdoor" added by some lower level devs who don't have access
to the official controls for hiding the spam for themselves.

~~~
capableweb
Would would hope that a big service like Twitter has checks and balances in
place so no "lower level dev" can add whatever they feel like to the
production service.

~~~
kortilla
Google just fired a dev who pushed in some pro union messages into a security
tool. All it takes is a rubber stamp from another engineer.

~~~
CameronNemo
Those pro union messages were informing employees of their rights, and part of
the dev's responsibilities were informing employees of their rights. Wasn't
the message also only shown on relevant pages?

~~~
kortilla
No, informing employees about labor was not part of the dev’s
responsibilities. This employee was not in the HR department and the tool was
not for HR-related messages. It was for security warnings.

------
WA
\- create a private list

\- instead of following people, add people to the list

Bam. No ads, no suggestions, no "x liked this", reverse chronological order
with no missing posts.

~~~
Grue3
Except the list doesn't show more than 200 tweets (unless there's some trick
to avoid this). If there's a sudden spike of activity, or you check it only
once a week, it's easy to miss something important.

~~~
rhizome
and it doesn't update automatically, and it doesn't update when you click the
header, and it's just basically a static list of the tweets from the last time
you refreshed.

~~~
bradleyankrom
That hasn’t been my experience with lists. They refresh just like the home
feed (except without the ads and posts are in chronological order).

------
whym
... to which Twitter Support says:

> Hi Ian, muting these keywords won't actually change the number of suggested
> Tweets in your timeline. We are exploring ways to improve suggestions to
> allow you to further customize your timeline. More to come!

[https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/122087242860531712...](https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1220872428605317122)

~~~
EugeneOZ
It doesn't work indeed.

------
ilikehurdles
I don't use twitter and I don't really know what this is, but it's at the top
of the hn. I mean, I obviously know what twitter is and have read tweets, but
otherwise this is kind of foreign. Can someone explain what these are used
for?

~~~
ehsankia
As Twitter grows, they stray further and further from just showing you tweets
from people you follow, and start showing all sorts of other crap you didn't
ask for in your feed, such as "person X liked this tweet" or "here's a tweet
from someone you may like", and so on.

There is no "official" way to disable these annoying entries in your feed, but
over time people have found secret "tags" that if you put in your mute list,
will achieve what you want.

This here is a list of all those available tags. There's no real description
of what "kinds" of tweets each block other than the vague name though.

~~~
hesk
The official way is to switch from Home to Latest Tweets. It works quite well,
actually.

~~~
agersant
It automatically reverts to home every few days (at least using the official
Android app).

~~~
wpietri
Same for web and iOS. To my amazement, not only is this something that Twitter
did on purpose (3 times, once for each client), but their designers have
defended it vigorously. Because metrics obviously are more important than
users saying what they want.

~~~
Lammy
This is one of the reasons I jailbreak my iPhone =p
[https://repo.packix.com/package/com.alwayslatesttimelinetwit...](https://repo.packix.com/package/com.alwayslatesttimelinetwitter/)

~~~
wpietri
Wow! That is cool, and I had no idea that people were making tweaks for
existing apps. Very neat!

------
Reventlov
Yeah, some explanation about these would be nice. I know I can figure it out
alone, but, still, an explanation wouldn't kill anyone.

~~~
tyre
feel free to add one in the comments section of the gist

------
no_flags
Am I correct in assuming these are mostly to filter out tweets pushed by
Twitter from people I don't follow?

~~~
swanson
Yeah it removes all of the random "liked by someone you follow" or "popular in
your network" etc tweets that slowly creep in over time.

~~~
jakub_g
Yesterday Twitter started showing me "someone you don't follow replied to
another person you don't follow" types of conversations and it's gotten really
absurd at this point.

~~~
raphael_l
This happened to me yesterday as well, only it was "liked" instead of
"replied". In my confusion I clicked on the account, since I didn't recognize
it. Only to mistakenly click the Follow button, as my brain didn't manage to
correctly derive the current status of it. Because I actually thought I had
accidentally followed them or something similar.

------
fireattack
I actually enjoy these "retweeted by xxx", "xxx liked this" and other
suggestions options. That's how I discover other people (mainly artists) on
Twitter.

