[mrtksn]

My feed looks like this:

1) "Facebook style" post are proliferating, that is memes from last year and images/videos from 5 years ago

2) Too many "cookie cutter" posts, that is variation of formats like "100 million people are using AI but %99 are using it wrong"

3) Propaganda accounts pushing narratives, that is something like "before everything was great, now everything is bad. what changed?", then with flood of replies indicating that what changed is loss of Christian values and too many immigrants.

4) Obvious lunatics, that is chemtrail enthusiasts who pose as Phd in this Fellow in that.

5) Tesla FSD just saved lives, the real danger are the human drivers

6) Get rich fast schemes and courses that are supposed to give you passive income to retire early.

7) MAGA types and anti-MAGA types fighting

8) TikTok videos

9) Stuff from people I follow

10) scam ads

The general content on Twitter has become really low quality rage content. Some good things that you can't find elsewhere still exists though and that is tweets from real people tweeting about current events as those events are unfolding.

Sometimes I think maybe Twitter should have been a non-profit that captures only the part about real people broadcasting about current events as they are unfolding.

[beej71]

Sounds joyful.

I switched to Mastodon some time ago. The first posts in my feed are currently:

A historic photo of 50s America

A question about parsing JSON in Rust

A historic fact about Scotland

A panoramic photo from a mountaintop

A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue”

A picture of a hiking trail sign

A guide on how to change your shell in Linux

etc.

It's not the same as Twitter, but on the other hand, it's not the same as Twitter.

[raydev]

> 2) Too many "cookie cutter" posts, that is variation of formats like "100 million people are using AI but %99 are using it wrong"

> 5) Tesla FSD just saved lives, the real danger are the human drivers

> 6) Get rich fast schemes and courses that are supposed to give you passive income to retire early.

Hopefully this helps others, because I see these complaints often about Twitter (and about Reddit too, shocking number of tech-minded people just read the front page and get mad at it!).

These types of posts fall under what I call the "self-improvement bait" umbrella, including the Tesla accounts here, since they are so weird and monomaniacal about Tesla and $TSLA and Elon.

Several months ago I simply started blocking anyone who posts using their strange marketing cadence, because they're all the same really. They are so easy to spot within 4 or 5 words.

I cannot express just how much my feed improved after doing this. Of course, new accounts trying to bandwagon on this trend do pop up, but again, just block them and move on.

[Vespasian]

I wish there was a Twitter currated and moderated like /r/historians is on reddit. The answers you are getting are not always correct and sometimes you dont' get one at all (either because no expert can answer or the question is unsanswerable in the first place) but they are always reasoned, calm and thought out.

(And yes I realize the irony posting this on a social media webpage).

Ultimately most people and their takes are really really boring and "freedom of speech absolutism" (as Twitter nowadays sees itself) leads to interesting, well researched and novel thoughts being drowned out by the mass garbage stuff.

I really don't understand why some people (like the current Twitter CEO) seem to crave that kind of attention.

I'd rather miss a few pearls than being bombared with manure all day.

[RNAlfons]

Funny how I get the same thing in German including the German Fascists and Propagandists.

I wonder if it's because they're still all there while others left or if there is some kind of algorithmic intention behind it.

[theshrike79]

My theory: Both arguments are fed by state-level actors using "verified" accounts, because internal discord in western countries is to their advantage.

[MOARDONGZPLZ]

Really bad one that’s probably a subset of one of yours but really grates on me specifically are ones in the style of: “What the the top X products/things/whatever that are overrated/underrated/lies/scams?” Which of course are just super generic questions that get people to engage with the post and produce exactly zero new information.

[TiredOfLife]

It's not like there is a huge Following tab that shows only posts by people you follow.

[zzleeper]

There's no reason why someone like Richard Hanania should be in my "For You". It is as far away from anything I interact or follow that the only reason why it could be there for me is if it was being pushed intentionally for whatever stupid reasons.

The change is quite recent, my feed suddenly became utter crap overnight.

[WinstonSmith84]

Yup, 9- is the reason (and only one) why I still use Twitter. The rest of the content is absolute garbage, as illustrated in the "for you" tab which seems to be a mix of all your other points.

There is btw a browser extension called "control pannel for twitter" available for FF and Chrome which let you hide the "for you" tab (among other options). Very useful on desktop. No such option for mobile though.

[47thpresident]

For mobile, “Control Panel for Twitter” has a paid safari extension for iOS or a free user script version for any browser that supports a user script manager. Unfortunately solutions like these only work on the web app, rather than the native app.

https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-twitter

[hackerbeat]

Lol. Sounds like YouTube.