twitter, much like most of the internet is as good as you make it
Balancing what little value I ever got from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. -- all of which I have used, sometimes for years -- against the waste of time and anger and frustration, the trolls and sociopaths, the nonsense and lies, I decided not participating in those fake town squares and social clubs would reduce my stress and wasted time without any downside. And I don't have to worry about how my personal information or reading habits or social interactions get harvested, aggregated, sold, and ultimately used against me.
This… isn’t hard?
I was on Twitter for five years, LinkedIn since it started (quit two years ago), Facebook on and off for several years, Instagram for a while. I thought I would get useful information, job leads, and stay connected to my family and friends. Instead I got a lot of useless but seemingly urgent "news," endless spam and friend requests from people I don't know, and had to witness multiple fights about politics and religion and social issues that wouldn't have even started in person. I learned about bizarre conspiracy theories I wouldn't have known about, and got some strong opinions about things like gun ownership, gay and trans rights, and immigrants, but I can't say that any of that added to my life.
I have a friend who follows people like Sam Harris and tells me all the time what so-and-so expert had to say about some social or political issue. So what? How does what Sam Harris (or any "public intellectual" or "expert") thinks or says affect me, really? If I valued repeating what I read on Twitter to other people to make myself feel smarter or better-informed, or if I cared what Elon Musk had to say from his bathroom this morning, I would spend my time on social media I suppose.
My point was that this was entirely inside your control, and it is relatively easy to avoid these parts, thus, "as good as you make it" is a relatively reasonable statement to make.
It sounds like you didn't get what you were expecting. It is perfectly possible to use twitter without treating it as a "fake town square and social club" (albeit, a lot harder if you only interact with the web site and not a third party client). You don't have to look at, or participate in the drama. I've used twitter for 13 years, and probably only ever looked at the "trending" topic, three times? I only see people I follow, and if they retweet stuff that I don't want to see, then I turn off their retweets.
I almost never tweet, except to attempt to helpfully reply sometimes. I delete my tweets after a few hours.
It absolutely is what you make it.
By analogy I can control the real-life interactions I have with people to some degree, but not completely. I can choose not to engage with family members who spout conspiracy theories, just ignore them, or not put myself in the situation in the first place. But I can't always avoid that in real life because I can't always control those interactions. With social media, though, I can choose not to participate at all, based on weighing the value I might get against the downsides of time waste and nonsense I have to read, skip over, block, unfollow. In my experience with social media the downsides always far outweighed the benefits, and that was before taking into account the platforms harvesting and selling my information. If something important happens in the world, or some new tool or technology comes out that I might care about, I will find out through some other channel (here, for example) that doesn't come with so many downsides. Other people will have different experiences.
I mainly want to push back on the idea that we have to use social media to participate in some imaginary "global town square," or that we will miss something vitally important if we don't pay attention. We don't, and we won't.
You've completely pivoted away from the thing that you were originally disagreeing with. Nobody was saying this in this thread.
I freelance (programming and system admin) for a living. I had a customer earlier this year who wanted to screen me over a video call before committing to a project. He asked me for my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts so we could "connect." When I told him I don't use those platforms he expressed shock and asked how customers could find me if I don't use social media. I asked him "How did you find me?" Obviously not on LinkedIn or Facebook. In 15 years freelancing I never got a single professional lead through social media. I suppose some people find it suspicious when they run into someone who doesn't use social media -- what are we hiding? In any case I got the project and the customer communicated with me by email and phone.
As for freelance jobs, I can't imagine where I would even look without Linkedin. There are some local forums that have job postings but nothing useful for a freelancer in EU.
I can't say that what goes on in Washington has ever affected my life since the Nixon administration (ending the Vietnam war just before I reached draft age). Politics (at least in the US but I suspect in most places) long ago turned into mostly a series of pseudo-events, distractions intended to keep politicians and celebrities and "the elite" in the limelight, virtue signaling and "owning" the other side, while nothing that actually matters gets addressed.
Maybe I don't understand it or see the need because of my age. My kids all use social media, sometimes they get really upset about what goes on. They all grew up with the internet and social media, I date back to rotary phones and daily printed newspapers on the porch.
I stuck with LinkedIn for 12 years thinking it was a necessary and useful platform for "professionals." Never got anything out of it beyond recruiters contacting me about jobs that matched one keyword in my CV. I get work through an agency now, before that it was all word of mouth and referrals, and I still think that works better than trying to find work through online marketplaces and social media sites.
To bring it back around, I don't doubt that some people can get value from Twitter and other social media. I don't, but I don't project my experience on the rest of the world. My original comment in this thread intended to answer "I hate Twitter, what can I use instead?" Stop and ask what you expect to get out of Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn and then periodically check that you get that.
Thanks for the reasonable conversation. I only participate here on Hacker News anymore because most of the time I can find some interesting topics and the conversations usually stay civil and useful. HN can go into the weeds but I hold it out as an example of what good moderation and a respectful user base can create. I haven't found that anywhere else.