Taming Twitter

There is a lot that is good about Twitter and at its best it is a great source of information and inspiration. Many prominent people are signed up and put out a tonne of decent, worthwhile content.

However, the good is massively overwhelmed by a torrent, a tsunami, of utter shite. Oh my god.

Before social media, we got our news from journalists. They are invariably smart, professionally trained, with a sense of ethical responsibility and an awareness that the world they report on is complex. For the majority of Twitter users this is very much not the case, and the algorithms busily optimising for engagement promote the most annoying and stupid people with the most annoying and stupid opinions.

The simple steps below are the path to salvation.

Step 1 - Create Lists

Create some lists that you will use to group the people you currently follow. Mine are Thinkers, Travel and Friends and Family - yours will be different.

A word of warning - Twitter will silently tell people that you added them to your list, so be careful with the naming :-).

Step 2 - Move the people you follow to your Lists

Next, you need to work through the people you follow and, one by one, add them to the Lists you have created, and once done, remember to unfollow each person.

You might take the opportunity to cull a few of the people you follow if their net contribution to your emotional wellbeing is negative.

The goal is to move everyone you want to hear from into your Lists and reduce the number of people you follow to zero.

Step 3 - Disable Trends

For me, Trends was the gateway back into a world of suffering. The Trends function can not be disabled, but it can be effectively disabled.

Adjust the location of your Trends in the settings; I choose ‘Suriname’ which seems to have remarkably little going on.

Step 4 - Enjoy Twitter!

That’s it. You can have all of the good that Twitter undoubtedly has to offer, with almost none of the bad.