honestly there's a couple things I highly recommend here
1. Get off the phone app, it's a time vampire and probably wasn't doing you any good
2. When using twitter on your browser, get the Control Panel for Twitter plugin to hide bluechecks
3. If you haven't already, get an adblocker. uBlock Origin is good enough, I think. (This is just a basic internet safety thing these days, I think.)
4. Bonus stuff: get either the Shinigami Eyes or Soupcan extensions to mark transphobes, the Blue Blocker extension to auto-block bluechecks (and, with Soupcan, transphobes), and the DeArrow extension to get rid of all those brain-rotting metrics.
most importantly, though: do not reply to or quote tweet stuff you don't want to see more of - this includes replying to or liking quote tweets! engagement is engagement as far as the algorithm is concerned, and if you keep liking quote tweets dunking on Jordan Peterson then the algorithm is gonna serve you up more of that JP content you clearly can't get enough of.
That's the thing my use of Twitter is pretty disciplined in that regard. I do not interact with shit engagement bait or join in dunk fests, I only interact with things that I want to see more of. I predominantly use the Following tab, only occasionally dipping into the For You tab to see what I'm missing. And up until last week the For You tab (mostly) worked only occasionally having easy to ignore garbage nonsense in it. But in the last week the shit flood gates have opened and it is now totally unusable.
People keep coming up with more layers of hazmat protection to interact with Twitter and the thing is it’s owned by nazis who are going to eventually make you see a lot of nazi shit regardless of your preferences.
You can’t actually control your exposure to algorithmically curated content. You can only swim against the tide until you get tired.
Do what you can to elect Harris/Walz and downticket Dem candidates in your area by doorknocking, phonebanking, or postcarding: https://www.mobilize.us/
+7
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
I still use Twitter daily and never see Nazi shit. The only rule I have to follow is that I don’t read replies to tweets from news sites or pundits, which is the same rule I use when reading any website. Contrary to popular belief, if you don’t follow or interact with or reply to Nazi shit, you aren’t going to get randomly inundated with Nazi shit on your following page.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
It remains to be seen whether Twitter continues to be an useful and trustworthy service despite Mr. Musk's ownership
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I find it very useful but I only follow trustworthy people. Wario64 alone is very useful for video game deals.
0
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
edited August 13
I won’t argue that it’s not notably worse under Musk, but there’s a weird impression people seem to have that it’s suddenly turned into 99% Nazi shit and I honestly think it’s because those people don’t use Twitter and only get exposed to it because they click an occasionally link to a viral tweet and scroll through the highlighted replies (which are the paid blue check dipshits).
minor incident on
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
Using an algorithm page and not the "following" page has never made any sense to me in any way. I never see garbage on Twitter unless someone I follow re-tweets a response to it or something like that.
It remains to be seen whether Twitter continues to be an useful and trustworthy service despite Mr. Musk's ownership
No it doesn't?
This post was sponsored by Tom Cruise.
+3
Sweeney Tomtry The Substanceit changed my lifeRegistered Userregular
If I haven't given up Tumblr and Facebook despite the flaws I don't see myself giving up Twitter despite the flaws. In the end a significant amount of friends I have have one of them and it's the non-number way of getting in touch quick, and even if that were all a service had that's enough for me
Twitter is less trustworthy after Elon fucked up the blue checkmark system so it's now possible for anybody to pretend to be a reputable news organization so you have to vet an account like that.
Oh you should definitely give up Facebook, they're the worst. And from what I hear filled with AI pictures of Jesus now.
+4
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Thankfully, most of the places that are reputable and have also been on there long enough that it's relatively easy to figure out if they're real
But also, fucking up the verification system because right wing weirdos saw it as a cool kid club they weren't a part of has absolutely introduced an additional point of failure
It remains to be seen whether Twitter continues to be an useful and trustworthy service despite Mr. Musk's ownership
No it doesn't?
