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Comment by gherkinnn | Hacker News Reader

Twitter has to be the worst major platform. It is a rollercoaster of misery, disgust, and annoyance.

And there isn’t even a proverbial nugget in the turd to make it worth it.

Nah, there's a lot of nuggets there. Keep away from the political trash and follow people who post interesting things that you like. For example, I like old video games, so I follow people who talk about old video games.

This guy posts cool, obscure Mario trivia: https://twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog

A wiki about cut content in old games retweets cool new finds: https://twitter.com/CuttingRoomWiki

This non-profit posts articles about classic gaming: https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg

Oh and the Homestar Runner guys started making content again, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/StrongBadActual

There's lots of nuggets. It's not even hard to find them among all the shit. If you're following someone whose content you don't like, just stop following them. One big tip I wish was more obvious is that you can turn off retweets from specific people you follow. So if someone posts cool content themselves, but also retweets a bunch of political trash, you can get the former without any of the latter.

Those are cool, but the problem is that Twitter shows you a load of turds for any nuggets. I just want it to click your link and read a thread, instead they minimize a thread and show me politics and celebrities below, and trending stuff on the right (desktop).

On the old reddit at least (stopped using after the new launch), if I went to /r/technology I’d only see /r/technology and that was pure nuggets. You could also unsub any default subreddits

The Twitter web client is trash, definitely agree with you there. I use a 3rd party mobile client (Twidere on Android). There are some clever uBlock rules you can use to make the web client a bit less shit (e.g. hide the "What's Happening" box), but it's hard to keep up with.

I got rid of twitter for exactly the reasons you mentioned and the for what it did to my inner well-being. There are some accounts that I've enjoyed following and even after leaving the platform I still use the RSS feed of nitter.net for these to browse these posts. No doubt that if I'd sign up again even with an intention not to post myself and only to lurk, I'd get sucked into toxic discussions within less than a week. nitter gives me the distance I need to consume the content (on my terms) without risking addiction or potentially contributing to the toxicity myself.

I prefer Twitter to Facebook. I still think there are threads on Twitter (daily!) where things can be learned in real time for later follow up/reflection. It isn’t a good medium for arguing though. This experience may be a reflection of my particular old school circle (I joined in 2006)

Facebook unfortunately doesn’t have vibe where people You trust can jump in and provide an insightful thread. It’s just stacked piles of trolling and baiting. Its only saving grace is keeping in touch with family and friends who don’t use any other platforms.

In my case, Facebook is for things like checking what my old aunt back in Italy is up to. Granted it’s not what I would describe as “insightful content” but at the same time, I’m never going to be upset for something my old aunt said. Twitter and Reddit on the other hand were having a really negative influence on my well-being. I’m sure you can use them in a “sanitised” way and avoid the trolling and hate, but it’s hard and requires a lot of self discipline. I’m not sure why I don’t get the “bad part” of Facebook, I’m starting to think that it’s cultural - Facebook is the only social network that I use, that still “thinks I’m Italian” and pushes me localised Italian content. On Twitter and Reddit on the other hand I exclusively follow content in English and/or related to Australia, the country where I now live.

But there is, as long as you stay within people with 5k to 50k followers, particularly in niche fields, and use mute words often.

I read Twitter for one thing: comments during a major disaster, but only for the first 24 hours or so of the event. It’s easy to filter the OMG posts and you get immediate relevant information.

I'm surprised people expected differently from a platform where every conversation is a shouting match by design.

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