I have just joined Twitter for the first time. Mainly so I can read more from the Twitter links in the Ukraine Thread.

Please recommend some ‘follows’ (is that how I am supposed to say it?).

I’m interested in Ukraine and ‘others’, please (somehow) indicate if your recommendation is Ukraine based or not.

I am now off to see how to follow STW…

Quit. I did 4 years ago and it improved my world sadness levels by at least 1%.

I was expecting that comment, but not as the first reply 😀

I don’t use SM much and am aware that it is a bit of an echo chamber so I will take care, but thanks for the warning. I also think I can cope with a 1% shift in my mood 😉

World Bollard Association

I love this account. https://t.co/nwVqlJAKgM

— LittleBigLesbian 🏳️‍⚧️ VTuber 🔞 (@LittleBigN3k0) October 16, 2022

@matt_outandabout

Love it! It’s my 2nd follow!

It pisses me off but I think that’s mosly because I’ve no idea how it really works

I follow some people (bollards included) but I have no idea what that actually does for me.  I don’t, for example, get to see all today’s tweets by those I follow and if I do follow a tweet that gets served up and it’s a response to somethng else, I can’t see a way od reading the post before it.

Then there’s the getting to the bottom and “see more” all the bloody time – often only showing an extra half dozen of what is clearly hundreds.  Why not show more intially ?

Sometimes it’s handy for finding live music in the area. I don’t use Facebook.

twitter.com/swear_trek

twitter.com/forest_fr1ends

the parody accounts

twitter.com/Parody_PM

twitter.com/JeremyHunt_MP

twitter.com/LKTranslator

twitter.com/Number10cat

ColdWarSteve
Brian Bilston

There’s more but I cba doomscrolling through my follows

Ranty Highwayman for tech info on roads, paths and cycle routes.

We Rate Dogs for a bit of a lift.

Confusing Perspective
There is no cat in this image
In Otter News
PunHub
Shit Planning

The key thing with Twitter is to manage your feed. So:
Mute words that you don’t want to see/will make you angry
Block accounts that do the same. Piers Morgan is a good start.
Set your feed to chronological. It means you (mostly) only get to see who you follow and not what Twitter think you want to see
Turn off retweets (on some accounts), some accounts retweet a lot of crap, this allows you to not see it.
Manage who you follow. There are plenty of people I’ve unfollowed after a period of time. If they don’t add value to your feed then unfollow.

Afraid it is a gateway to despair.
Avoid anything even slightly politically unless you’re ready to lose all hope. It’s genuinely frightening how few clicks will take you from a seemingly innocuous current affairs post straight to comments from openly proud racists.
As with all social media, it would probably be great if you could turn the comments off.

In terms of who to follow:
Miranda Keeling
George Pointon
Josh Pugh
Erika Thompson
Verity Milligan
Ufe
Bob Mortimer
James Blunt
Twop Twips

There is some great ones coming in, I may have to slow down who I add to my following list!

@lunge – Interesting post, thanks.

The key thing with Twitter is to manage your feed.

This. It’s a popular whine but like most social media the content you see comes down to your own quality control. You can (usually) read an account’s output before deciding to follow it.

I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over populating a feed on a new account, it’ll happen organically. I started out by just following people I actually know.

@raf_luton

Parody account of the top secret RAF Luton. You’d be amazed at the number of people who leap in to “correct” their photo descriptions.

Can’t help with Ukraine accounts though – I’ll click through a few of the links in that thread and the political ones but rarely follow them direct.

Dreadnaught Holiday (@dreadships), for the French pre-dreadnaught class warships and Tour de France Lanterne Rouge support.

Honestly it’s a horrid pit that sucks up all your time. Just don’t.

Dreadnought Holiday and World Bollard good recs if you must.

Be liberal with the block/mute buttons to make it bearable.

Don’t follow any cycle warriors. You know the ones who post about every poor bit of cycle infrastructure… it’s depressing.
I used to use it to find out about music stuff, tours, releases etc… but since well, Trump really, everything became politicised – then Covid.. it just became an echo chamber of the same shite. Hardly go on there now.
The worst thing when you do go on there is the promoted feeds and ads – cleverly disguised as posts you signed up for… irritates the shit out of me.
Then there’s all the stuff you should be following, promoted down the right hand side.. celebrity gossip bollocks. Yeah, you can control your own feeds, but all the stuff you don’t want to see gets shoved in your face anyway.

Don’t follow any cycle warriors. You know the ones who post about every poor bit of cycle infrastructure… it’s depressing.

Oh my God this. Most of the ones posting daily! video interactions with other road users. angry show-offs who’re just feeding their own followers with daily spite. How they get enough footage is beyond me.

I follow a lot of the political editors of newspapers and BBC/ITN/Sky news. you often get news faster, follow a number of the academics commenting on Ukraine, various parody sites (as above) some friends and so on. You have to be careful, some of Twitter is vile.