There are some people that believe in a light at the end of the tunnel
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
all i know is that since elon took over despite not tweeting at all for years i still get followed once a day every single day by what seems at a glance to be some sort of pornbot account except upon further inspection all the photos on the account are PG and there's no link to anything???
i dont understand what these bots are for... maybe they truly ARE hot milfs in my zip code
+1
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
I still use Facebook for family and local/neighborhood shit (and marketplace) mostly, but it’s got a lot more of the gross shit being shoved into your timeline no matter what that people seem to think Twitter does.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
People keep coming up with more layers of hazmat protection to interact with Twitter and the thing is it’s owned by nazis who are going to eventually make you see a lot of nazi shit regardless of your preferences.
You can’t actually control your exposure to algorithmically curated content. You can only swim against the tide until you get tired.
Twitter still has the following tab, so this is not accurate.
I don’t use any of those add-ons and I still see basically what I want to on Twitter by just maintaining my follow list to be mostly current and former forumers, funny accounts, sports, a couple local news things, a small handful of celebrities, and podcasters I follow. And on the following tab that’s all I see. If they retweet too much bullshit or stuff that stresses me out, I eventually unfollow.
SpaceX’s Starship launches at the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, have allegedly been polluting the local environment for years, possibly in violation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act. for years. The news arrives in an exclusive CNBC report on August 12, which cites internal documents and communications between local Texas regulators and the EPA
SpaceX’s fourth Starship test launch in June was its most successful so far—but the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built continues to wreak havoc on nearby Texas communities, wildlife, and ecosystems. And after repeated admonishments, reviews, and ignored requests, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have had enough.
The issues stem from a complaint filed to the TCEQ just over a year ago on August 6, 2023. The letter reportedly cited 14 separate incidents regarding “environmental impacts from the Facility’s deluge system” stemming from “discharging deluge water without TCEQ authorization.”
Water deluge systems work in tandem with flame deflectors to mitigate the intense heat, energy, and sound that accompany orbital rocket launches. Despite Starship possessing 33 methane- and liquid-oxygen fueled Raptor engines that generate a collective 16.7 million pounds of thrust, such a system was not installed at the Boca Chica Starbase before its first launch, although they are now in place. That test resulted in damages to local endangered species’ nesting and migration sites, as well as a 3.5-acre fire at Boca Chica State Park.
…
One of the major initial concerns—the wastewater’s mercury content—stems from what experts believe may be egregious typos within SpaceX’s records. Lab reports indicate polluted waters contained 0.113 μg/L of mercury, while subsequent summaries appear to misplace the decimal point to show 113 μg/L. If the former measurement is accurate, then Starship’s wastewater contains roughly 1/17th the legal mercury limit.
This, however, does not explain SpaceX’s numerous other alleged reporting issues, regulatory side steps, and disregard for federal and local concerns. In a blog post last year, environmental engineer Eric Roesch also pointed to previous SpaceX water samples reports that appear to omit measurements for nickel, a toxic metal. Meanwhile, the same chart lists multiple pollutants at concentrations at or above TCEQ and EPA standards, including total suspended solids, cyanide, copper, and chromium.The news comes the same day as the FAA’s announcement that it was indefinitely postponing a series of four public environmental impact assessment meetings. The four scheduled events were focused on Starship’s future test launches at SpaceX’s spaceport near Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX hoped to receive approval to increase its total number of Starship tests there to 25 annual launches.
“The FAA is seeking additional information from SpaceX before rescheduling the public meetings,” a spokesperson told Popular Science via email on Monday evening.
Local residents near Boca Chica have frequently voiced concerns about potentially dangerous conditions created by the 15-story-tall Starship’s engines. SpaceX’s neighbors have described a liftoff’s deafening noise and physical effects as “truly frightening.” Dust plumes created from the spacecraft’s 16.7 million pounds of thrust have allegedly caused health issues, while bowling ball-sized debris from a launch site’s 25-foot-deep crater has severely damaged vehicles and shattered windows. In April 2024, 27 community and environmental organizations published an open letter voicing anger with the tests while highlighting Starbase’s proximity to indigenous sacred lands.
We need to end private Space Flight because these fucks are too utterly irresponsible to be trusted with its responsibility.
