|
I use Twitter, anon account with very loose opsec. I mostly follow individuals on personal accounts, meaning few to no managed accounts (corporations, politicians, professionals with any kind of product or course to sell) or accounts with a heavy emphasis on narrative making (journalists, activists, politicians, tech marketers, crypto enthusiasts, VCs/startup people). Twitter is how I ended up joining a group chat interested in psychology and discussing e.g. practices for better communication, emotional maturity; a group chat around cooking and sharing tips; and otherwise having nice interactions within a loosely-stable group of people with shared interests. Most were accounts <300 followers and/or <300 following. I'm not too concerned with anything big enough to be considered news (which is how I interpret what you mean by "public conversation"), as it usually filters into my timeline 2-3 days (or even weeks) in advance of print/broadcast media anyway. I guess my point is, the key for making Twitter a positive experience for me is forgoing big accounts, like video game streamers, TikTok/Instagram influencers, and news-/politics-/special-interest-focused brands, and mainly seeking real individuals with shared interests. One big indicator is a high ratio of their own tweets vs retweets -- if an account is mostly retweeting things (often will be tweets on polarizing topics from polarizing accounts) and not really tweeting stuff like "I've been reading X programming book" or "I've been getting into Y hobby, and like Z about it", I either ignore the account or turn off retweets from them. edit: removed some content relating to politics/news, trying to keep this message focused on twitter itself/how I use it/tips I hope are useful. |