Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed

[danielpetho]

hi friends!

i'm pretty tired of engagement bait and all the political nonsense on my x/twitter feed.

i was curious if i could use an llm to filter out these type of content, so i prototyped a quick chrome extension.

it uses LLama 3.3 to analyze the tweet through https://groq.com/ (because they are super-super fast).

the extension is available in the chrome store, also there is a link to the repo.

- you can tweak the system prompt for the filtering - but you need your own API key from Groq (you can get one for free)

[insin]

> i'm pretty tired of engagement bait and all the political nonsense on my x/twitter feed

Getting rid of "For you" entirely and removing Retweets from the chronological timeline (default configuration for [1]) gets you 95% of the way there - you'll only get engagement bait and political nonsense if the people you choose to follow are the ones actively doing it, in which case…

[1] https://jbscript.dev/control-panel-for-twitter

[ksec]

Yes. I dont even use "For you". I dont even "follow" most people, just put them into a list and visit that list only. In hind sight I have been using X / Twitter like RSS for a very long time. I guess that is because coming from RSS and I dont know how Twitter work at first and I first thought why do I have all these random people on my feeds.

I have lists for Software, Hardware, Politics, VCs, Economy, Art, and some other wired stuff.

You can ignore 99% of Spam, bait etc and only focus on the signal.

[danielpetho]

oh wow, this looks promising. thx!

[pluc]

If you don't want engagement bait or politics on Twitter.. why are you on Twitter? RSS is better to keep up to date on news, and if none of your friends are on Mastodon, get new friends.

[bearjaws]

I think Twitter has two core users

1. People who want to debate / react to things / politics / just get angry apparently.

2. People who are like a town crier from times past, they want to be the first to know some event has happened and then go to their group chats & other social media to post about it.

[akopkesheshyan]

Completely agree. No need to over engineer problem. Just leave the network

[andrewla]

Sorry, ignorant question -- how does one us RSS to keep up to date on news?

With Twitter, I can see content from people I follow and from content referenced or highlighted by people I follow. People in this case can also include news organizations or other professional journalistic content.

In addition there is the algorithmically generated garbage feed stuff that is mostly useful for seeing (potentially) interesting content that I missed on the main feed, but also contains a ton of content from people I did not follow and that people I do follow did not highlight or reference. Presumably this project attempts to reduce the garbage-ey ness of this feed, which I would appreciate.

[andrewla]

Tangential, but I think I speak for many when I say that we no longer need to specify "X" as a name for twitter -- just call it twitter and tweets and ignore the abysmal rebrand until the day that it gets reverted.

[DantesKite]

Such a great demonstration of the concept.

I think it’s inevitable that we’ll start to see more sophisticated ways of organizing our social media feeds.

I don’t think it has to be this binary decision where we either abandon social media altogether or expose ourselves to the most emotionally draining content possible. There’s likely many different unexplored metas as it were.

I often joke that we should have a marketplace of algorithms we can subscribe to, where the sentiment “slider bar” can go from Hello Kitty Island Adventure positivity to 4Chan LiveLeak nihilism, if you so choose.

[MattDaEskimo]

This is what the algorithm & tools of the platform is supposed to do for you.

It's also what makes you valuable as a free consumer.

If you want lumber, don't buy a house and strip it

[danielpetho]

yeah some kind of real-time tweaking would be also nice. sometimes i'm in the mood for topics i'm usually not following, but i would go back to my "default" space after a while.

the problem imo is that there is absolutely zero control on most platforms.

on x there is a button called "i'm not interested in this tweet" but obviously it doesn't do anything meaningful

[anthk]

Just leave out Xitter. Read blogs over RSS and gopher phlogs (SDF, bongusta...)

Also, Usenet and Dove/Fidonet (you can get them over NNTP news://cvs.synchro.net:119) have more polite discussions on politics.

[jamesrcole]

I think this is a glimpse of the future. I can imagine ever-greater amounts of information overload, and AI used everywhere to filter it to manageable levels.

[freehorse]

This sounds like an extreme waste of resources in all sides.

[wkat4242]

And on the other side AI being used to create more of it and to find ways to bypass the filters.

[vanrohan]

I'm also on a mission to clean the "For You" feed. I tried using local LLMs to do this real-time classification, but it's currently just too slow.

