I love asking people where they get their news. Increasingly, Twitter is the top response. People say, “I don’t watch the news. I have Twitter!” Why is this dangerous? In many cases, your local news station or newspaper must craft content that will be broadly appealing. Most of the topics covered will need to be relevant to a large group of people. Twitter is the exact opposite. Twitter’s business model is based on creating a hyper-individualized experience just for you that drives your engagement in the site. Most people think that engagement means replying, retweeting, or liking tweets, but engagement has a much broader meaning on Twitter. Engagement can mean:

Clicking on a tweet or link in a tweet
Scrolling through replies to a tweet
Visiting a user’s profile
…and much more

Twitter makes money not only by selling ad space on your timeline in the form of promoted tweets but also by collecting your behavioral data and selling it. Everything you do on Twitter, even if just passively taking in content, is data.

Twitter wants more data on you, so they make every effort to put content in front of you that will keep you engaged on the platform. Unlike Amazon, which will suggest for you twenty garbage cans after you already buy a garbage can, Twitter does not try to drive engagement by simply serving you more of the same. Once you show interest in a topic or stance, Twitter will attempt to show you tweets that are even more engaging (and often this means more extreme). Engaging does not mean informative. A tweet with thousands of quote tweets debunking it is considered very engaging. Because the model is built on engagement, you will end up being presented with increasingly polarized views, i.e., the views that drive engagement.

So what can you actually do to avoid being slowly pushed towards more extreme views? Here are three tips:

Change your Home feed from the default Top Tweets to Latest Tweets. “Top Tweets” just means most engaging tweets, whether from accounts you follow or not, and regardless of when they were tweeted. Remember, engaging does not mean informative! It simply means most likely to drive you to continue to engage on the platform.

“Latest Tweets” puts your Home feed in chronological order, regardless of engagement. You will see tweets from accounts you follow and replies between accounts you follow. This gives you more control over the content you are consuming.
Don’t follow topics. It might seem harmless and even attractive to follow a topic. It’s a perfect way to replace watching the news or reading a newspaper, right? Wrong. Again, topics are meant to drive engagement rather than keep you informed. This means the hottest takes, not the most relevant information will be displayed prominently in the topic. The other day, someone remarked to me, “Why is there so much drama in [TOPIC]? There are always people feuding. I can’t take it!” Is there really so much drama? Even though this topic is associated with a community in which I am regularly engaged, I had heard nothing of the drama being highlighted in the Twitter topic. The drama was manufactured to drive engagement on Twitter and was not really relevant to the work being done in the space.

If you really feel the need to check out a topic, you can always navigate to the Search or Discover tab to scroll through tweets from your suggested topics.
Get curious about how Twitter views you. How can you tell in which directions Twitter is attempting to push you in terms of engagement (and therefore content)?

First, check out which topics Twitter suggests for you. You can see the whole list by going to Settings then Topics. Are there any topics there that surprise you? Do you have an emotional reaction to any of the topics?

Next, check out the people who influence you. Which accounts do you really like? Which account’s tweets do you always read as you scroll through your feed? Which accounts do you find most interesting? Visit those profile pages and check out which accounts and topics are recommended to you on that profile page. Are those accounts and topics aligned with your values? Are any of them surprising? Let’s imagine an example. You are trying to reduce the amount of sugar you eat, but you constantly feel you are failing. You visit the profile of a Twitter account you really like. All the recommended accounts and topics are about desserts. The direction Twitter is pushing you is away from your goals.

After doing a bit of an audit on Twitter’s influence, you can revisit the list of accounts you follow and do some revisions. You can also consider this information when you are making a decision on which accounts to follow in the future.
Remember that very few issues have only two sides. Unfortunately, us versus them arguments drive a lot of engagement. If you are engaging in a Twitter thread or some trending topic and the conversation is being framed as a simple us versus them with only two sides, try to find at least one additional perspective. Do not just accept one of the two defaults. There are potentially infinite perspectives.

I hope these tips illustrate how it is possible to be driven to an extreme position even by simply lurking on Twitter. I also hope these tips illustrate the downsides of automated personalization. Through automated personalization, our worlds become smaller and more polarized. We are not presented with a variety of perspectives because nuance does not drive maximum engagement. The key to a happy and healthy Twitter experience is not simply going where the platform is leading but making active choices about the content you consume (and create, but that’s a story for another day).

UPDATE: If you would like to explore this topic with me, I will be leading a Wardley Mapping session at Map Camp UK this year. You can use the code Cat20 for 20% off registration.