Official Twitter Thread (1 Viewer)

[djmich]

IK: who do you follow on X? Just curious, as I trust your judgment and enjoy your posts. Glad to take this to PMs if you prefer.

Sure. Here are some folks who I feel fairly comfortable recommending. My criteria for following somebody is they need to post interesting stuff, in good faith, hopefully with a sense of humor. I don't like people who just post on one or two topics incessantly, and I don't like people who are overly negative. For example, I basically agree with @wesyang on the topics he posts about, but it's just too much.

I'll break this down into people who I see as more or less on my side ("red team," very loosely speaking) and bubble-busters ("blue team," very loosely speaking). My "red team" people would have mostly voted for Trump this last time around, but only a handful of them actually belong to team MAGA, and about as many were Harris voters. A few of them are barely even 51% aligned with me but I like them so keep them on the "good guys" list. I put these in alpha order so nobody can nitpick, and there are probably typos:
@asymmetricinfo
@bonchieredstate
@eigenrobot
@fischerking64
@gummibear737
@janecoaston
@neoavatara
@neontaster
@pegobry_en
@pmarca
@politicalmath
@thomaschatwill
@tyler_a_harper
@wanyeburkett
@wil_da_beast630

Here are accounts that I like as bubble-busters. I have lower standards for these accounts. Specifically, I don't mind if they're not funny, and I don't mind a little bit of Yglesias-style bad faith argumentation as long as they aren't pushing outright misinformation in my TL. I'm just looking for high-quality avatars for "the other side."
@armanddoma
@besttrousers
@briannawu (seriously)
@daveweigel
@dilanesper (this is a tiny account, but I highly recommend it)
@jamessurowiecki
@jbarro
@jdcmedlock
@jonathanchait
@mattyglesias
@noahpinion

This is great, a lot of these folks, the ones I don't already follow, show up in my "for you", going to follow them and see if I can rely on For You less. I spend more time there because the algo actually does its job, its effective...but its also inefficient (for me) too as I still get too much over the top junk opinions...hopefully adding these and I can rely on it less. Not adding @jdcmedlock though, I remember him being to trolly, a lot more than Yglesias.

One guy that I didn't recommend previously but is great with data is @cremieuxrecueil

 

[beer 30]

I won’t join Bluesky because it’s basically the same viewpoint. I personally want differing viewpoints

I kinda think it's funny people bailing on X, same as all the folks who bailed after 2020 and went to Truth Social. You're just going to your own echo chamber. Stick around and stand your ground, make your point and fight for it.

I think what you need to understand is that a lot of people want to read, and some of them want to discuss things, all in a way that doesn't involve standing their ground and fighting.

Not wanting to fight but what's stopping people from reading? 95% of the time I just doom scroll X. On the off chance I engage, it's a repost or the occasional snarky comment. I hear what you're saying about fighting about every comment, I've seen plenty of the dogpiles and it's not what I'm there for.

I meant to sign up for Bluesky this weekend, just slipped my mind. Interested to see what's going on over there.

 

[Max Power]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

Damn. Those are almost PSF numbers.

 

[Dr_Zaius]

The one complaint I'm really shuked by is the pornbot one. That hasn't been my experience at all. Very rarely I might see some lady with a low cut top in somebody's replies, but that's about it.

 

[beer 30]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

Some people like being moderated

 

[fatness]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

I checked and those numbers came from BlueSky itself.

In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM is removed quickly.

With this significant influx of users, we’ve also seen increased spam, scam, and trolling activity — you may have seen some of this yourself.Our team is reviewing these accounts, and you can help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.

The comments seem to show that a fair number of people are happy when CSAM, spam, scams, and trolling are moderated. Like at FBG, you know?
(I had to look up CSAM. It means Child Sexual Abuse Material.)

 

[Desert_Power]

IK: who do you follow on X? Just curious, as I trust your judgment and enjoy your posts. Glad to take this to PMs if you prefer.

