I realised last night that, despite my ever-growing keywork mute list, I find Bluesky unusable in the evenings to the volume of people endlessly retweeting political hot-takes. On Twitter, I avoided this by extensive use of the “Turn Off Re-Tweets” button. Are there any new solutions for BlueSky? - ThreadSky

giffordhead.co.uk • 16 days ago

I realised last night that, despite my ever-growing keywork mute list, I find Bluesky unusable in the evenings to the volume of people endlessly retweeting political hot-takes. On Twitter, I avoided this by extensive use of the “Turn Off Re-Tweets” button. Are there any new solutions for BlueSky?

Comments

pellegrina.bsky.social•16 days ago

It would be great to have it by account rather than global—there are some people I really want to follow but until they get RSI in the retweet finger, my feed is swamped by them. In the other place I turned off retweets for those people (and never used the algorithm feed).

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

Yes. This is exactly where I am. And turning off all retweets mean that I miss out on interesting things that certain people (well, mostly, @edwardw2.bsky.social) fish out from parts of BlueSky that I never knew existed.

jasonbraier.bsky.social•16 days ago

Create a list of those you really want to follow (I have an employment lawyer list) as against those who regularly retweet hot takes, and set your feed to that feed. Or just unfollow those who endlessly retweet.

kaffeehaus.bsky.social•16 days ago

I believe I don't see retweets in the "Following Feed". May I ask which feed you use the most? I'm not sure I see retweets at all. Are they flagged as "retweeted" or how do you know?

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

It may be that you have disabled them in settings (which I have just done). Previously, they look like this (with the guilty party’s name redacted).

kaffeehaus.bsky.social•16 days ago

Yes, I've disabled them and never saw them, apparently. Thanks for your answer!

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

When I last asked, I was kindly directed towards “OnlyPosts”. Unfortunately, I find it just doesn’t work that reliably and seems only to display about 60% of what it should. I also can’t really identify what the problems are with it to make bug reports.

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

I fear I might have to start mass unfollowing people as the only solution. But it is a real shame since there are lots of people whose posts I enjoy reading, in between the mass of politics.

clarec.bsky.social•16 days ago

In settings in the following feed preferences I was able to toggle off reposts. It has cleaned up my timeline.

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

Interesting. Might I ask how you found this setting? The following feed for me doesn’t have any preferences (and the cog in the top right-hand corner takes me to a page to rearrange or unsubscribe from feeds rather than tinker with settings).

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

Ah. Found it now! Not where I was expecting it!

clarec.bsky.social•16 days ago

It’s really difficult to find. Glad you got there. It’s not perfect but it does help to declutter the timeline a bit.

edwardw2.bsky.social•16 days ago

there's a feed called txt for airports. its all posts that do not have pictures-- so pure text posts and videos (the latter due to some fault of the algorithm used)

I found one of my followers there after I answered a question they posed.

edwardw2.bsky.social•16 days ago

I should add that very occasionally, obscene videos pop up on that feed. Caveat lector etc etc etc

majnouna.bsky.social•16 days ago

I’m hoping for a “turn off retweets” function! Meanwhile basically unfollowing excessive retweeters

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

That’s what I feared. It also seems just generally worse here than it was on Twitter. I think part of the problem maybe that people were encouraged to mindless re-tweet stuff due to the “there’s no algorithm” issue. That really messed up with people like me who never used the algorithm!

majnouna.bsky.social•16 days ago

I wonder if it would have been better to totally do away with retweets and only have quote tweets. If people had to comment on what they share a lot would abstain or think more carefully.

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

Yes. Indeed. I just don’t really understand why people do it. What purpose is served by retweeting someone saying words to the effect of “isn’t [X] bad and stupid?” when most of their followers will agree that X is bad and stupid?

majnouna.bsky.social•16 days ago

Venting?

giffordhead.co.uk•16 days ago

I guess so. I get people also like to feel appreciated and if you post a lot of trite comments about how someone who is obviously bad is bad, you can easily get hundreds of likes and retweets.

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