Twitter is a powerful tool that has become essential for my online activity. We build our communities, our projects there, and it is mainly there that I create and maintain the audience for our podcast.
But Twitter is scary, anxiety-provoking and addictive – dangerous when it becomes the landmark and the megaphone of the far-right, also when it fails to moderate and protect in the climates of harassment that set in there. If the small steps of the network multiply to moderate these effects, they are insufficient.
However, it’s been over a year since I developed little practices and manias that have considerably improved my use of the tool – so much so that it no longer worries me. Here are some of them ????
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Lists have been around for a long time on Twitter, and that’s probably why they are still rarely used. Yet, they have become really powerful since they can be pinned directly to his welcome.
They then become kinds of alternative Timelines, themed by you (and in which there is no sponsored tweet ????)
My most important list: Focus.
I limit it to 50 accounts, and only select mutus and people whose tweets I don’t want to miss. If there was one list that you should try to adopt, this is it. Often times, I only open Twitter and check it out – especially when I’m aware that the news is hectic and I don’t feel ready to take on my main Timeline.
Otherwise, I have 2 examples that can inspire you.
Passionate about consumer technology, my list Tech is filled with tech journalists, often American, but also French. I also have a great interest in weather forecast : my dedicated list only contains specialized accounts to get my dose of weather data and advanced forecasts.
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The algorithmic timeline is frustrating: it brings out responses to tweets from people that we do not yet follow; or it shows too many Likes that drown the tweets written by the people I follow.
But it has great advantages: the sections ” In case you missed it In particular are effective when you want to have a digest of the writings of the day.
These objects of frustration are not inevitable.
By dint of having systematically used the button “This tweet does not interest me” (see below), Likes have completely disappeared from my timeline, replies to people I did not follow too.
Every few weeks, they are back, but it is now a matter of repeating the maneuver once or twice to find an algorithmic Timeline which only contains my followings and their RTs.
A TL I can depend on eased my need to open it too often, and made it effective at catching up on content that I might be interested in that I might have missed.
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Currently, I force myself not to follow more than 400 people. This is probably the hardest trick to pull off, but it pays off.
This requires making compromises, and thinking more about what you choose to read every day, and it may even lead you to have to regularly re-consider all your followings to take a step back, and free up space for your virtual quota.
The consequence is logical and simple, and goes hand in hand with my previous point: we have an algorithmic timeline that is more suitable, and more focused for ourselves.-
Particularly when you are an activist, a permanent and active online presence can be a source of anxiety, even wake up or create traumas.
It’s a tip that we all know, but I cannot fail to mention it as it has contributed to making me serene on Twitter: hide without doubting. Unlike blocking, it does not affect anyone in that it is only a matter of taking care of yourself first and foremost.
My telling example is about police violence that rots our well-being over and over again. Often linked to very violent images, I have for a long time masked a fairly large lexical field directly or indirectly related to the subject. If I now wish to actively read on the subject, it will have to be a step on my part – and no longer it will land without my consent in front of my eyes.
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I know there are a lot of people who have ditched the use of the algorithmic timeline, and are using the timeline view, I also know that others have activated a daily screen time limit for the Twitter app. I’m sharing here the tips that I think are the most universal, but it’s important to experiment and find out what works best for you.
And you ? Have you been using lists since we can pin them?
What are your tips for opening Twitter more calmly every day? Come talk to me: D
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