Tell HN: Twitter Is NSFW by Default?

[legerdemain]

I signed up for Twitter after the Musk takeover. I use it in a separate, new Firefox container, and I'm only following a few tech influencers on a tech topic I care about.

About 50% of my Twitter feed is:

  - soccer fights

  - videos of people beating the crap out of each other in the street

  - straight-up pornography

Is this expected? How do I turn it off so I can see more of the content I signed up for and less street fighting and porn?

[ssalka]

A recent update made it so that the default feed shown is "For You", which includes recommended content based on your usage history. Since you have a new account, it's likely that the recs are not accurate and instead based on usage by other users with similar browsing patterns or metadata (geolocation etc).

If you want to only see content from users you follow, switch to the "Following" tab at the top. Unfortunately, while this used to be a persistent setting, it seems Twitter is now frequently (not 100% of the time in my experience, but very often) resetting users back to the For You feed after the app/site is closed & reopened.

Per your actual question, I don't think there is any simple NSFW filter on Twitter, but you can mute keywords - albeit that's a pretty manual process.

[mtmail → ssalka]

The 'minimal twitter' Firefox addon will keep it set to "Following", among hiding other UI clutter.

[KomoD → ssalka]

> Since you have a new account, it's likely that the recs are not accurate and instead based on usage by other users with similar browsing patterns or metadata (geolocation etc).

Wrong, it doesn't matter how old your account is, it'll still serve you trash

[groffee → ssalka]

I've got an 'old' account and am still getting recommended crap.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I keep hearing people say this but I don't have the same problem. 75% of my Twitter feed is tech and 25% is business-related and a few random odds & ends. Occasionally new "recommendations" show up and if they're not interesting, I mute/block them.

I've never gone out of my way to do any kind of filtering besides that.

[TechBro8615]

I think it's based on your birthday. If you have not set a birth date (or set one that makes you < 18 in $CURRENT_YEAR) then you will not see NSFW content.

I'm not sure if it defaults to opting into NSFW content based on your birthday. That seems like a poor choice of behavior. It's possible this only recently became an issue with the introduction of the "for you" tab recommending content with little to no filter.

[emkemp]

Use tweetdeck.twitter.com, and set each column to a specific use. I have them set to Home (i.e., tweets and retweets from accounts I follow), Notifications, and User (my own tweets and retweets). This works wonders for me.

[mrlonglong]

Twitter is dead. Long live other micro blogging sites.