[Albion] Twitter

[philgull25]

Do people still use it?

Used to be fun place for Albion discussion and debate, but seem to just be full of school kids insulting and outdoing each other these days. Not sure I can be bother with it.

 

[bluenitsuj]

Do people still use it?

Used to be fun place for Albion discussion and debate, but seem to just be full of school kids insulting and outdoing each other these days. Not sure I can be bother with it.

Yes I use it for footie news and to follow local businesses. I don't get bothered with any crap as I don't follow it and/or block it.

 

[Sheebo]

Used to - load of bollocks now full of false theory’s and plastics. Also the whole ‘who can post the coolest gif’ thing and use words like ‘ratio’ makes it not for me now - young kids platform on the whole.

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

Yes, regularly. It always amuses me that people struggle with the concept of not following/muting people you’re not interested in hearing from.

 

[Hamilton]

Left last month and love the fact that I am less angry. It's a cess pit.

 

[Acker79]

I use it more as a source of info that a social thing - I follow people who post information or opinions I'm interested in. Never really look at replies to their tweets and never really chat with anyone on there, so it has never really felt like a cesspit - except when the people I follow are highlighting such things.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Yes, regularly. It always amuses me that people struggle with the concept of not following/muting people you’re not interested in hearing from.

I don't post now but look at it every now and again and I'm just bombarded with suggested tweets from others that my follows follow or adverts. Will only get worse now Musk is running it. Not for me, Clive.

 

[Weststander]

I login in a couple of times a year to look at positive stuff from people I like, such as Albion footballers.

Genuinely, I’ve never read the musings of twittering twats. I know some people get involved in that for entertainment, winding up political opponents with ease.

 

[KZNSeagull]

It may not be around much longer. It won't be missed

 

[Acker79]

I don't post now but look at it every now and again and I'm just bombarded with suggested tweets from others that my follows follow or adverts. Will only get worse now Musk is running it. Not for me, Clive.

Have you made sure to set it to 'following' or 'Latest'? I've always had it like that, but I've seen a few people complaining about their timeline being all over the place and getting lots of nonsense and the solution is usually to switch to 'following' (desktop - top of the timeline) or 'latest' (app - click the star in the top right).

I still get 'promoted' tweets in my timetline, but as I block them when they come up, they are mostly now promoting tweets from movie studios that I follow anyway, so barely notice them now.

 

[Frutos]

Yes

 

[Farehamseagull]

Used to use it a lot but came off about 3 years ago as it’s a cesspit of humanity.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Have you made sure to set it to 'following' or 'Latest'? I've always had it like that, but I've seen a few people complaining about their timeline being all over the place and getting lots of nonsense and the solution is usually to switch to 'following' (desktop - top of the timeline) or 'latest' (app - click the star in the top right).

I still get 'promoted' tweets in my timetline, but as I block them when they come up, they are mostly now promoting tweets from movie studios that I follow anyway, so barely notice them now.

I’ll have a look. But…

 

[Acker79]

I’ll have a look. But…

Can't say that has happened for me, yet. It used to, when they first introduced the two styles a few years ago, but eventually settled down.

 

[AlbionBro]

Left last month and love the fact that I am less angry. It's a cess pit.

I would say you made the move of your life, as that place will just explode with angry people throwing a few "ratios" in and some might even go for the z word (Zerbi).
Fortunately, you should be in a safe place here.

 

[Acker79]

There was another thread about twitter, mainly about musk's takeover, and the decline of twitter that resulted. I posted in there some of the other thread, in case anyone is interested:

There appear to be a few new social medias trying to grow as an/the alternative as twitter seems to be crumbling. There seem to be standard 'new system' problems with all them - small workforces dealing with large surge in sign ups, system still being built. Then there's the simple 'I'm so used to twitter, how do I do [x] here?' thing people may need to get over.

I've been trying to track where all the people I follow on twitter are moving to because they all seem to be going to different places. I don't know if anyone is interested, but thought I'd share some comments on the various systems I've looked at.

Mastodon
Was the first destination to gain traction, and feels very much like the front runner alternative.
My experience has been a complicated sign up process, but once over that, it's not too dissimilar to my experience with twitter. It has 'instances' where you base your account, so you need to find an instance to register with. Once you have you can follow anyone on any instance. You can switch between a 'home' feed of the people you follow which is like twitter. You can also switch to a local feed with posts from people in your instance. Or a federated feed with all posts.
Finding an instance is the difficult part - each is run separately with their own local rules (there are some core across all instances). Some allow anyone to register, some require you to request permission to register, some need invites, etc. But once you're in it all gets much simpler.