Another way to reduce the spam, is to remove bot followers from your account, I believe these bots use "likes" (which are hidden) to boost content for the botnet owners. Most of these bots are easy to spot, 0 posts, and very bad follower/following ratios. I built this Chrome Extension for bot removal automation: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/x-bot-remover/aohkh...

It would be way better if this was just done by X themselves, but why not try.

[russdill]

It'd be nice if x would let you do what bluesky does, let you write your own algorithms and create your own feeds.

[danielpetho]

yeah, something local (and free) would be much better. i'm not even sure how expensive could this be if it would run all the time...

re bot removal: thanks for it, will give a it a try!

[derivagral]

Cool idea! I had something similar for using LLMs as an intermediary not for spam but for "boring" local news matching to your profile. Court stuff, town meetings on youtube, that kind of thing.

[danielpetho]

sounds interesting! tho that would be rather summarizing content i assume?

[strajk]

Nice! I'm glad I was not the only one frustrated by these and I actually made sth similar just this weekend, also using Groq cause it's super fast as u said. (but haven't published it cause I'm always frustrated about that part of sideprojects :D) https://x.com/Straaajk/status/1875492276715315405

[danielpetho]

super cool! i like yours better tbh as it looks much more granular in terms of categorizing

re publishing—just do it! this project is also a rough mess, only a quick experiment, so i doubt anybody will care if it fails sometimes / not perfect, code is a mess etc.

[andy_ppp]

I want this for YouTube videos as well that can summarise the content and just take me to the things I would find most interesting in the video, almost like auto chapters that skip all the “and later we’ll be discussing really interesting thing X if you keep listening” filler. It would be great to filter all the noise out and create highlights package automatically that was 10% of the video length that can be watched separately.

[gigatexal]

Would instantly use it if I could also have it filter Elon’s tweets and his fans and followers.

[danielpetho]

you might be able to craft a system prompt eg.: filter out anything that mentions or even slightly related to elon musk, his companies, etc.

obviously it's never going to be perfect tho

but your best bet is still blocking/muting people then

[Havoc]

Prompt used seems to be here:

https://github.com/danielpetho/unbaited/blob/main/extension/...

Seems like a reasonable idea. I have doubts about an LLM being able to reliably detect when a tweet was made to *deliberately* trigger emotions. That’s setting the bar quite high on llm working out intent

[danielpetho]

100% agree unfortunately, haha

the default system prompt is quite weak, and could be much more specific / better.

also, even as a "human" can't decide sometimes what is a bait...

[yomismoaqui]

Already implemented something similar but using Gemini Flash 1.5

https://twitter.cercaapp.com

[danielpetho]

neat!

yes it's the same idea, tho for this one you need your own API key, which can be a bummer for some.

[j45]

Filtering out is a nice feature.

Highlighting each piece as such and teaching as what about it is bait, etc would make people stronger and more aware.

[pjmlp]

I have been ramping down my use until I collect the info I need to follow specific people elsewhere, then I am out as well.

[ryan_lane]

Why do you use twitter if you want to log into a completely blank feed every time you use it?

[palmfacehn]

90% of my feed is just AI generated art. The mute button seemed to work on the baiters.

[tomalbrc]

*AI generated pictures

[bentt]

Too many replies are missing the point. This isn't about whether there are other ways to do this, or if X is good/bad. This is about using a local AI model to curate content we want to avoid/see. This is a big area of interest and I'm happy to see something on HN about it!

[ikanreed]

But, of course, it would be better if we could generalize and let users describe in conversational language the specific things they don't want to see.

[itslennysfault]

It's not a local AI model. It's using a groq.com API, but your point about people missing the point is still a good point.

[danielpetho]

yes that's the main idea.

i mean even llms wouldn't be necessary (this is just a possible direction), but just give me more control on my own feed

[haunter]

I don't have to because I just use the "following" tab? I only see people I follow. Really don't get the point of this service

[danielpetho]

i like the for you page since i can discover fresh/new work from others. otherwise how would i get to the point of following someone? (excluding when you find the person's account on an external site)

but i feel you, the following tab is definitely a healthier/more controllable space

[yellow_lead]

Its impressive how fast this is. I don't use twitter anymore (for the same reason as your use case), but nice job!

[danielpetho]

yes groq is really amazing.

there is another player i've found when making this -> https://inference.cerebras.ai/

never tried their api tho

[wkat4242]

It's groq, they have amazing custom built hardware.