Also I don't stay on Twitter all the time, so a curated timeline is more
useful than a chronological one (yes, I'm going to miss some tweets, but I
will miss some anyway even if I use the reverse chronological order because I
won't scroll down that far.)

~~~
oehpr
Yah, I agree. I don't necessarily think chronological ordering is the perfect
curation system either. But the problem is that whatever criteria Twitter uses
isn't aligning with what I think it should be.

Now of course, I'm not special, I shouldn't expect it WOULD be aligned with
what I consider good curation. But I can't imagine the choices they ARE making
are anywhere near the mean users preference. So lots of people reject that
curation and choose to curate for themselves as if it was an RSS feed.

But I think the thing that these people (and I count myself among them) really
want is for companies like twitter and youtube to let us make our own choices
about curation.

"I really like this person and want to see everything they release."

"I like this persons tastes and want their feed added to mine"

"This person isn't that interesting, just show me stuff they make that gets
popular"

"I only want to see tweets from this person about certain subjects. I don't
care about their views on woodworking."

ect.

~~~
fireattack
There is "show less often" option for each Tweet.

How effective it is, I don't know.

------
jomoio
Life got so much better after blocking "@threadreaderapp unroll"

Interested to see how these work.

~~~
wpietri
Just so others don't have to discover this: even if you block Threadreader,
they will still harvest your tweets. You have to do "@ThreadReaderApp BLOCK
ME".

~~~
maltelandwehr
Why would you do that? Why do people have an issue with Threadreader? A
portion of Twitter users seems to really like it. So why not let them read
your tweet storms that way?

~~~
wpietri
If I wanted to publish a blog post, I'd do that. When I put something on
Twitter, it's for a reason. I also dislike Threadreader's assumption that they
get to monetize my content for free and without permission. If somebody would
like to build a business on my work, they can start by asking.

------
busymom0
Can someone explain how this works? I was expecting to see a list of words but
this seems like some keys or object names.

~~~
ship_it
[https://osintcurio.us/2019/08/01/muting-the-twitter-
algorith...](https://osintcurio.us/2019/08/01/muting-the-twitter-algorithm-
and-using-basic-search-operators-for-better-osint-research/)

------
glowcoil
You can just switch from "Home" to "Latest Tweets" and all of this goes away.

~~~
lkesteloot
Exactly. In some interfaces you'll be eventually switched back to "Home"
automatically. You can tell this has happened because Twitter becomes less
awesome. When I find myself thinking, "Why does Twitter suck today?" I scroll
up and find that I'm back on "Home".

~~~
mjhagen
This is what made me quit Facebook originally.

------
cabaalis
I don't use twitter much but it does feel cleaner with these in place.

I'm assuming though that this is a technicality of implementation. Since it
changes their preferred experience, I can't imagine these keywords will remain
available to block.

------
tech234a
This list was originally released here:
[https://twitter.com/iancoldwater/status/1212902068739919872](https://twitter.com/iancoldwater/status/1212902068739919872)

------
wildpeaks
Using search to show Live results only from people you follow is another way
to cut on the spam:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20-filter%3A&s...](https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20-filter%3A&src=typed_query&f=live)

You can even remove replies as well:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20-filter%3Are...](https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20-filter%3Areplies&src=typd&f=live)

------
vermontdevil
What does "pyle" mean in this context?

------
nemof
honestly i dont know why more people dont use tweetdeck. i have my timeline,
it's not controlled by an algorithm, it's always chronological, i'm not
constantly being suggested stuff, i can split out topics into columns that i'm
interested in, i can filter the columns to show exactly what i want.

also can i suggest that filter:follows is super useful if you want to search a
term exclusively among your follow list.

~~~
danols
Because most people use Twitter on their mobile. How is their mobile web
browser app?

~~~
nemof
Funnily enough recently I've started using tweetdeck on my phone too. I use
Firefox and an addon called better tweetdeck to adjust the column width to the
same width as my phone screen. There's some jank, but the value of having a
Twitter client on mobile that's not the official mobile app, and not crippled
like many third party apps are now, it's enough to compensate for that jank.

I would say as a heavy Twitter user my needs are probably not typical, but imo
tweetdeck with its live updating columns is the true nature of the firehose
that Twitter is, and I love it.

------
AndrewKemendo
In classic fashion, some people decided to write a script to automate entering
the mute list, something that took me maybe 2 minutes in total to do manually.

[1]
[https://gist.github.com/IanColdwater/88b3341a7c4c0cf71c73ac5...](https://gist.github.com/IanColdwater/88b3341a7c4c0cf71c73ac56f9bd36ec#gistcomment-3153196)

~~~
thomascgalvin
Two minutes multiplied by even a hundred people more than makes up for the
time spent scripting this. That's just sort of how hackers do.

~~~
chaz6
Quite; the latest trend of "Robotic Process Automation" is quite sad. Rather
than automating a bad process, you should improve the process itself.

------
dzhiurgis
Topics worked so well until they decided to reinvent them few months ago. Now:

* Some key topics missing

* The ones that are not missing, miss key people

* They keep adding me to new topics that I have 0 interest in

Also, Topics were always in Explore tab that showed all sort of shit that I
don't care about. Should be a separate tab for topics (though useless now, so
don't bother I guess).

