Be selective in who you follow, and if you're following someone who shares interesting thoughts but retweets too much, you can turn off their retweets. That in combination with being judicious on the block button makes Twitter one of my favorite social networks.

I am careful but Twitter still shows tweets that people I'm following have liked. And they always seem to be the most enraging tweets (presumably with great engagement).

Basically I want my Twitter to be a politics-free zone, but I can't help it if some of the people I follow occasionally like political tweets.

Also, today it has been sending me a push notification to the same race politics tweet repeatedly even after I keep dismissing it. The author isn't anyone I follow and the tweet wasn't liked by anyone I follow - Twitter is desperately trying to get me to see it though.

Switch to “latest” view instead of “home” and you receive a chronological timeline without seeing the liked tweets. I can’t imagine using Twitter without this. See the instructions on how to switch on this Twitter support article: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-timeline

Yes! I forgot to include this particular step.

I've heard that viewing Twitter exclusively through the Lists feature also removes a bunch of cruft, but things aren't so bad for me that I've had to try that out.

Yes, I really wish there was a way to turn that off. I personally use Twitter almost exclusively through a 3rd party Android app (Twidere) which just shows me my timeline in chronological order and nothing else. Seems most of the problems with Twitter comes from it not just doing that.

Change your timeline to "latest" from "home", and you will stop seeing tweets liked by people you follow.

I believe you can add "suggest_activity_tweet" to your muted words under Privacy and Safety. I'm fairly certain this still works.

I found pruning and cultivating collections of 'good' twitter accounts just too much work for what it was worth.

The accounts are all run by human (well I hope they are) and all prone to the same problems that make me not like Twitter ...

At least most folks maintain some focus on the topic / decorum on their blog or in a random article. Most seem incapable of ignoring the attention you get from being a jerk or typical twitter drama and etc.

I agree with you but don't all the actions you mention turn Twitter into an even larger, more strict echo chamber?

To continue the analogy, I might say that rather than creating a larger echo chamber, it's moving into a well-tuning studio space. An echo chamber is cacophonous, a well-tuned room improves clarity by reducing excessive concentration of individual frequencies.

Arguably, the curative approach lets me hear higher quality content from folks who have different perspectives than me, compared to just leaving the floodgates open.

I think that is the difference between an echo chamber, where everybody is amplifying the content, and a gateway chamber where who gets there is heavily limited[0] but the conversation is not. In the first the conversation is limited but participation is not[1] in the second participation is limited but the conversation is not.

An echo chamber is bad, but I think a gatewayed chamber is not only not bad but required for effective communication, learning and development of new ideas. You can't enforce the Chatham House Rule unless you get to choose who gets in.

[0]: This doesn't have to be by any external source, it can be just by whom you choose to follow on Twitter.

[1]: Everybody gets to talk about the need to defund the police or #stopthesteal or whatever position the platform supports because more voices behind your position is more power.

I’m not sure you can make that assumption.

Part of what makes these social networks echo chambers are the unconscious ways we navigate them: how long we linger on a post, stay in the site, etc. I’m not sure whether conscious decisions like being judicious with the follow and block buttons would pull you into more of an echo chamber than the algorithm does, especially if you’re selecting for things other than “this captures my short-term attention span.”

I think that's a cop-out. There are no objective measures of these things, the meaning of "how long you linger" or where you move your mouse are completely made-up by the coders who wrote the algorithm. They don't have to be a signal of anything, but the companies just go ahead and decide it means something. Then Goodhart's Law finishes the job.

I add people to Lists and then let some of their tweets get pushed into my timeline. Another way to manage over-tweet-ers. Didn't know about blocking re-tweets though. Off to do that to a few people.

Absolutely don't use the block button, they can tell you've blocked them and it can open yourself up to harassment. Use mute instead.

You can also unfollow them, or soft block (block and then unblock, which forces them to unfollow you), which are both noticeable but not as bad as a hard block.

> you can turn off their retweets.

How does one do this?

Navigate to the profile of the account you'd like to stop seeing retweets from. Click the circular icon with three horizontal dots to the right of their profile picture. Select the first option in this menu labeled "Turn off Retweets."

I've been waiting for that to be a global option since forever.

Thank you.

If you're using Twitter on a desktop browser, I made an extension which by default removes everything but what the people you're following are actually saying or commenting on, and automatically switches you back to the chronological timeline when Twitter tries to move you back to the algorithmic timeline:

https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter

I found this extension last year and I love it! Thank you for making it.

No more bullshit injected into by feed or forced upon my eyeballs from the right column and everything stays in the correct order. Twitter is vastly improved by your extension.

> It's an even bigger echo chamber than FB.

The trick is to block early and often. The feed is what you make it.

This simply doesn't work. I've tried every tool and trick available and sooner than later the feed becomes filled with drama, politics and random noise. Partly because humans are inherently social and political, partly because Twitter will throw random tweets and topics at you.

I'm on at least my 15th account. Speaking as something with a barely-serviceable love-hate relationship with the service... You have to add people slowly, and be quick to unfollow if you notice a disturbance in the force. Even though I'm keen on programming and related topics, I don't follow a lot of very-popular IT-type folks because of the drama they bring, ESPECIALLY "infosec" Twitter. I've noticed that's a bubble among bubbles. I love a lot of the folks in that bubble, but I won't follow them because The Algorithm gets heavily weighted with them.

Hah - I was hoping I wasn't the only one doing this. In addition to just not being good at "viral twitter", I never have any followers because I nuke-and-pave probably one a year with a new account.