Sure. Here are some folks who I feel fairly comfortable recommending. My criteria for following somebody is they need to post interesting stuff, in good faith, hopefully with a sense of humor. I don't like people who just post on one or two topics incessantly, and I don't like people who are overly negative. For example, I basically agree with @wesyang on the topics he posts about, but it's just too much.

I'll break this down into people who I see as more or less on my side ("red team," very loosely speaking) and bubble-busters ("blue team," very loosely speaking). My "red team" people would have mostly voted for Trump this last time around, but only a handful of them actually belong to team MAGA, and about as many were Harris voters. A few of them are barely even 51% aligned with me but I like them so keep them on the "good guys" list. I put these in alpha order so nobody can nitpick, and there are probably typos:
@asymmetricinfo
@bonchieredstate
@eigenrobot
@fischerking64
@gummibear737
@janecoaston
@neoavatara
@neontaster
@pegobry_en
@pmarca
@politicalmath
@thomaschatwill
@tyler_a_harper
@wanyeburkett
@wil_da_beast630

Here are accounts that I like as bubble-busters. I have lower standards for these accounts. Specifically, I don't mind if they're not funny, and I don't mind a little bit of Yglesias-style bad faith argumentation as long as they aren't pushing outright misinformation in my TL. I'm just looking for high-quality avatars for "the other side."
@armanddoma
@besttrousers
@briannawu (seriously)
@daveweigel
@dilanesper (this is a tiny account, but I highly recommend it)
@jamessurowiecki
@jbarro
@jdcmedlock
@jonathanchait
@mattyglesias
@noahpinion

We have a lot of overlap, but going to add some of these folks. A econ folks I like (that have discussions in replies) you may enjoy:
@modeledbehavior
@conorsen
@brad_setser

 

[Bozeman Bruiser]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

I checked and those numbers came from BlueSky itself.

In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM is removed quickly.

With this significant influx of users, we’ve also seen increased spam, scam, and trolling activity — you may have seen some of this yourself.Our team is reviewing these accounts, and you can help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.

The comments seem to show that a fair number of people are happy when CSAM, spam, scams, and trolling are moderated. Like at FBG, you know?
(I had to look up CSAM. It means Child Sexual Abuse Material.)

I remember when Elon bought Twitter and there was a surge in CSAM and Nazi stuff.

Everyone claimed it was authentic and a reflection of the user base, a result of Elon firing all of the triple cap frap double pump FBI liaisons, etc. It was used to scare advertisers away.

Wonder if BlueSky will get the same treatment or if people will reasonably assume it is trolls and just let management solve the problem.

 

[tommyGunZ]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

 

[urbanhack]

I've pretty much gone cold turkey from twitter since the election. Started BlueSky....but it's time I just stay away and spend more time reading and outside. I'm already feeling better.

 

[fatness]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

I checked and those numbers came from BlueSky itself.

In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM is removed quickly.

With this significant influx of users, we’ve also seen increased spam, scam, and trolling activity — you may have seen some of this yourself.Our team is reviewing these accounts, and you can help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.

The comments seem to show that a fair number of people are happy when CSAM, spam, scams, and trolling are moderated. Like at FBG, you know?
(I had to look up CSAM. It means Child Sexual Abuse Material.)

I remember when Elon bought Twitter and there was a surge in CSAM and Nazi stuff.

Everyone claimed it was authentic and a reflection of the user base, a result of Elon firing all of the triple cap frap double pump FBI liaisons, etc. It was used to scare advertisers away.

Wonder if BlueSky will get the same treatment or if people will reasonably assume it is trolls and just let management solve the problem.

I'd imagine BlueSky will get hit with the surge in CSAM and Nazi stuff, and also the spam and scams and trolling I mentioned before. The question is how well they will handle it. And I guess another question is "do the BlueSky readers want it cracked down on, or left alone due to a "no moderation" goal?"

I might be misunderstanding you, but you're speaking of the CSAM and Nazi problem on Twitter in the past tense. Is that all over and done with on Twitter?

 

[titusbramble]

Apparently the new BlueSky users are crushing that "report to moderation" button. The site is now getting up to 42,000 reports a day.

