If you follow specific profiles/channels/pages and just read the feeds from them as if they were news, you are removing the toxic part (mostly infinite scrolling) and getting a resourceful feature.

If for some reason someone you need to follow is on X (twitter) only, you have to choose between losing a source or compromise with the platform.

I personally belong to the former group (and possibly you do, too), leaving behind sources, but not everyone likes it that way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are news that are circulating much faster on Twitter than anywhere else (for example about war in Ukraine). There are people and companies that post only on Twitter and nowhere else (especially in tech).

It's certainly more diverse than Bluesky, if this is an echo chamber-measuring contest.

Also the Asian community (Korea, Japan etc) is incredibly strong on Twitter. They don't really care about the whole politics around the platform.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49449576

But when I was doing it, I got a big warning that anyone could come up and register that handle for themselves. So I instead ended up just deleting every post, my personal details, and left the account alone (not using it anymore).

I know they do this intentionally (it's bad intentions all over the place on social networks nowadays, except HN, of course).

I'm terrified of somebody else just creating the account with the same handle I used to have, and impersonate me across old friends and contacts.

What do you suggest?

It's been a long time since I've seen them (thank god), but the worst culprits were subs like facepalm, white people twitter, leopards ate my face, and pretty much any left-leaning or liberal sub.

They did a fantastic job of platforming the ideologies they stand against simply by screenshotting the most vocal advocates and talking heads and sharing them so commenters could get angry. That shit lived rent free in the subscribers' heads to an unhealthy degree and for everybody who hate-engaged, there were plenty more who saw it as an introduction.

One day I'll do for Reddit what I did for the rest of social media but for now it's easy enough to stay off Popular and All and just stick with the smaller subs with a specific subject matter.