Twitter has a setting where you can specify words that if they appear in posts, they'll not show up on your feed. This helps me.<p>However, several other factors also help me:<p>- I'm very aggressive with telling Twitter and any other platform when I don't like something by using the "Not Interested" button or equivalent. This seems to work well with Twitter.<p>- Twitter loads slowly on my system, so I use a Firefox add on that hides the whole sidebar or whatever they call the trending topics. So I don't see them anymore, even though they weren't really bothering me in the first place.<p>- I honestly barely use Twitter except to see the latest on specific accounts. I'll usually click on links directly to access them and not depend on a feed. Stuff that is super popular on Twitter tends to be screenshotted and posted to other platforms anyway.<p>- Overall my even minimal use of Twitter is dwindling; most of the accounts that have content I like on Twitter are also on BlueSky.
You can disable "For You" and only have your timeline and lists.<p>But you need a plugin (or run some javascript). I am trying to get a Safari Extension through the App Store... but that is taking some time.<p><pre><code> (function() {
var defaultMatch = "For you";
function fixYou() {
let firstSelected = document.querySelectorAll('[href="/home"][aria-selected="true"]')[0];
let text = firstSelected.textContent;
if(text == defaultMatch){
document.querySelectorAll('[href="/home"][aria-selected="false"]')[0].click();
}
}
const observer = new MutationObserver((mutations) => { fixYou() });
observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });
window.addEventListener('load', () => { fixYou(); });
})();
</code></pre>
This is the code to do it, if you want to roll your own.
They have done this since forever, even under the previous ownership. The “flavor” of the political content was different then, but it’s always been annoying. One of the worst features of the site.
This is an honest question for people still using X/Twitter and yet complaining about it: why?<p>It's been obviously going downhill for a while and the reason has been obvious too. The leadership doesn't care about your concerns.<p>Why not stop using it or move to something else?<p>There are a bunch of alternatives out there and most people don't have a job that requires them to specifically use Twitter.<p>Unlike Facebook, where I know I have missed out on communities by not using it, I don't feel like I've ever lost anything by not using Twitter. Anything that goes viral on Twitter these days gets a bunch of mainstream news articles anyway.
Use Twitter lists to bypass the algorithm:<p>1. Create a list of accounts you want to follow at <a href="https://x.com/<your_username>/lists" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/<your_username>/lists</a><p>2. Bookmark your list instead of the main feed<p>3. Optional: Use a browser extension to auto-redirect to your list<p>Result: A chronological feed without algorithmic interference.
I am very interested in politics and political science but I am not at all interested in what people have to say about politics on Twitter, Mastodon and such. There is some value in probability polling the "silent majority" and in serious reporting but a self-selected sample can send each other image memes all day and it doesn't matter.<p>On Mastodon I post articles about politics in France, Brazil, Nepal and such and also about political science but I have rules that block words like "fascist" as well as the names of major US politicians -- I don't care what tribe people are in and the more you make me know the more I go down the Unfollow -> Mute -> Block path.<p>Bluesky's algorithmic feed has a bias towards <i>nice</i> and the people may be nicer too (e.g. Bluesky has "chronic illness" cases to but unlike on Mastodon they don't blame me) and I see a lot less anger than I see on Mastodon without having to set up a lot of filters. Still I am doing the "follow a lot of people to get some to follow you back" thing and finding it is emotionally draining to scan through a few hundred profiles and reject all the ones that talk about politics. It's a job for my agent YOShInOn.
So does every social media website except for niche forums.<p>Reddit has transitioned into 100% propaganda mode. Every single post and comment is political astroturfing.
I have an account I exclusively use to follow users of a certain topic. I don’t really get political content, even when using the for you tab. That being said I’d love for there to be an option to ditch political content on my main account.
I would love to see more in-depth analysis of recommender algorithms. You don’t need to know how they work (on a technical level). What matters is the results they are showing to people.<p>In lieu of an FDA for algorithms that I would love to see, it would be great to have some basic assessments of the distributions of recommendations an algorithm is making.