The 2023 average was less than 1,000 a day.

I checked and those numbers came from BlueSky itself.

In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM is removed quickly.

With this significant influx of users, we’ve also seen increased spam, scam, and trolling activity — you may have seen some of this yourself.Our team is reviewing these accounts, and you can help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.

The comments seem to show that a fair number of people are happy when CSAM, spam, scams, and trolling are moderated. Like at FBG, you know?
(I had to look up CSAM. It means Child Sexual Abuse Material.)

I remember when Elon bought Twitter and there was a surge in CSAM and Nazi stuff.

Everyone claimed it was authentic and a reflection of the user base, a result of Elon firing all of the triple cap frap double pump FBI liaisons, etc. It was used to scare advertisers away.

Wonder if BlueSky will get the same treatment or if people will reasonably assume it is trolls and just let management solve the problem.

I might be misunderstanding you, but you're speaking of the CSAM and Nazi problem on Twitter in the past tense. Is that all over and done with on Twitter?

It was for all intents and purposes ignored pre-Elon, and the extent to which it was a problem was wildly exaggerated post-Elon (one only needs to look back at the BBC interviewer who claimed there had been an increase in hate speech, only to not be able to come up with a single example when prompted by Elon to do so). Where it stands today, couldn't say, but given that sort of thing is universally within the narrow range of what X would actually moderate these days, you would assume it is nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be. It'll clearly never go away entirely for obvious reasons, same as it will never go away on any platform

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Do people actually think that Twitter is awash in child pornography? Come on. Now you're just being ridiculous.

 

[djmich]

Do people actually think that Twitter is awash in child pornography? Come on. Now you're just being ridiculous.

In general the porn posts are way down, not sure what they did but it was cleared up on my feeds months ago.

 

[Capella]

Yea as someone who frequently complains about Twitter the porno bots seem to be gone.

 

[djmich]

This encapsulates the biggest problem with X right now. Tweet

 

[HellToupee]

Any suggestions for baseball and football beat writers/fantasy analysts on blue sky?

Just deactivated my X account and switched to blue sky.

I might be a little different than most posting here in that I didn’t use X for anything but sports/fantasy news/analysis. Don’t care for the vitriol on that platform on any other topic.

try here for starters. This lists a bunch of blue sky starter packs for sports that you can quickly build up who you want to follow. The links on this page when clicked will bring you right to BlueSky where you can choose "All" to follow or choose individually.

9 Bluesky starter packs to help sports fans fill their feeds

You may have noticed that X/Twitter rival Bluesky has started to gain some serious momentum in the last week. More than

ftw.usatoday.com

Zero NHL . They even listed wnba & F1 . Oh my

 

[McBokonon]

This encapsulates the biggest problem with X right now. Tweet

The reply is also hilarious.

 

[sho nuff]

Do people actually think that Twitter is awash in child pornography? Come on. Now you're just being ridiculous.

In general the porn posts are way down, not sure what they did but it was cleared up on my feeds months ago.

Yah. Went from multiple people following per day to not much. Noticed this week or so its been one every few days now in my notifications so they appear ti be slowly creeping back in.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

This encapsulates the biggest problem with X right now. Tweet

The reply is also hilarious.

It reminds me of the golden age of the FFA, when shtick accounts were allowed and tacitly encouraged.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Do people actually think that Twitter is awash in child pornography? Come on. Now you're just being ridiculous.

In general the porn posts are way down, not sure what they did but it was cleared up on my feeds months ago.

Yeah, but just to clarify, @fatness wasn't talking about porn bots. He was talking about child porn. That's a huge, massive, night-and-day difference. Pornography is ubiquitous on the internet, but child pornography is not. I can honestly say that I have never, not a single time, encountered anything even in the same area code as child porn, anywhere on the internet. You have to go looking for this sort of thing to find it, and nobody is going to believe that you were "just doing research" on the topic.

