What I do:

1. move 99% of my follows to lists, so I get less useless, dopamine level hacking spam 2. anyone can just call me to say hi, chat or rant: https://sonnet.io/posts/hi

When it comes to making any meaningful, or at least interesting connections with people, I’ve had more success with 2. in a month, than with Twitter in the past 10 years or so.

I miss forums though.

Back in the day when blogging is still hot, many "tech bloggers" that I read exchanges "friend links" between their blogs so their readers can discover other blogs. Many high-end bloggers are quite picky on who they would exchange links with (after all the link is displayed on the home page), which resulted a high quality read list.

Maybe people should resume doing it.

PS. "back in the day" does makes it sounded old, but it was just 15 years ago or so.

I’ve found http://leantl.com pretty great at making Twitter at least somewhat bearable. It’s essentially a redirect to: https://twitter.com/search?src=typed_query&q=filter%3Afollow...

twitter's time and place has passed. Was clever and even a bit useful for a while, and like facebook, has been taken over by fake accounts, bots, scammer, shameless self-promoters and partisan hate on both sides yelling at each other

Tweeting these days is like screaming into a hurricane and hoping someone will hear it.

I've blocked twitter (and other social media) in my hosts file on my mac - can't get to it, can't follow links to it and haven't missed it a bit. May have even dropped my BP a couple of points.

Recommendation algorithms really need to come with extensive UIs for tweaking, tuning and cleanup (less like this, more like this, don't include this, you're seeing this because of... etc...), maybe completely new 'exploration UIs' to actively find new stuff at the edge and beyond my own bubble.

For instance, having to open random YouTube links in private browsing mode just to prevent that the home page is forever "poisoned" with this specific type of crap is kinda bizarre.

IMHO recommendation algorithms could be really useful if they allowed the user to play a more active role. Give us a "power user UI".

IMO as a hacker it's better to focus on maintaining a personal website, feed and newsletter which is under your control rather than spendeng time on a giant platform which is fully out of your control.

    the timeline that Twitter fills using their
    algorithm instead of just chronologically showing
    tweets of people you follow

You can still see the tweets chronologically:

https://twitter.com/marekgibney/status/1482303273352769543

> I'm sure Twitter is well aware of how their algorithm works, and I'm sure it yields the best results for the majority of their users, but I apparently don't belong in that group.

The algorithms are optimised to crank up the engagement metrics. Though that’s certainly good for Twitter, whether that’s actually the best thing for their users is up for debate.

People complain about how bad twitter is all the time and that just isn't my experience. Sure, I sometimes search for my shitty senator and get pissed off by the terrible things he is doing but most of the time what I see on twitter is interesting at best and boring at worst. If twitter recommends something I don't like, I click on the three dots and click not interested in this tweet.

@brentroose Have you considered either of the following?

Path A:

1. Search and find folks that you wish to follow...i think you mentioned php devs, etcx. But, look for their personal blogs, websites - not twitter.

2. When you have found the folks you might want to follow, try and follow any rss/atom feeds that they be publishing for their blogs/sites. If none, then maybe reach out to them and ask what might be a good mechanism to follow them (which ideally is not twitter).

Path B:

1. Research the Fediverse (https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse)...for platforms, communities on mastodon, pleroma, etc.

2. Once you have established your identity on the fediverse (either stood up your own instance, or joined someone else's or whatever), then look for communities focused around the topics for the people you wish to follow...and then follow them on the fediverse (no twitter-like algorithm here on the fediverse).

Finally...Path C:

You can actually pursue both of the above paths if you wish! :-)

> So, here's where I need your help: I really want to discover more interesting people online; people who write about PHP, webdev, and programming; people who dare to challenge ideas that we take for granted; content that makes us think outside our box. But how do I find those people?

I'm subscribed to your RSS feed, that's how I follow people who write about webdev. ;)

I wish there was an option for an algorithmic timeline but only across accounts I follow.

I use the algorithmic timeline because a lot of people I follow are in a different timezone, so chronologic means I just never see their tweets. But in the last few months, it feels like I see more tweets from accounts I don’t follow than those I do.

Like many homepages powered by recommendation algorithms, it's useful to actively dislike content you don't want to see. (e.g. YouTube)

Twitter tends to suggest trending tweets on topics it assumes I'm interested in. It tends to pick up self-promoters posting sensational headlines. I tell Twitter "See less tweets like this" and also mute that account. Doing so a few times definitely improved my experience on the timeline.

Recommendation algorithms help me find interesting content I wouldn't have found otherwise, but are not yet smart enough to filter noise on its own. Just like one tends their own garden by pruning weeds, it helps to actively maintain one's timeline.

You can only complain up to a point. Twitter cannot stand in for your own judgment about who to follow. If you blindly follow the recommendations of a free engagement machine you will get what you paid for. Twitter is big enough that there is a huge variety on there, and almost always the solution is to follow better people. You cannot do that overnight. I have a great experience on Twitter, because I follow some really excellent people. It took 5-10 years to get there, and it should, because you can't speedrun the process of figuring out who you want to listen to and what you care about.

the whole concept of fitting meaningful and thought-out things in 1xx characters is miserable imho.

I recommend using Twitter's search if you want to find tweets on a particular topic. If someone posts several worthwhile tweets, you can follow them. Over time, you'll start getting retweets of good content. You can follow those people. Use Tweetdeck and create lists by topic. The most important thing is to take your time.

There's no way I'd let Twitter tell me which tweets I should see. You're going to end up with people that promote themselves and their friends, and that promotion gets annoying in a hurry - if I wanted that I'd watch QVC.

I mostly try to avoid accounts with more than 100K followers. A lot of them post information of questionable accuracy because that's how you generate interest in your account. Moreover, they aren't likely to interact unless you're in their inner circle, which makes for a boring experience.

For me, twitter home is just random. Developers should check their code, there must be bugs or something. I ve been using twitter chronologically for years now which begs the question: why did we give up on rss?

Hard same: https://mcarter.me/posts/twitter-makes-me-feel-bad

Twitter Home is obviously bad and it scares me that the majority of people who use Twitter use Twitter Home as their setup.

Twitter (social media) goals and your (our) needs won't ever be aligned you (we) should use something else.

> Twitter Home made me miserable

This is more the author's fault than anyone else's. Sure, Twitter is a scammy cesspool, but the author needs to exercise some self-control.

Tweetbot is free, hides ads, can sort chronologically, and you can filter out other people's likes, retweets, and replies.

Go to the icon on the top right (the star one), select 'See Latest Tweets'. The experience will improve

I always do latest, and I read reddit on new except in very specific circumstances

One model is to put good ideas out with minor mistakes and welcome corrections.

> Unfortunately for me, I find external sources (blog posts, news articles, etc) often the most relevant and insightful; and Twitter deliberately filters them out when discovering new people.

Right, so what the author is looking for is... RSS feeds? Twitter is simply a poor-man marketed RSS feeds aggregation with all kind of flavored noises.

To me it feels like the author is not interested in what the people have to say, but more like a network of shared resources on specific topics. Well then, maybe reddit is a generic answer, and HN or lobste.rs for specialized topics.

> uses twitter

> get's annoyed by twitter

> write's a blog post about being annoyed by twitter

Am I the only one?