This totally aligns with my personal experience. I am Italian, most of my "For you" tweets used to be in Italian. Recently a lot of US, pro-GOP content sneaked in; stuff along the lines of: guy explaining that his wife must vote as he wish (i.e. Trump); anti-abortion lady praising Musk; anything (good or bad) mentioning Musk.
I am sure I am doing something wrong on my side and started falling to rage-bait, but I am equally sure I didn't initiate any interest in this kind of content.
I don't have an account and just redirect x/twitter links to xcancel so that I can still see comment threads. It also provides RSS feeds but I haven't tried using them. Doesn't solve the account discovery issue but I think my sanity is better off that way.
I'd say this is pretty much true of Threads as well. I had a few months experimenting with it, turning down (I'm not interested in/outright blocking) any political stuff that came my way and it still filtered through somehow.
How can an algorithm determine whether content is political or not? Sure you can naive filter for a list of political urls but it won't catch most of them.
You need to use the block option, relentlessly. There's loads of garbage on there but you can clear much of it away. See it -> block it -> done.
In most parts of the World, some aspect of the media is regulated.<p>In the UK, broadcast news is heavily regulated by an independent body (Ofcom), and newspapers are "self-regulated" by a body created after the phone-hacking scandal[1] staffed by newspaper insiders (IPSO). Even so, sometimes bad things happen and Ofcom has to take GB News to task, and IPSO has to tell one of its mates off for printing something invasive. This is all below the level of the law coming into play (for example, slander/libel or personal data handling), this is just "best practice".<p>The regulators are needed in the UK and everywhere else in the World they exist not to censor platform owners and contributors, but to protect the wider World from them. You can't just break into somebody's voicemail and report what you heard any more. You can't just have one politician interview another and pretend its news content, no matter what GB News say. There are standards to try and improve the quality of the output to make it useful.<p>Social media has clearly reached a point where some rules are necessary for that purpose. Meta have had a little swing at this with their own Oversight Board, but its clearly not working enough in the interests of the audience because we keep finding examples of dead teenagers whose parents insist could have been saved if Meta had just been better members of society. [2]<p>And then there is Musk. I get it, he started a company that builds cool rockets, and bought Tesla and drove it bigger, and he had a cameo in Iron Man 2 because Tony Stark is meant to be modeled on him by the film creators, but it's clear now, he can't run an influential platform well, and it's no surprise that even if he isn't actively promoting his strong political preferences in the algorithm, he's not exactly diving in and insisting it gets fixed to solve this problem.<p>Regulation is seen by the tech industry as an impediment to innovation, a barrier to growth. I think with technologies that impact the health of a society, that society has a right - a need - to see that those technologies are regulated in the name of the society not being harmed by it.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/molly-russell-inquest-teenager-died-by-self-harm-while-suffering-negative-effects-of-online-content-coroner-finds-12707322" rel="nofollow">https://news.sky.com/story/molly-russell-inquest-teenager-di...</a><p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/19/tech/social-media-lawsuits-teen-suicide/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/19/tech/social-media-lawsuit...</a>
Cool. Now do Reddit.<p>I don't know, I don't trust any of these exposes on X anymore after the WSJ published an "Elon Musk has used illegal drugs" article that cited "people familiar with Musk” and unnamed board members said they expressed concerns privately to his brother. I mean, come on. Can you imagine this article written and featured prominently on anyone else?<p>They lost all credibility in terms of reporting on anything Musk related.<p><a href="https://mleverything.substack.com/p/journalism-as-activism" rel="nofollow">https://mleverything.substack.com/p/journalism-as-activism</a>
So does the frontpage of WSJ, though of course it leans in the other direction.<p>Ability to block certain topics completely would be nice -- though it goes for all media. With ever smaller / faster (local) LLMs, I could imagine a nifty browser extension that does that.
Heh, so do the editorial feeds of newspapers. I think that if political content is allowed at all, users should be given the full gamut. Not a feed tailored to their beliefs (either affirmative or ragebait), because echo chambers are radicalization machines.
This is true for all social media, and most websites in general, especially around election season. But of course, Twitter gets singled out because it's one of the few websites where the political content doesn't exclusively lean far left.