The idea that child porn is enough of a problem on any of these sites that somebody is just going to stumble across it by accident is a wild accusation with no basis whatsoever in reality, as far as I can tell.

(Edit: @Zow knows way more about this topic than I do. If he tells me that I'm wrong about this, I'll defer. But it sure isn't my experience, either at Twitter or literally anyplace else.)

 

[NewlyRetired]

Any suggestions for baseball and football beat writers/fantasy analysts on blue sky?

Just deactivated my X account and switched to blue sky.

I might be a little different than most posting here in that I didn’t use X for anything but sports/fantasy news/analysis. Don’t care for the vitriol on that platform on any other topic.

try here for starters. This lists a bunch of blue sky starter packs for sports that you can quickly build up who you want to follow. The links on this page when clicked will bring you right to BlueSky where you can choose "All" to follow or choose individually.

9 Bluesky starter packs to help sports fans fill their feeds

You may have noticed that X/Twitter rival Bluesky has started to gain some serious momentum in the last week. More than

ftw.usatoday.com

Zero NHL . They even listed wnba & F1 . Oh my

here is a hockey starter pack

hockey sky starter pack

Join the conversation

bsky.app

 

[Navin Johnson]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently.

 

[djmich]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently.

There's always X as an alternative

 

[IvanKaramazov]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently.

There's always X as an alternative

"This place is moderated too aggressively for my tastes. I'm taking my talents to Bluesky."

 

[titusbramble]

Yea as someone who frequently complains about Twitter the porno bots seem to be gone.

Meanwhile on BS

x.com

x.com

 

[the moops]

Yea as someone who frequently complains about Twitter the porno bots seem to be gone.

Meanwhile on BS

x.com

x.com

I read it on the internet it must be true.
No need to post any of this **** in here

 

[thecatch]

Yea as someone who frequently complains about Twitter the porno bots seem to be gone.

Meanwhile on BS

x.com

x.com

I really hope that’s someone trolling

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I don't know that it would be a good idea to start a "which platform has the most weirdos" competition.

 

[Dr. Octopus]

This thread is getting odd.

 

[Joe Schmo]

Yea as someone who frequently complains about Twitter the porno bots seem to be gone.

Meanwhile on BS

x.com

x.com

I really hope that’s someone trolling

I really don't believe that it is given the BS demographic

 

[djmich]

Balanced Platform?

 

[Sparky Polastri]

This thread is getting odd.

Pretty eye opening to see what hills people are willing to die on and fight for. I don't get it, but it makes for a fun follow.

 

[Joe Bryant]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently.

Elon Musk is obviously political now. FBG Moderators try to keep things away from politics. Not sure what you mean there.

Or @Navin Johnson what you mean about "Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently." Please report any posts that you see as over the line of what we're trying to do here.

Thanks.

 

[Joe Bryant]

I don't know that it would be a good idea to start a "which platform has the most weirdos" competition.

Agreed. Please let's not do that.

And agree with @Dr. Octopus the thread has had some odd posts.

Please keep this non political. If that's not possible, and that's understandable for some, please don't post in this one.

 

[the moops]

Balanced Platform?

Dudes. Here's a simple hint. If a link posted talks about democrats and republicans and independents and what they are doing, it is political and joe doesn't want that around here. Sometimes there is a gary area - that link is not

 

[GroveDiesel]

Meanwhile, we have the REAL reason that Twitter exists.

 

[Max Power]

Meanwhile, we have the REAL reason that Twitter exists.

You can almost guarantee this tweet resulted in students running to bathroom to horde remaining rolls.

 

[Joe Bryant]

This thread is getting odd.

Pretty eye opening to see what hills people are willing to die on and fight for. I don't get it, but it makes for a fun follow.

I don't much fighting to the death on hills in this thread. Or did you mean something else?

 

[Navin Johnson]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently.

Elon Musk is obviously political now. FBG Moderators try to keep things away from politics. Not sure what you mean there.

Or @Navin Johnson what you mean about "Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently." Please report any posts that you see as over the line of what we're trying to do here.

