Notes on making Twitter a better experience for yourself by avoiding culture war topics and other unpleasant forms of discourse. Here are some of my practices for making Twitter more human friendly.
Mute keywords
Go to Settings > Privacy and Safety > Mute and block > Muted words.
Mute words for things you don’t want to hear about. You can set a time limit on mutes if there is something you want to go away for only a short time period.
e.g. usually the tweets I see about politics are relatively thoughtful but at one point I got tired of hearing about election discussion and muted “Trump”, “Vance”, “Biden” and “Harris”.
Note that depending on how generic the word you mute is, you can mute undesirable things. Picking a specific word is important, but often our sanity can be more important than a few missed tweets. We don’t yet have semantic muting.
Mute accounts
Even if you don’t follow them, certain account’s tweets might appear in your feed due to retweets or algorithmic suggestions. If you find an account consistently posting content you’d rather not see in your feed or the replies, you can mute them. I prefer muting to blocking since it is a lighter approach, but I have resorted to blocking in at least one instance for someone who showed up a lot in comments sections I was interested in; Twitter would still show.
e.g. I have muted Elon because marking his posts as “Not interested” was not enough to get him of my For you feed. If he does something that’s actually interesting/relevant I trust will probably end up hearing or seeing it some other route than directly from him which I’m okay with.
Mark posts as “Not interested”
When you come across a tweet you don’t like, you can signal to Twitter that you’re not interested.
- Click the three dots on the tweet.
- Select “Not interested in this Tweet.”
- Optionally select “Show fewer posts from USERNAME” to tell the algorithm you want to see less of them on your feed. There’s also a “This post isn’t relevant” option, but I’m not sure what Twitter’s intent is with that one. Over time, this helps fine-tune the algorithm.
Unfollow accounts
Sometimes I realize I’m still subscribed to an account that’s no longer relevant to my interests, or perhaps they’ve started sharing too much off-topic material. I don’t do any sort of regular review of my following list, I just do it on an as needed basis.
Use the Following tab exclusively
You can opt to use the “Following” tab to see tweets only from accounts you follow, in reverse chronological order. This bypasses the For you feed’s algorithm entirely.
Personally, I prefer the For You page for the greater variety of material and my following count is too high to keep up with all the content.
Use “turn off reposts”
Some people you follow may post great original content but often retweet things you’re not interested in. You can turn off retweets for specific accounts.
- Go to the profile of the account.
- Click the three dots next to the “Following” button.
- Select “Turn off Retweets.”
h/t to vgel for pointing out this one
Browser extensions
Disable engagement bait sections like the Explore panels. You can also hide like and view counts if that’s something you’d like. Use browser extensions like [Minimal Theme for Twitter](Minimal Theme for Twitter / X - Chrome Web Store (google.com)) to accomplish plugins.
Similar for disabling “Recommended Videos” and Shorts on YouTube with Enhancer for YouTube or other browser plugins.
Should we have to be doing all this?
Ideally, no. But absent changes in incentives for social media companies, tools like this are very valuable.
”Our interactions” bookmarklet
Use https://twitter-bookmarklet.glitch.me/ to create a bookmarklet that will show you the interactions between you and a profile of your choice.