Because I get to choose who I am following and it’s relatively impersonal so I don’t feel obliged to reply / acknowledge the message and so forth. The benefits of one to many communication.
So I wanted to ask if this was a general trend and more people are enjoying Twitter, more in a relative sense in comparison to its own history and in comparison to its peers in social media.
I like to create lists so I can segment the content I consume. There are a lot of really cool "communities" and users on Twitter tweeting about practically every niche thing you might be interested in (often in real time). I have lists for different tech content (security, web dev, etc), finance, art, psychology, personal friends, and a few political ones (local, political memes/jokes, interesting political commentators).
When politics gets too toxic and I can mostly filter out that side of Twitter by just checking the lists that focus on tech, etc. I wouldn't recommend just going to the homepage and seeing what Twitter feeds you. I also wouldn't recommend reading comments or commenting as people are very cruel in comments on Twitter and rarely respond to anything in good faith.
The reason I personally still use it is because I've found it very good at proving a feed for the latest news within certain niches. I really value this with tech news and finance news. Other places like HN can be good for reading about the latest tech news too, but generally things only get picked up here when a media outlet has reported on the story and although the quality is higher a lot of it is dated and can be years old -- it's still interesting, just different.
I'm like the OP and browse every few days, never post anything just use it to see things from a mix of widely dispersed interests. There is a very low limit for me where when I add another person/group/whatever the feed becomes noisy.
I have spent 0 time looking for an alternative client.
I keep connected, but just not on the specialized soap-box lists because I have so little interest in other peoples' pet peeves and incessant need to present themselves as superior.
It's also why I like HN and not Reddit. Baggage should always be discouraged.
It's really not a social network I think. Communication is not really different to YouTube comment feeds, where there are people with social standing leaving messages and literally thousands commenting with no hope of ever getting a reply (unless they're socially relevant themselves).
I can't shake the feeling of being part of the masses when I use it, with my role in it being at most leaving a +1 in someone's followers/likes/retweets. Way less interactive than an old school forum, or HN, for example.
Then if I feel like consuming memes, I will open the meme list. If I'm feeling creative and need inspiration, I may open 'Tech / Design'. It depends on how I feel. My account is also private, and I don't feel the need to chase fame or even interact with anyone. Most people don't even see that as an option they have and blindly (and publicly) interact as much as possible without considering a more private alternative.
I have had a really good experience with the platform and actually met friends with my super niche interests that way. It's how I keep up with people in my small academic field in an informal way and talk about the human side of doing science. Also, I believe my papers have gotten more attention since posting there.
The only thing I'm not a huge fan of is how replying boosts posts and there's no downvote. It leads to noobs getting baited into responding to trolling or low effort content and giving it a ton of attention. However, everyone knows about that after their first month on the platform and uses workarounds so it isn't an issue.
Even with all this culling I still add more people to my lists than remove people from them.
Also, go to Twitter a few times a day, not every few minutes.
My experience now is that it's mostly accounts chasing fame, and bots retweeting bots.
It seems that people are afraid to be themselves on social media too - perhaps for good reason.
Nobody is genuine, people say things for upvotes and validation so now everybody has a political agenda. This creates mobs that shout people out of their echo chambers for good think points. Everybody is hopped up on dopamine being cruel to each other and they’re addicted.
Id like to this hackernews is different, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. The voting system isn’t good think bad think here it’s good for discussion/bad for discussion.
I cleaned up my follow list to only follow those who I would want to see something from everyday.
This even meant dropping some friends who would only retweet politics.