Hive
This is a more recent starter. Feels like it has a vibe of 'lesser known alternative, but we're the secret cool option'.
A few of the people I follow looked at this one. Mostly comedians/comedy actors that went this way. It's app only (no browser version currently available). It's a small start up, seems to be newer than mastodon so is still in its infancy as an app. But has a similar single feed to twitter. Was recently down for a while as they patched a security issue (preventive in response to a scare at twitter, preferring to go off line and fix rather then stay up and risk exposure), but has now relaunched. New app is a bit faster. Looks snazzy. Easiest way to register for me was with my apple account (I tried to register with my email but it struggled to accept that). New app is still waiting approval on google app store. It lets you add music to your profile (one free song, if you want multiple songs need to link to an apple music account)
EDIT: Update now available on android.
This is probably one of the simplest alternatives. Let's you select topics of interest for the 'explore' section rather than trying to predict using algorithms

Post.
Another one early in it's infancy, has a feel of decorum, knows it isn't cool, or the popular option, but is confident in itself, and it's own selling points (which is to a left leaning, wordy audience.
It's not fully functional, inverted from hive this is only browser based at the moment (you can bookmark a link on your phone if you want to pretend it's an app). This one seems to be popular with the writers I follow (hence the wordy feel). This currently has two feeds - an 'explore' which is a general feed, and 'following' for just the people you are, erm, following. Again, it's currently a small team keeping it running at the moment. When I signed up I had to go on a waiting list, took a week, but when they did let me in, they noted they were letting a lot more people in as a stress test. I think it's still officially in Beta.
EDIT: I've since discovered this site has micro transactions. Every user gets 50c to start with. I assume you can buy more if you want. It can be used to tip people, some accounts put articles behind "pay walls" usually only 1 or 2c is enough to access or tip. It's not an obligation to tip, the word count is unlimited, so some people are producing full on articles, so compensating them with tips or dropping a cent or two to access could be considered reasonable.

James Gunn (writer/director/co-ceo of DC films) seems to be signing up to everything and when he signed up to some of the above, some of his followers suggested others that I've checked out:

Counter Social
Gunn is the only person I follow on twitter who has moved there (or publicised it). This isn't one I've been comfortable with because it has a dashboard presentation. There are lots of various widgets with your following feed in one widget, suggestions in another, notifications in another, etc. It's like staring at nine screens at the same time. I think you can add/remove them, but because I'm only following Gunn and he is posting everywhere else, I've not really lingered on this one. Did have a simple sign up process, though. Currently is proudly ad free.

Vero
This seems popular with artists - explore sections are separated into music, photography, film. A very glossy interface. It is not accessible in a browser, but is available via desktop apps (apparently, I've not checked that out so can't comment on it). Like counter social, I've not spent a lot of time here because not enough of the people I'm interested in following are on here.


They all seem to be selling themselves as nicer places, and generally the users there agree.

Personally, my experience of twitter was like the introvert sat in the corner at the party - I never really engaged with anyone, never really looked at replies, I used it as a source of info following journalists for news/sports etc, comedians for the funny, actors/directors/movies for first official look at trailers etc. So I was never really exposed to the more toxic side of twitter. (and also why I don't publicise my account here or anywhere).

They all allow longer messages (Post. tends to be the biggest, which may be why it's popular with writers).

I imagine a lot of people here will be interested in NSFW policies; A problem with online services is the issue of nudity/sexual content. Apple is quite strict about it with their app store, banks don't like to deal with companies trading porn, which is why tumblr banned it. Twitter has gotten away with it because it was too big to not work with. Most of the above are banning nudity. Mastodon don't, but will ban any that are not appropriately labelled - settings allow you to show or hide sensitive content (I think perhaps the instances allows them to circumvent the rules). Hive allows nudity in art, but not general nudity. Others aren't clear, and I haven't really looked to find out.

[Technology] - Elon Musk and Twitter

I joined Mastodon a few weeks back but have struggled to get my head around how you can tell what is a legit account or not across the multiple servers. By my understanding anyone can set up a server say newscentral.social, and then set themselves up with a name that people might trust i.e...

www.northstandchat.com

 

[BN9 BHA]

I look at it every day, i find it really useful for local traffic information.
I have found plenty of ways around ignoring stuff I don’t want to see, muted words is a good one.
Plenty of interesting accounts to follow and tweets that make me laugh.

 

[Weststander]

I look at it every day, i find it really useful for local traffic information.
I have found plenty of ways around ignoring stuff I don’t want to see, muted words is a good one.
Plenty of interesting accounts to follow and tweets that make me laugh.

Sadly, I use the AA for that.

 

[A1X]

Cricket Twitter is genuinely wonderful. I try to avoid Football Twitter.

 

[albion534]

I just use it for checking latest news and stuff. I never comment.