[wkat4242]

Um yeah good idea in principle but for me if I don't want to see the bad content it's better to just not look at it. The hate is everywhere, even on positive posts in the comments.

But good idea yes.

[danielpetho]

i agree. but sometimes my lizard brain just can't resist the temptation and i will stop to read the tweet/start a video. and the algorithm already could think that i'm interested in this type of content

[eddieh]

It was much easier and healthier for me to just leave Twitter (never gonna call it the other name). In fact, I’ve left nearly all of social media. It would be nice to get away from all algorithmic content feeds. Maybe someday.

[nomilk]

Social media apps have downsides, but I find the algorithmic short videos on facebook ("reels") quite incredible. The algo seems to suggest mostly science; niches I would never have known about, let alone had an active interest in, had the algo not suggested them.

I suspect experiences using social media apps differ wildly from person to person.

[alias_neo]

I only ever used Twitter for news because it was were all of the big names were;, but I stopped using it entirely when it took a massive dive after the recent sale. I checked back a couple of days ago, and top of my feed was some BS take on a subject (I forget what), and _every_ _single_ response was from a blue-tick agreeing with it, I immediately knew I can close it and not come back unless I want to click through to a specific tweet for whatever reason.

[bjornsing]

It pains me but I’m leaning in this direction too. I found the idea of a digital town square with a commitment to maximum truth appealing, but seeing what Twitter has become it’s hard to not feel this was naive of me.

To me the big blow was seeing the response to what’s happening in Gaza and what narratives people and algorithms in combination end up promoting. The thoughtful, balanced, humanistic view gets approximately zero traction, while completely untruthful propaganda (on both sides) has enormous reach.

Maybe it’s an insurmountable problem. Human defense mechanisms in combination with algorithms will always push people to tribalism and cheering for atrocities. I hope not, but seems like it.

I guess you could take the OPs approach of filtering out all the propaganda and keep contributing. But then you are effectively working for a propaganda machine free of charge, helping create value that will draw others in to be subjected to the propaganda.

[beAbU]

I've found this [1] to also work really well to clean up the feed.

1: https://help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-deactivat...

[buran77]

I went that route for my account which I wasn't using anyway but only because I realized it's not "my account" and my control over it is way too limited.

I logged in after many years of inactivity only to realize that despite only having a few friends, my feed was exclusively Musk and Tesla stuff. No amount of "don't show me this" helped. On one hand I found it exceptionally pathetic that any person would need to stroke their own ego to this degree at the expense of everyone else. But worse, it's clear that Twitter/X/Musk control my feed more than I do so the only way to win the game is to not play it.

[thih9]

The link leads to a Twitter/X support article for “How to deactivate your account”.

[patchtopic]

[flagged]

[xmodem]

Switching to mastodon has been such a breath of fresh air. No algo-driven feed manipulating me to constantly check in means that I have a much healthier relationship with it. If I'm, say, on the metro I can use it to kill time for 5 minutes... and then put it down, and I don't feel compelled to pick it up.

[blueflow]

The platform was not the problem, it was the people. People migrated to bluesky and fedi and now create these contents there.

[dewey]

If you have to fight this much to use a platform...why bother?

[danielpetho]

the network effect is still strong.

it feels like a huge chunk of (recent/real-time) tech/design discussion happens there. but could be just me. i'm still warming up on bluesky/threads.

[spookie]

Let's not promote divisions.

Unless you meant: "people should stop using social media in which there are monetary incentives to be sensationalist", which I definitely agree on.

I would love if we had more civilized discussions on the web, we would understand eachother better that way. But it's an impossible ask.

[blueflow]

No way "drawing lines" between you and other people could backfire.

[ChocolateGod]

I don't want to be on whatever side you're on if you're going around making divisions over what social network people use.

[Extropy_]

Don't drive a car and thus never get a flat. Problem solved.

[pier25]

I just moved to Bluesky

[danielpetho]

someone asked the exact same question hah.

i'd say because: the network effect is still strong. it feels like a huge chunk of (recent/real-time) tech/design discussion happens there. but could be just me. i'm still warming up on bluesky/threads.

[nomilk]

I'm personally a huge Elon fan, but I know many who are not and have heard from multiple sources that they can't get him out of their feeds no matter how hard they try. If you tweak your current idea to simply remove all Elon-related content from the feed, that would be funny but may also be strangely profitable (people would probably buy it out of spite).

[plaguuuuuu]

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