+28
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited August 13
My specific most common AI hellscape on Facebook is a child (frequently playing off of poor African child tropes) who has created some sort of elaborate and implausible sculpture out of fruit or vegetables
For a brief while I was also getting beds that are also Jesus embracing a sleeping woman
I still use Twitter daily and never see Nazi shit. The only rule I have to follow is that I don’t read replies to tweets from news sites or pundits, which is the same rule I use when reading any website. Contrary to popular belief, if you don’t follow or interact with or reply to Nazi shit, you aren’t going to get randomly inundated with Nazi shit on your following page.
I use twitter almost exclusively for sports stuff. It's still the best place to get up to date information on like NBA transactions and NFL practice reports and college football recruiting news and whatnot. It's still pretty good for TTRPG stuff - and none of the alternatives are even close on these accounts yet. I do get the occasional stray cringey Pantsuit Nation tweet across my timeline or sometimes Mark Hamill will make fun of Trump in a way that everyone on there will retweet, but I haven't seen any actual Nazi stuff on my following page.
0
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
My specific most common AI hellscape on Facebook is a child (frequently playing off of poor African child tropes) who has created some sort of elaborate and implausible sculpture out of fruit or vegetables
For a brief while I was also getting beds that are also Jesus embracing a sleeping woman
I get some of those, but lately it’s been mostly AI disabled veterans holding signs that say (with misspellings and a handful of obvious AI butchered letters) “no one cares that it’s my birthday” or some such.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
+2
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah I've gotten a couple of those too
Oh hey I took a screenshot of one of the Jesus ones, have a dead rat
+31
Sweeney Tomtry The Substanceit changed my lifeRegistered Userregular
I don't get any of that stuff. Worst I get is occasionally one of the film FB groups I'm in will link a fake poster or trailer they got duped by and think is real, that they get corrected on and delete within like half an hour
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
My Facebook is admittedly partially fucked because I refuse to use any of their functionality - I exclusively follow people I know (or occasionally their small businesses) and am not a member of any groups. And I've gone through and blocked the accounts of large amounts of the posts from pages and groups and it has put in my feeds based on my presumptive interests, which has left it fairly uncertain as to how to fill my feed with content.
+5
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
People keep coming up with more layers of hazmat protection to interact with Twitter and the thing is it’s owned by nazis who are going to eventually make you see a lot of nazi shit regardless of your preferences.
You can’t actually control your exposure to algorithmically curated content. You can only swim against the tide until you get tired.
Twitter still has the following tab, so this is not accurate.
I don’t use any of those add-ons and I still see basically what I want to on Twitter by just maintaining my follow list to be mostly current and former forumers, funny accounts, sports, a couple local news things, a small handful of celebrities, and podcasters I follow. And on the following tab that’s all I see. If they retweet too much bullshit or stuff that stresses me out, I eventually unfollow.
You can also turn off retweets on a per account basis, so if you want to follow someone because you're interested in their stuff but their retweets are too much, you can choose to not see those.
+2
GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
honestly i cant toss rocks at any social media that anyone uses from an internet forum.
though, i do love how much every other platform thinks it's the other ones that house all the mouth breathers or whatever. twitter describing things as reddit while being very twitter is a fun parallel to all our twitter threads mocking twitter while being very twitter.
feels very much like regional rivalries between towns with their only real difference between them is the number of sonics..
honestly i cant toss rocks at any social media that anyone uses from an internet forum.
though, i do love how much every other platform thinks it's the other ones that house all the mouth breathers or whatever. twitter describing things as reddit while being very twitter is a fun parallel to all our twitter threads mocking twitter while being very twitter.
feels very much like regional rivalries between towns with their only real difference between them is the number of sonics..
On the other hand, as far as I know there isn't a hint of an algorithm here dictating what we all see.