As you called out, most of what I follow is infosec twitter. And the drama ratio is high. I'll follow someone because they do genuinely create a couple excellent technical posts or links, only to find out they are trash and I spend the next month hearing about it.

I can't block the topics that Twitter constantly recommends.

This is it, no matter what words you mute, no matter how much you block/mute users. Twitter considers it of the utmost importance that they get to push content, politics and news they consider important in a 3rd of the screen, always.

The last thing I care about in the world is what employees at Twitter consider valuable to put in the "What's happening" column.

Twitter could do with taking a page out of TikTok's and oldschool Reddit's book at making their app about me and my interests and passions rather than being a megaphone for a few insufferable bluechecks and twitter employees that I struggle to hear my interests from under the cacophony of things I do not care about.

I agree. Twitter is too unpleasant (for me) to use.

I know there are ways of actively managing it to reduce the toxicity, but that's a lot more work than it's worth to me.

At least as far as what keeps me off Twitter, Fleets missed the point entirely.

You really just need to follow one good Twitter account and they will usually retweet other people who are interesting and usually share a characteristic that led you to followed the original account.

Yeah I dunno why people on HN seem to struggle with Twitter so much. You choose who to follow! It's entirely under your control.

If someone starts being annoying, unfollow them. It's really simple.

Got it, so build a bigger echo chamber.

Or be judicious about who you give attention to. Over the last couple of years, I’ve made a concerted effort to follow smart people who I don’t agree with. Sometimes this has proven that I’m wrong and other times, it’s made me feel more secure in my own beliefs.

There’s a difference between smart and toxic. Some smart people are toxic. Others are smart and passionate. If you work to follow people like that and work harder to read their words with an open mind, great things can happen.

By this standard, any social group is an echo chamber.

I don’t follow anyone on Twitter I agree with on most issues.

However I don’t think your concern here is unfounded but in my personal experience the bigger issue is on the surface non political or non biased organizations or “content creators” who’s bias is very similar to that which the viewer shares.

Who cares? Friend groups are an echo chamber too.

Sometimes I get the impression that Twitter is like an un-moderated comments section, where people comment on comments.

Almost like an infinitely connected comments sections, bringing many of the challenges of the once-isolated comments sections.

I had the same issue and for me it was about "Topics" I followed (e.g., computer programming). They were surfacing nonsensical self-absorbed tweets so I unfollowed these topics, and since then, my feed is a lot better.

I use lists. I found https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow which moves all of your follows to a private list. Then move people from the private list to a topic list.

I also use Tweetbot on my Mac, which allows me to filter retweets. That means I only see what people say. I do use another filter on my National Basketball Association list to block a certain keyword.

The downsides of Tweetbot is that it doesn't support everything that Twitter offers (polls, probably fleets, etc.) and is about $10.

yep, I use lists and it helps a lot with this. Twitter got a lot better for me when I put all the hot take tweeters into a list and unfollowed them, then only check that list when I feel like going there. Which is not often

> As much as I try, I can't seem to escape the oversaturated bubble

Pro tip: Mute words and people.

I can't tell you how much better my experience has been since I started growing my muted words list.

You can't mute anything in a link though, so it can't be used to block spam or people who reply to everything with their gofundme.

Thanks for pointing out that muting words was even an option! That seems like a super useful feature.

You're describing what the algorithm tends to promote -- turning it off (the "latest tweets" feed) may give you a bit more variety.

It is hard to escape, a lot of the people who occasionally post interesting things are also the ones that post 20 times a day.

> .. bigger echo chamber than FB.

I would question this line, FB has a serious challenge to address in this space.

I don't understand how it's even usable if you follow hundreds, let alone thousands of people.

I currently look at Twitter as a destination for socially approved statements.

Twitter is a place where you are either celebrated for having approved perspectives or risk professional destruction.

New users can only be craven popularity chasers. Old users either conform or quit. Why would anyone play in that sandbox if you have any respect for diverse opinions?

Yet the difference between socially approved on Twitter and in the real world is massive.

I imagine that quite a few Twitter-socially approved statements would raise a lot of eyebrows in the real world. for being plain weird, nonsensical, or the listener simply not able to understand it at all.

I imagine a subset of things said on Twitter and/or tactics used will make you wake up in the hospital when applied to the real world.

This is why hardcore Twitter users tend to be so shocked when the election results come in and learn that a vast majority of people do not support their view.

The weird culture around social justice and systemic racism gets treated with the same respect as Jehova’s witnesses, Mormons and Scientologists where I live. What’s commonly accepted as progressive online seems to be widely perceived as rehabilitating race-based discrimination here.

Is that consistent with your experience?

Yes, but I should add that I'm from the Netherlands.

Let's for the sake of simplicity use the word "woke" for the type of politics we're talking about.

We have it too, but it's far smaller. Most of our media is more left than the actual population it broadcasts to. However, our left is more traditional left, not woke left. So it's marginal.

Politically, we're a very different country. We have tons of parties, and therefore are a coalition country. Extremism has no place in such society as it can't produce a working coalition. Hence, dutch society moves between a narrow band from centre-right / center / center-left.

In practice, usually centre-right as the disconnect between left wing ideas and what the population actually wants is stunningly large.

The absolute dumbest thing left wing movements have ever done, and this is an international thing, is to abandon white workers. In white-dominant countries.

Anyway, the dutch are extremely sober, based, down to earth. We immediately reject anything that makes no sense.

So to finally answer your question (sorry): wokism has no place in general society here. You can't speak it at a birthday party, it will be the last one you're invited to.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. Lot of weirdness on the Internet the last few years.