“Why I Stay Off Twitter” by jefftk

I avoid Twitter (𝕏) for similar reasons to drugs: I think it would change me for the worse, and I would be unable to give it up.

After staying off Twitter reasonably successfully for years, I cross-posted my AI Tweets there a few weeks ago. I had something very Twitter-shaped to say, and I thought it was important to get out, so I do think this was worth it. And it all went well: none of this is complaining about the comments I got there.

Coming back a few times to check notifications, however, it's been very good at baiting me: Tweets that are confidently wrong in cases where I have relevant and uncommon knowledge. The pull to dive in and share what I know is very strong! Then this bleeds over to the far broader case where people are wrong, and you have a large potential time sink.

If it were just the time sink, I'd stop resisting. I spend some time on HN and Reddit, and to the extent that Twitter could substitute for that by showing me things I was more interested in, that wouldn't be an issue. The real problem [...]

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First published:
September 19th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tvwtwgcujTfep4HgY/why-i-stay-off-twitter

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.