Unless threads and replied being sorted chronologically counts as an algorithm, maybe it does I dunno.
all i know is that since elon took over despite not tweeting at all for years i still get followed once a day every single day by what seems at a glance to be some sort of pornbot account except upon further inspection all the photos on the account are PG and there's no link to anything???
i dont understand what these bots are for... maybe they truly ARE hot milfs in my zip code
My Twitter account went unused for something like 15 years and was apparently hacked and turned into a Russian pornbot. It got banned for it but I can still log in to view things, I just can't post (which is fine, I had never tweeted or commented on anything ever, nor planned to). But I can't change anything about my profile so I eternally have some random, mostly naked woman now for my profile pic if I ever happen to log in to view something lol
If you have any interest in trying to purchase or sell anything you need to have Facebook because no one uses fucking Craigslist anymore. The entire secondary sale market has moved to Marketplace.
I've been off social media for like five years now and I miss Twitter for learning about sales and limited releases for stuff I collect, but it has been a worthy trade.
MegaMan001 on
I am in the business of saving lives.
+5
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
honestly i cant toss rocks at any social media that anyone uses from an internet forum.
though, i do love how much every other platform thinks it's the other ones that house all the mouth breathers or whatever. twitter describing things as reddit while being very twitter is a fun parallel to all our twitter threads mocking twitter while being very twitter.
feels very much like regional rivalries between towns with their only real difference between them is the number of sonics..
On the other hand, as far as I know there isn't a hint of an algorithm here dictating what we all see.
Unless threads and replied being sorted chronologically counts as an algorithm, maybe it does I dunno.
Technically, the forum has a “best of” feed that’s basically as useless as Twitter’s For You feed.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
If you have any interest in trying to purchase or sell anything you need to have Facebook because no one uses fucking Craigslist anymore. The entire secondary sale market has moved to Marketplace.
I've been off social media for like five years now and I miss Twitter for learning about sales and limited releases for stuff I collect, but it has been a worthy trade.
The last time I tried to sell a moderately high ticket item and listed it on both Marketplace and Craigslist I got something like 2 replies on Craigslist and 50+ on Marketplace.
It’s pretty futile trying to use anything but Marketplace these days for selling shit locally.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
Regarding whether you see/do not see nazi shit or any of the other unpleasantness of Twitter, everyone should take a look at their profile settings and see what the algorithm is serving you and curate that stuff.
Reacting/responding to tweets about bad things you don't like, and especially mentioning things to talk about how they are bad is treated the exact same by the website as if you were enthusiastically posting about something you did like. Engagement is the key, and it's fed by how much you interface with a subject, how much the people you follow interface with it, and probably how much you stop scrolling to read a tweet about that subject.
One of the funniest things about current Twitter is that it just lists like, hundreds of presumptive interests for users seemingly at random, so even if you don't interact with it much at all your For You tab will be full of hyper-specific topics. For instance, for no apparent reason, Twitter convinced itself that I was extremely interested in the Batman Animated Series and Gravity Falls, just to have something to throw at me if I ever went to the feed.
One of the funniest things about current Twitter is that it just lists like, hundreds of presumptive interests for users seemingly at random, so even if you don't interact with it much at all your For You tab will be full of hyper-specific topics. For instance, for no apparent reason, Twitter convinced itself that I was extremely interested in the Batman Animated Series and Gravity Falls, just to have something to throw at me if I ever went to the feed.
Is the algorithm pulling from things the people you follow tweet about? A buddy got into the Clippers and started tweeting about them a lot, and then I """"mysteriously"""" started seeing a bunch of ads for basketball generally and the Clippers specifically, I can't help but suspect a connection
Edit: And to be clear, I never interacted with the Clippers stuff (or with anything, I purely scroll)
One of the funniest things about current Twitter is that it just lists like, hundreds of presumptive interests for users seemingly at random, so even if you don't interact with it much at all your For You tab will be full of hyper-specific topics. For instance, for no apparent reason, Twitter convinced itself that I was extremely interested in the Batman Animated Series and Gravity Falls, just to have something to throw at me if I ever went to the feed.
Posts
hard water
Well
usually, yeah, but it depends on your local geology.
That's the thing my use of Twitter is pretty disciplined in that regard. I do not interact with shit engagement bait or join in dunk fests, I only interact with things that I want to see more of. I predominantly use the Following tab, only occasionally dipping into the For You tab to see what I'm missing. And up until last week the For You tab (mostly) worked only occasionally having easy to ignore garbage nonsense in it. But in the last week the shit flood gates have opened and it is now totally unusable.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
You can’t actually control your exposure to algorithmically curated content. You can only swim against the tide until you get tired.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
No it doesn't?
