[Note: While I do intend to write more about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this post is intended to address this only indirectly rather than directly, by helping illustrate how to find other sources of information, and you are once again implored to rely on other news sources.
Mar 7, 2022·edited Mar 7, 2022Liked by Zvi Mowshowitz
> I do not know of any practical alternative.
Both Ukrainian and Russian side use Telegram as the main platform for: realtime information dissemination (even including air raid alerts), propaganda, and information crowdsourcing via bots. Main downsides are: it deliberately has NO built-in ways to discover channels (the curated ads are apolitical), and the auto-translation is hidden deep in the settings
Through some regional chatrooms and discords, people share either "breaking news" or general location based telegrams invite links. I found one from a telegram invite link that was for bar crawls that someone shared.
The breaking news one was heavily moderated and only key on the ground people could post/link. It was a lot of ad-hoc journalists that did try to sensationalize a bit, but often shared comments live with photos and videos or live streams.
The general chat one had lots of people, but people were relatively well moderated. People chimed in on events all over the world and protests, along with support. This telegram chat sounded a lot like the kind you described people "taking over" for the Canada trucking thing... But maybe without the taking over thing.
Just like reddit, both are subject to bias and bad actors, but they seemed to be where the news was. Live and more easily parsed than Twitter (for me).
Thank you for sharing your lists. Even though I've entirely given up on twitter myself(speedy news that doesn't suck, where?*), knowing where to start looking for good follows is hard, so those are great value.
* Seriously, the mainstream sources are so bad. Since I quit social media I basically find things out entirely by Tyler-proxy through MR's daily links. The past few months I've increasingly been wondering whether this is a problem that Could and Should be fixed by throwing lots of money at it. Journalism seems to have bifurcated into Serious, and Even More Serious, but all I want is to know what's happening without drowning in the tweet swamp.
This is probably silly but one of the things I like about using lists in tweetdeck is that I can push lists off the screen to the right. So if it's something that will have spoilers (like my motorcycle racing list) I won't see it unless I purposefully scroll over to it.
Totally off topic, but the gameplay video at https://emergentstcg.com/ says "This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed their YouTube account".
My approach is to never go to the homepage for any news feed, but instead just look at the timelines of various accounts when I feel like it. Definitely not a power-user.
I tried building some lists a few months ago, but it's a slow process. What I really want is a list of all accounts I follows that I don't have on any list, so I can go through them one by one and segment them. Without that, it's way too tedious.
I have a little script that allows me to duplicate the timeline of any account into a list. All the people the account follows are added to the list. I find it's a pretty good way to get a taste of what someone else's filter bubble looks like.
Late question: I started using Tweetdeck for lists because of this post, and I like it, but there's one issue I'm wondering if anyone has a solution for.
When I'm scrolling through a list in Tweetdeck, and I switch tabs, when I come back my list has jumped back to the beginning. Notably, this does NOT happen with my home feed. It saves its place. But for some reason, lists always jump back to the beginning, so if I want to read older tweets, I have to scroll down and find my place again. Is there a solution here, or do I just have to deal with it?
On both the twitter web and mobile web+app you can make your feed purely chronological from your follows only. Tweetdeck not needed. Selection option at the very top three dots.
Have you found an alternative to Tweetdeck since it became gated? Its free availability was a core value prop for me prior to the decision to make it a premium feature.
> I do not know of any practical alternative.
Both Ukrainian and Russian side use Telegram as the main platform for: realtime information dissemination (even including air raid alerts), propaganda, and information crowdsourcing via bots. Main downsides are: it deliberately has NO built-in ways to discover channels (the curated ads are apolitical), and the auto-translation is hidden deep in the settings
When I wanted the latest news on George Floyd telegram rooms were heavily used.
Can you say more about how those are used in practice?
Hi!
Through some regional chatrooms and discords, people share either "breaking news" or general location based telegrams invite links. I found one from a telegram invite link that was for bar crawls that someone shared.
The breaking news one was heavily moderated and only key on the ground people could post/link. It was a lot of ad-hoc journalists that did try to sensationalize a bit, but often shared comments live with photos and videos or live streams.
The general chat one had lots of people, but people were relatively well moderated. People chimed in on events all over the world and protests, along with support. This telegram chat sounded a lot like the kind you described people "taking over" for the Canada trucking thing... But maybe without the taking over thing.
Just like reddit, both are subject to bias and bad actors, but they seemed to be where the news was. Live and more easily parsed than Twitter (for me).
Thank you for sharing your lists. Even though I've entirely given up on twitter myself(speedy news that doesn't suck, where?*), knowing where to start looking for good follows is hard, so those are great value.
* Seriously, the mainstream sources are so bad. Since I quit social media I basically find things out entirely by Tyler-proxy through MR's daily links. The past few months I've increasingly been wondering whether this is a problem that Could and Should be fixed by throwing lots of money at it. Journalism seems to have bifurcated into Serious, and Even More Serious, but all I want is to know what's happening without drowning in the tweet swamp.
Haha, "Tyler Proxy" - I'm guilty as well!
I prefer small obscure subreddits
Like?
The local city of wherever the news is, is a great start, or a suburb of that city if the city is really big
This is probably silly but one of the things I like about using lists in tweetdeck is that I can push lists off the screen to the right. So if it's something that will have spoilers (like my motorcycle racing list) I won't see it unless I purposefully scroll over to it.
Sounds silly but I do it too, and I do appreciate it.
Totally off topic, but the gameplay video at https://emergentstcg.com/ says "This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed their YouTube account".
Thanks. No idea why they haven't fixed that - it's an account migration issue.
My approach is to never go to the homepage for any news feed, but instead just look at the timelines of various accounts when I feel like it. Definitely not a power-user.
I tried building some lists a few months ago, but it's a slow process. What I really want is a list of all accounts I follows that I don't have on any list, so I can go through them one by one and segment them. Without that, it's way too tedious.
I have a little script that allows me to duplicate the timeline of any account into a list. All the people the account follows are added to the list. I find it's a pretty good way to get a taste of what someone else's filter bubble looks like.
I've often wondered why this isn't a generally available feature. Can you share the script?
Here it is : https://gist.github.com/richarddelome/72b0402a15101dc8d065184683272acc
@friscojosh is a very good football follow, though tweets mostly in shitposts so a translation layer is necessary.
NFL beat writers is a good list to have in your pocket for latest developments (https://twitter.com/i/lists/1500244)
Other football follows with actual football content, heavy tilted towards data analysis (most of my other follows are heavy into gambling/fantasy):
@PFF_Mike
@danorlovsky7
@AdamHarstad
@bburkeESPN
Late question: I started using Tweetdeck for lists because of this post, and I like it, but there's one issue I'm wondering if anyone has a solution for.
When I'm scrolling through a list in Tweetdeck, and I switch tabs, when I come back my list has jumped back to the beginning. Notably, this does NOT happen with my home feed. It saves its place. But for some reason, lists always jump back to the beginning, so if I want to read older tweets, I have to scroll down and find my place again. Is there a solution here, or do I just have to deal with it?
Weird, this does not happen to me.
I figured it out. I was using the "new Tweetdeck" preview. I switched back and it works now
On both the twitter web and mobile web+app you can make your feed purely chronological from your follows only. Tweetdeck not needed. Selection option at the very top three dots.
Have you found an alternative to Tweetdeck since it became gated? Its free availability was a core value prop for me prior to the decision to make it a premium feature.
I pay for Twitter, so I still use Tweetdeck. Price is tiny compared to utility, at least for me.