------
baddox
Also: a list of mute words for Twitter to ignore when they see this!

~~~
CathedralBorrow
I think they might have seen this when they implemented this feature in their
software.

~~~
baddox
Perhaps, although I'm not so sure. The muting feature as documented is clearly
intended to apply to the actual content of tweets. The keywords in this list
clearly seem to be things that would appear in, say, a JSON representation of
a tweet, but wouldn't be part of the actual textual content of a tweet. Of
course it's possible that they deliberately implemented this as an
undocumented power user feature.

~~~
dvtrn
I think you're right. As an example, I have the word/name of a certain
political figure 'muted', however will continue to see tweets involving that
figure if a friend retweets a tweet that has an embedded 'card' linking to a
news article featuring said political figure.

------
cpeterso
I've noticed that muted words don't mute ads. I've muted words like
"blockchain", "bitcoin", and "Ethereum" and yet I still see ads for blockchain
startups. Shouldn't the fact that I went out of my way to mute a word be a
strong signal that I am not a good match for an ad??

~~~
reificator
> _Shouldn 't the fact that I went out of my way to mute a word be a strong
> signal that I am not a good match for an ad?_

That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is as a strong
signal that you're not already invested in a competing service so acquisition
should be much cheaper.

------
joshdance
I doubt this does anything.

Reason is none of these words actually appear in the tweet body. It is not
'mute meta data about tweets' it is 'mute words' which presumably only are in
the tweet body.

You can't mute tweets 'Sent from Android' why would you be able to mute tweets
based on Twitters internal meta data?

Direct quote from Twitter "Hi Ian, muting these keywords won't actually change
the number of suggested Tweets in your timeline. We are exploring ways to
improve suggestions to allow you to further customize your timeline. More to
come!" source -
[https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/122087242860531712](https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/122087242860531712)

------
tadzik_
You can also use tweetdeck.twitter.com to pretty much the same effect.

------
vincvinc
I was totally expecting this to be a "antidote for the upcoming US elections
that I want nothing to do with" list, like I have:

    
    
      elections
      trump
      warren
      clinton
      republican
      democrat
      bernie
      biden
      gender
      male
      female
      privilege
      race
      racism
      racist
      white house
      outrage
      cancelled
      
      
    

... greatly recommended as a way to get back some control over which
information you prioritize.

------
nnd
Twitter was the most useful social network for me personally, depending on who
you follow you can come across some interesting ideas there.

Yet, after a few months “sober” I wonder if I might be missing out. Is the
signal to noise ratio high enough to justify using Twitter these days if you
are not a major celebrity and don’t intend to promote something?

~~~
arkitaip
The way I see it is that there are actually two Twitters:

* Bad Twitter: is run by Twitter Inc. and tries everything to mess with your feed, turning it into a toxic mess that's designed to clickbait and outrage you. It is disrespectful and domineering in the way the UI is designed and every now and then it slaps you around by introducing a change in the UI that increases the noise in your feed.

* Good Twitter: this is the amazing people you know and don't know who use the social network to connect, create and have fun. It's creative af and makes it easy to discover new minds all around the planet. It's also very kind in that people will try to uplift each other and offer support in more ways I can recall.

------
foobar_
If only twitter could implement block account lists we can ban the whole bots,
spammers and trolls in one go

[https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-
twitter-b...](https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-
block-options)

When will twitter implement this?

It takes one day to hack this.

------
kentbrew
If you don't like the way desktop Twitter periodically overrides your system
settings and returns you to "top" tweets, try Twitter System Saver:
[https://github.com/kentbrew/twitter-setting-
saver](https://github.com/kentbrew/twitter-setting-saver)

~~~
wpietri
Ooh, that's cool. And I had no idea that a browser plugin could be so simple.
13 lines of code!

------
nonbirithm
Question is, how did people find out this specific set of mute keywords work?
Was it a leak or did people really just figure them out through trial and
error?

Either way it feels like Twitter has an incentive to close this "loophole"
because they would believe it would decrease engagement, which would impact
their bottom line.

~~~
ei8htyfi5e
...or this is San Francisco and people at Twitter talk?! A roommate sees an
employee do it, who knows...

------
chaz6
I tested this script in Firefox and it worked for me:-

[https://gist.github.com/IanColdwater/88b3341a7c4c0cf71c73ac5...](https://gist.github.com/IanColdwater/88b3341a7c4c0cf71c73ac56f9bd36ec#gistcomment-3153244)

------
sincerely
Can't you just sort your timeline to Recent for the same effect?

------
KaiserPro
Its only the main timeline that has these "features", so if use lists, you get
a feed free of "suggestions"

Its also a great way to organise your timeline by subject.

------
mattbk1
If you want to see tweets in order, or not see promoted tweets, or not see
tweets faved by people you follow, just use a third-party app.

