Does anyone who uses HN still use this site? I've never used it, other than checking out posts either embedded in news articles or linked from news articles. But everything I hear about it from people on podcasts or people with blogs (or news articles about the antics of its owner) suggests it's massively polluted with white supremacists and the like. And overrun with conspiracy theories to boot!
I'm asking in good faith for feedback from people who either use it currently or stopped using it for whatever reasons because I realize that I live in my own curated echo chamber.
A thing with X/itter more than most social networks is you can choose your group. If you want white supremacists they are there. If you want top scientist they are there too. You have to be selective. I actually have three active accounts, one my normal one where I follow paulg and quite HN type stuff, a bitcoin focused one because I dabble but don't want that all the time, and I've got an old pro Russian Z account as I support Ukraine and was curious what the other side were on about.
It works best if you follow specific people who are leaders in whatever area you are interested in. Also if you use the 'for you' bit you have to keep clicking not interested on things to curate the junk.
I would use Mastodon more, but as long as the big fish stick to Twitter, I won’t move either. I follow a lot of people in 3d printing, and also in space flight, and especially that last group won’t easily move away from Musk.
I use it to stay up to date on the happenings of various indie developers and retro gaming news. I also have several political keywords muted. My timeline is pretty much nothing but what I'm there for, no supremacists or conspiracy theories around.
I just started using it again. I haven’t scene WS. I only saw conspiracy theories after the Trump assassination attempt, and it cleared up fairly quickly.
My perception is that people claim it’s polluted with white supremacy, but haven’t actually seen it unless they go looking for it specifically.
>massively polluted with white supremacists and the like. And overrun with conspiracy theories to boot!
It is, and intentionally so. Elon's agenda with the platform is to elevate right-wing and conspiracy speech as much as possible to offset and spite the "woke mind virus" he believes turned his daughter transgender. It's turned into a real cesspool.
Unfortunately, there are also still a lot of good accounts there that haven't left for greener pastures, that's the nature of the network effect. I'm mostly on Mastodon but I still follow some people on Twitter, mostly art accounts.
Also I wouldn't worry so much about "echo chambers." It isn't difficult to find politics contrary to your worldview, whatever platform you're on, but that doesn't oblige you to force it into your eyeballs. There's nothing wrong with curation.
