[superchroma]

you know what, if you reject the algorithm and block all politics and other topics you don't care about as well as some prominent ideologues and then follow some topics you do care about like some kind of art, twitter is actually fine, and I met some cool people on there. People who call it a hellsite are intentionally using it like one.

[danudey]

People who call it a hellsite are using it the way it is specifically designed and intended to be used.

Twitter was originally exactly the experience you suggest; they then spent years and billions designing a system to create, out of nowhere, all of the problems that the site has, and they spend all their time and energy pushing people into that system to drive "engagement" metrics and "time on site" metrics.

People who call it a hellsite are complaining about two things:

1. The intentional design goals of the site which they are trying to force onto people

2. The result of those goals being applied to people who don't know that they can spend a ton of time and energy to avoid the problems they don't realize aren't mandatory.

Saying that it's the user's fault that Twitter is a cesspool that promotes and spreads awful content and rewards people being horrible is just the "you're holding it wrong" of our day.

[shapefrog]

I did all that, for years. I dont actually see the algo - but everyone I follow does. And they retweet the shit out of the algo feed crap.

[superchroma]

yeah, I've got one friend I follow who is hopelessly enmeshed in politics, so I hit "Not interested in this tweet" and then "Show fewer posts from X" and that solved it.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

So if you learn to become in expert in Twitter and spend a lot of time tuning it, you can get a decent experience. That’s not a ringing endorsement. It’s like saying a car is fast if you put a turbocharger in it.

[superchroma]

I spent a grand total of about two minutes. I just block things I don't like in my feed as they come up and it got better very quickly. Sure, it's up to you to be principled enough to stash your immediate emotional reaction and desire to engage and instead evaluate and block content that's bad for you, and, sure, that's difficult at first, but it's easy once you realize it's bad for you and making you unhappy.

I think it's just like food. You need to develop the mental response when you look at something so that you consider whether it's good for you first.

[orwin]

Not calling it a hellsite, i actually used it (to read, not to tweet), but there is A LOT of dark pattern on twitter and i think you can build better communities on discord or reddit.