Steam
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
But also, fucking up the verification system because right wing weirdos saw it as a cool kid club they weren't a part of has absolutely introduced an additional point of failure
There are some people that believe in a light at the end of the tunnel
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I see way more AI pictures of soldiers, but yeah, just dogshit AI photos and old people talking about how nice the picture is.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
i dont understand what these bots are for... maybe they truly ARE hot milfs in my zip code
Twitter still has the following tab, so this is not accurate.
I don’t use any of those add-ons and I still see basically what I want to on Twitter by just maintaining my follow list to be mostly current and former forumers, funny accounts, sports, a couple local news things, a small handful of celebrities, and podcasters I follow. And on the following tab that’s all I see. If they retweet too much bullshit or stuff that stresses me out, I eventually unfollow.
We need to end private Space Flight because these fucks are too utterly irresponsible to be trusted with its responsibility.
For a brief while I was also getting beds that are also Jesus embracing a sleeping woman
I use twitter almost exclusively for sports stuff. It's still the best place to get up to date information on like NBA transactions and NFL practice reports and college football recruiting news and whatnot. It's still pretty good for TTRPG stuff - and none of the alternatives are even close on these accounts yet. I do get the occasional stray cringey Pantsuit Nation tweet across my timeline or sometimes Mark Hamill will make fun of Trump in a way that everyone on there will retweet, but I haven't seen any actual Nazi stuff on my following page.
I get some of those, but lately it’s been mostly AI disabled veterans holding signs that say (with misspellings and a handful of obvious AI butchered letters) “no one cares that it’s my birthday” or some such.
Oh hey I took a screenshot of one of the Jesus ones, have a dead rat
Steam
You can also turn off retweets on a per account basis, so if you want to follow someone because you're interested in their stuff but their retweets are too much, you can choose to not see those.
though, i do love how much every other platform thinks it's the other ones that house all the mouth breathers or whatever. twitter describing things as reddit while being very twitter is a fun parallel to all our twitter threads mocking twitter while being very twitter.
feels very much like regional rivalries between towns with their only real difference between them is the number of sonics..
On the other hand, as far as I know there isn't a hint of an algorithm here dictating what we all see.
Unless threads and replied being sorted chronologically counts as an algorithm, maybe it does I dunno.
My Twitter account went unused for something like 15 years and was apparently hacked and turned into a Russian pornbot. It got banned for it but I can still log in to view things, I just can't post (which is fine, I had never tweeted or commented on anything ever, nor planned to). But I can't change anything about my profile so I eternally have some random, mostly naked woman now for my profile pic if I ever happen to log in to view something lol
I've been off social media for like five years now and I miss Twitter for learning about sales and limited releases for stuff I collect, but it has been a worthy trade.
Technically, the forum has a “best of” feed that’s basically as useless as Twitter’s For You feed.
The last time I tried to sell a moderately high ticket item and listed it on both Marketplace and Craigslist I got something like 2 replies on Craigslist and 50+ on Marketplace.
It’s pretty futile trying to use anything but Marketplace these days for selling shit locally.
Reacting/responding to tweets about bad things you don't like, and especially mentioning things to talk about how they are bad is treated the exact same by the website as if you were enthusiastically posting about something you did like. Engagement is the key, and it's fed by how much you interface with a subject, how much the people you follow interface with it, and probably how much you stop scrolling to read a tweet about that subject.
Go here and see what the site thinks you wanna hear about: https://twitter.com/settings/content_you_see
I had to cull a mountain of stuff lately and it was very enlightening as to why my feed seemed so obsessed with certain boring/exhausting topics.
Is the algorithm pulling from things the people you follow tweet about? A buddy got into the Clippers and started tweeting about them a lot, and then I """"mysteriously"""" started seeing a bunch of ads for basketball generally and the Clippers specifically, I can't help but suspect a connection
Edit: And to be clear, I never interacted with the Clippers stuff (or with anything, I purely scroll)
That’s just good taste