~~~
jpindar
Or [https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/), and the
Better TweetDeck extention.

------
rcardo11
Worked fine BUT still seeing "X liked" or "Y retweeted". Any suggestions to
get rid of those would be awesome.

~~~
jpindar
Use [https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/)

Things like that appear in a separate column, which you can hide.

------
Fenrisulfr
Awesome, added it to my twitter. After refreshing, I wish there was a way to
remove "Promoted" tweets still.

~~~
thrower123
Block the accounts as they come, and you stop seeing any of them.

In my experience, the vast majority are time-limited movie accounts.

~~~
pzumk
This doesn’t work. I have blocked over 26k accounts and I still see ads. I
don’t have blocked Apple or DuckDuckGo and most of the time I see those, but
every single day I’m blocking more and more sponsored accounts because they
keep appearing. You can’t block all of them.

Here’s my Block List. Not sure why it didn’t update for two months, maybe it
doesn’t work anymore:

[https://blocktogether.org/show-
blocks/BrCdgyZpXmLQ25akOwtgfR...](https://blocktogether.org/show-
blocks/BrCdgyZpXmLQ25akOwtgfRZWzpC_a83jlntMnZjP)

~~~
mayneack
They come back, but it's significantly lower volume than without the block. I
recently made a new account and was surprised by the volume.

Mine is 100% (I think) from blocking ads, if you want a second source:
[https://blocktogether.org/show-
blocks/njFjyOn40oKxRW8XJLmN70...](https://blocktogether.org/show-
blocks/njFjyOn40oKxRW8XJLmN70CVaQcXZbgn5I9iN0OV)

(it's also updated 2 days ago)

------
binarymax
It's gone. The garbage is all gone. I can look at twitter again without
cringing. IT'S A MIRACLE.

------
mister_hn
Is there a keyword to mute the cyclic messages like "Look who you knows on
twitter"?

------
ycombonator
Is there one for Apple News because it closely resembles content from Yahoo
homepage.

------
neves
Must enter one by one? Can't I copy and paste everything?

~~~
lucb1e
If you look at the request it does, use "copy as curl", replace the word with
"$word", and put it between:

xclip -out -selection clipboard | while read word; do <the curl command>; done

Then you can probably do the whole list at once.

There is probably also a javascript way to automate this, but if they do it
with ajax, this might be faster. Since I do this sort of automation regularly,
I aliased the clipboard pasting to "c-v"[1] and so it's quite easy for me to
do this sort of thing quickly without having to remember the exact flags and
type all of that.

[1] .bashrc addition: alias c-v='xclip -out -selection clipboard'

~~~
capableweb
If you feel like trying something else than xclip, xsel allows you to easily
remember the command with just `xsel -o` instead of that.

Also, if the JS way would use AJAX, it would take the exact same time to
perform the requests via the browser, as it would with curl, unless there is
some particular quirk with their server/setup/deployment/god, or if you have a
computer that doesn't run Twitter (the client side application) so good
(bottleneck in cpu/ram rather than network speed)

~~~
capableweb
Wondering if the downvote came because of someone thinking xsel is inferior to
xclip, or if there is a misunderstanding what AJAX really is... Would be great
if people say something more than "I DIDNT LIKE THAT"

~~~
lucb1e
FWIW I see nothing wrong with your comment and I fully agree that it should be
common courtesy to post a comment with a downvote.

------
alexellisuk
Thank you Ian. Congrats for #1 on here

------
longtom
This must be documented somewhere?

------
verytrivial
I'm near the end of my first month without Facebook or Twitter and I'm not
missing the stress of it at all.

------
paulpauper
blocking political words works wonders for me too

~~~
josefresco
Yes I considered posting my political term block list but didn't want this
threat to devolve into a flame war. I cringe wondering what my timeline would
be like without those muted words.

------
suyash
how to use this?

~~~
josefresco
On the web:
[https://twitter.com/settings/muted_keywords](https://twitter.com/settings/muted_keywords)

Also available in the app in settings. You need to add each word one at a
time.

------
zzzeek
I use tweetdeck on desktop and Fenix on mobile and I see no twitter
promotional anything. I don't even know what this list is.

------
abdullahkhalids
What I want is an option in the dropdown menu next to tweet to mute the
tweeter for 24hours. Sometimes, someone randomly goes on a tirade you don't
want to scroll past.

~~~
Plough_Jogger
Twitter already provides the option to mute phrases or accounts for the
following periods: Forever, 24 hours from now, 7 days from now, 30 days from
now

~~~
abdullahkhalids
That involves interrupting your session to go into settings.