Thanks.

why was my earlier post deleted?

 

[Joe Bryant]

Balanced Platform?

Dudes. Here's a simple hint. If a link posted talks about democrats and republicans and independents and what they are doing, it is political and joe doesn't want that around here. Sometimes there is a gary area - that link is not

Agreed. The CNN video did tell me something I didn't know in that X in 2024 was more an even split between Red and Blue where it had been much more Blue in 2022. That is an interesting thing about X. But @the moops is right, there's not much upside to continuing down that discussion path.

 

[Joe Bryant]

LOL - Elon himself appears to be moderating this thread.

Continue the cheerleading, I'll see my way out.

Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently.

Elon Musk is obviously political now. FBG Moderators try to keep things away from politics. Not sure what you mean there.

Or @Navin Johnson what you mean about "Yeah, this place has gotten pretty bad recently." Please report any posts that you see as over the line of what we're trying to do here.

Thanks.

why was my earlier post deleted?

Looking at moderator log, looks like it was because it was replying to and quoted:

"Elon saved America by buying X. Elon likely saved the world by buying X."

That post and the replies to it were removed.

If that's what you mean by "gotten pretty bad", we'll have to disagree. We're not going to have the "Elon saved America" discussion here.

(Which is another reason I didn't understand the post that said they thought Elon was moderating this thread.)

 

[Desert_Power]

This encapsulates the biggest problem with X right now. Tweet

The reply is also hilarious.

Good stuff all around there.

 

[Max Power]

I through the left/right conversation was interesting through the lens of leaving X. Some see X as an improving product, while others do not. The fact that the distinction appears to fall along political lines sort of reveals what each group really wants.

 

[3C's]

Meanwhile, we have the REAL reason that Twitter exists.

Kent is in a lot of "dept"? Good solid education there...

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Meanwhile, we have the REAL reason that Twitter exists.

Kent is in a lot of "dept"? Good solid education there...

I sat through a research presentation yesterday by a PhD candidate at a Big Ten school. Her dissertation was based on a series of Zoom interviews with 24 people. She made a word cloud. I wish I was kidding, but that actually happened. Couldn't believe it.

 

[Joe Schmo]

Meanwhile, we have the REAL reason that Twitter exists.

Kent is in a lot of "dept"? Good solid education there...

I sat through a research presentation yesterday by a PhD candidate at a Big Ten school. Her dissertation was based on a series of Zoom interviews with 24 people. She made a word cloud. I wish I was kidding, but that actually happened. Couldn't believe it.

A word cloud?? She couldn't even carve out time for a diorama or salt map?

 

[Sparky Polastri]

This thread is getting odd.

Pretty eye opening to see what hills people are willing to die on and fight for. I don't get it, but it makes for a fun follow.

I don't much fighting to the death on hills in this thread. Or did you mean something else?

Came late to this thread, but the last dozen or so pages is people arguing over why twitter sucks or why it's the best. I just don't get it. It's pretty clear the tool is dividing people. Not sure why we allow that to happen. My pops gave me some new aggregators some years ago that I have control over. I don't understand why people would give up that freedom to algos that are designed to create echo chambers so these interactions are interesting to me as I try to figure that out.

There are a handful of posts in those pages that are seeking to help in using the tool, but those aren't close to the majority. "Dying on hills" is probably a little hyperbolic, but to me any effort to defend the platform or defame the platform is a COMPLETE waste of time. It's designed to give different experiences and silo people off, so comparing experiences is pretty useless in my opinion.

Throw on top of that the removing of some posts and leaving others muddles the ability to understand context of the thread overall. Still don't understand that, but it doesn't matter. Maybe that's why I get the impression I do? Dunno.

 

[Eephus]

Bluesky feeds are potentially a great feature. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to aggregate content related to specific subjects on Twitter. I played around with Lists on Twitter but it seemed like a lot of bother. I have no idea how Bluesky feeds work but they're easy to add and provide a subject matter view of posts and articles. I highly recommend the "Baseball Writers & Sites" feed.