It’s a popular whine but like most social media the content you see comes down to your own quality control.

Not so with Facebook, if you try and cull the random crap it fills up your feed with, it just fills it with even more random crap.

I don’t want any ‘suggested’ content, but it seems that this is impossible.

(FWIW I was on Twitter for about 20 minutes, then realised I didn’t really care what Geraint Thomas had for breakfast so binned it off)

What kind of music do you like? For smaller bands and artists, it’s still great. There was a time when it was great for the bigger acts as well, but abuse (mostly from outside the UK) has led most of them to hand their accounts over to professionals so they don’t have to read and interact with the nutters.

Oh, Cold War Steve… a modern day Hogarth. Essential.

Not so with Facebook, if you try and cull the random crap it fills up your feed with, it just fills it with even more random crap.

I get the occasional promoted post but I just ignore it.

Bookmarking www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr shows your feed in chronological order, that helps too.

I don’t want any ‘suggested’ content, but it seems that this is impossible.

FB Purity is what you seek.

I get the occasional promoted post

Really? Genuinely, 95% of the stuff in my feed is Sponsored (i.e. ads) or Suggested For You. ONly the tiny remainder is stuff I actually follow, and rarer still are actual posts by actual friends.

FB Purity is what you seek.

I’d never heard of that, but a quick Google suggests it doesn’t work on mobile browsers.

I love @fesshole – there is some really amusing stuff on that account.

FB Purity is what you seek.

nice one. Never mind “tip of the week”, this might be “tip of the year”! I almost started a thread moaning this week as the FB algorithm seemed to have changed & I was literally getting 3-5 sponsored/suggested post in between every real post. This has basically cleaned everything up. Amazing!!

Weirdly hypnotic

Tweets by selling_mirrors

nice one. Never mind “tip of the week”, this might be “tip of the year”! I almost started a thread moaning this week as the FB algorithm seemed to have changed & I was literally getting 3-5 sponsored/suggested post in between every real post. This has basically cleaned everything up. Amazing!!

Are you using it on a phone or a ‘proper’ computer?

Agree about not following cylcowarriors. Once interesting and funny people that have descended into a ranty world of hatred and bile. There is one who lives local to me who used to post interesting stuff about all sorts, including some rather nice bits of kit that she made. But that all went by the wayside and was replaced by how she wanted to kill everyone who didn’t agree with her or drove a car. Odd. Unfollow.

I mostly follow the lighter stuff and a few people off here.

I also block any account that follows me where the profile picture is a pouty faced orange 20 something with her chest pushed up to a gravity defying extreme. Robots innit.

Just looked at FB Purity – is it just me that thinks the risks associated with an extension being able to ‘read and change my data on all Facebook sites’ sounds more than a little bit risky?

Are you using it on a phone or a ‘proper’ computer?

Mac

Just looked at FB Purity – is it just me that thinks the risks associated with an extension being able to ‘read and change my data on all Facebook sites’ sounds more than a little bit risky?

It’s been around since the Internet was in black and white. You’re right to be sceptical but if they were up to anything dodgy they’d certainly have been busted by now.

They could always get hacked, of course.

Yeah, it (or at least the version I installed on Mac!) is just Javascript, you can go through the code & see exactly what it’s doing. Obviously, I haven’t done that, but a quick Google shows it’s really popular so I’m sure people have and, as above, would have pointed it out if there were anything dodgy going on! (although that said, I did just find an older post which recommended only getting it from their actual website as the versions on the Chrome webstore weren’t official and did contain malware!)

David Blanchflower
Richard Murphy

What about Reddit instead?
You can stick to the subs of interest (I use it for dj’s and bands) and avoid the shit (politics….unless that’s your thing, then good luck).
Twitter is vile. You’ll regret joining it sooner or later.

For Ukraine stuff, just see what’s posted in the Ukraine thread.

Three Year Letterman is worth following for when someone doesn’t realize it’s a parody account.

pic.twitter.com/dfOxrh5kzm

— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) October 15, 2022

For fun I follow these:
Poorly translated shirts.
Fesshole.
Bob Servant.
…and the parody accounts including Ken Clarke (@MrKennethClarke)

I don’t look at anything serious anymore because of the spiteful and crazy comments.

I like twitter, but you do need to keep on top of your list and have a cull every now and then. And yeah, there are some real crazies out there.

There is plenty of wholesome stuff in among the crazies and downright depressing bigotry. For example, Andrew McCarthy, an amateur astro-photographer who takes some staggering shots and is happy to discuss his equipment and techniques.

The ethereal Pillars of Creation by my backyard telescope/Hubble/JWST.

Probably my favorite area of the sky, I’m thrilled we have the technology in our lifetimes to look deeper into it. Perhaps one day humanity will visit them? pic.twitter.com/DcGzn8FhuM

— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) October 19, 2022