Maybe Bluesky has "won"

Twitter/X is great. I like it quite a lot. Follow people you like and keep that number under 100. Or if you just started, under 25 and add people slowly. Unfollow people quickly if they annoy you! Or mute them if you still like them but they annoy you temporarily.

There's two feeds: for you (the algo) and following. following is the traditional only people you know feed.

If you're having trouble with the people on X you might need to reconsider yourself. Why are you not open to many viewpoints? Diversity of thought and people should be welcome and if you hope to change minds, you do need to be able to interact with those people to do so.

I did theater when I was younger, and I think a lot of my 'open' friends weren't open per-say they were just weird and like being in the weird group more than being truly open.

I can handle other view points, what I won't put up with is disinformation, straight up lies, and racism/sexism. They immediately go in the bin. Unfortunately that's simply not possible in the firehose feed on X since the trash is promoted to the top and I would guess that 90% of blue checks are bots either from American PACs or Russian/CCP/Iran/N. Korea.

Not too long ago I would have agreed with you. That was, for a long time a decent way to enjoy Twitter, even when people were already long claiming it was an unpleasant place.

But for the current situation you are just misrepresenting the problem.

Aggressively maintaining a decent follow list no longer helps.

And "other viewpoints" are not the problem. Every somewhat popular tweet has automated replies full of porn bots and clearly automated answers that say basically nothing or just try to provoke or advertise.

"Following" has become infuriatingly useless too because it algorithmically sorts in nonsensical ways.

The result: many tweets I would have liked to see get completely buried while others get shown to me over and over as I visit the site.

I'm so incredibly tired of algorithmic timelines.

It used to be a good tool on interesting updates on hobbies I enjoy. Now it just wants to waste my time, and I'm just not interested in screaming matches about daily politics.

That includes echo chambers too so it is not about differing opinions even, I don't need people from "my side" telling me again and again what the "enemy" is doing wrong and how I am supposed get angry at that.

This. I used to have two very ruthlessly curated accounts, and at the moment, trying to keep them like that is a lost cause.

i'll note that everyone, even the guys i like and never post about politics are posting politics. interesting times.

i will probably work through my physical book backlog in the meantime.

other things: i use the web app exclusively. the bots have been pushed to the bottom of all replies or hidden. the following feed is unaltered and chrono (annoyingly so, some posters post A LOT). and i know even hovering on things i dislike for too long will show me more of that. i get good good content from non american friends so i have a hunch this is a unique american thing rn

> Aggressively maintaining a decent follow list no longer helps.

> I'm so incredibly tired of algorithmic timelines.

Then why not just use your following lists? I have a main list of people I follow, mostly people I know, then a bunch of topical lists for various topics, from silly stuff to NLP.

Well then don't get on Bluesky either, which is teeming with disinformation, straight up lies, and racism/sexism.