This is not a deep dive per se, it's more of an opinionated article about the cesspool that Twitter has become, with some personal experience - which in no case is factual experience nor includes data, these are my views - chopped in.
The importance of choosing your following wisely
We spend a lot of time in social media, whether it is normiebook, jewtube, tiktok, fakestagram or even Hive and its various dApps; to correct myself, we waste a lot of time in social media, and Twitter is no different, but out of all those mainstream social media apps I mentioned above, Twitter is probably the most useful and the only one that can become a great tool to stay informed, get unbiased opinions - or at least diverse opinions - on public interest topics, reach information that mainstream media won't tell you about and much, much more.
All you have to do is put in some effort. Yeah, I said effort, sorry to break your bubble, but some things in life are still required for you to get off your ass and do shit. It requires effort and time to do your own research about who to follow, why are you following them, what kind of bias do they have, what interests them or may motivate them to slip in the occasional propaganda (so you are able to identify it when you are reading it), what is their political spectrum and why, alongside many other factors to consider. The point is, DYOR about who you are following because it is their opinions what you'll be reading.
The other part of using Twitter wisely is to not get trapped in an echo chamber or a cesspool of toxical and yet very vocal tribe. You see, the Twitter algorithm is already biased against libertarians, conservative people of influence and interest, anarchists and generally, vocal people against the narrative media has. The shadowbanning, ghostbanning, and agenda pushing bias Twitter has is already enough to get someone who's no wiser, to follow those who are wielding the right opinions and push ideas into their minds. As you can imagine, if you are not careful and follow people from both sides of the spectrum - and also consider following people with radical views and some others with conservative views about both sides - then most likely, you will end up believing only one truth, your own criteria will be biased, there will only be one side for you.
This happens to 99% of the Twitter accounts. People end up believing their side has the most support, fellows conclude that reality is based on their twitter feed, they actually trust their echo chamber to be flawless. That's when the pandering, the brainwasing, the propaganda and social engineering works the best. One sided stories are always dangerous and we should be aware that all these mainstream social media apps will want you to read only one side, and they will actually get out of their way to make it happen.
Staying informed about different topics
As important as it may be to be informed about both sides of the opinion spectrum, whatever the topic it may be, it is even more important to get the bigger picture when it comes to important matters that have regional, continent or worldwide influence.
To understand - or at least to try and get more information and get to your own conclusions - why a political matter is happening, we need to know about the economical background of the parties involved, the social issues and history behind them, the interests of the people or corporations pushing the matter in question and much, much more. When it comes to Finance related articles, that most of the times these are plagued with opinions and agendas disguised as facts or masked as trends, we can't take all the article as fact, but there are hidden truths on each and every one of them; knowing the author, what they advocate for, who do they work for, what are they holding (or infere what are they holding) etc are just some of the factors we should consider when reading their piece.
Let's take a recent, relatable and relevant topic: The Hive vs Steem issue. Taking aside the posts published on Hive/Steem by independent authors, there were tens of articles written by different authors, writers from different backgrounds, people working for different crypto/finance/tech houses from different countries (with different agendas), involved in their own regional politics, with their own interests at hand and most importantly, these writers based their articles in the information provided mostly by a biased source, whether it was a source coming from one of the consensus picked Hive witnesses or if the information came from a source related to Justin Sun, Steemit and the shitshow they caused, it doesn't matter, every source is biased.
see, I slipped my own bias there, you might have noticed, you might have not, maybe I already convinced your subconscious that the good fellas here are the Hive ones.
The main point of staying informed about different topics is, if you don't get the whole picture, or at least a bigger picture, you will end up believing anything anybody with some character and respect tells you, no matter if they are wrong or right. Using the Hive/Steem example again, knowing a few scraps of information could change your view about what happened a few months ago, things that most of the articles do not mention, perhaps because they don't know about it, maybe because they choose not to inform the readers because its inconvenient information, I'm willing to say it was 40/60 - there's a lot of bad journalism out there, it's not all bias:
Let's talk about these few pieces of info: the relationship between Poloniex and Justin Sun, the relationship between CZ Binance and JS, the weight the Korean community has a crypto holders and their relationship as a whole with exchanged, the influence JS has with Koreans, the role centralized exchanges play in DPoS, the importance of staking your funds in a blockchain has, the history of Steem and its founders, the story behind the Steemit stake, among many others, will widen your horizon and amplify your knowledge about why this issue went down the way it did, without thinking there are bad actors or good actors, and merely just interests in hand that pushed an asset freeze, a hardfork and then the stealing of funds.
Used wisely, Twitter is the best source of information where we can have quick access to both sides of any story
I am not an expert on crypto or finance, tech or politics, perhaps I'm not an expert on any given topic, but neither is 99% of the people out there. One of the things I am most critical about is how most people are no experts, and yet they are not wise enough to at least surround themselves with - or at least listen to - people who know more about certain topic. You may not know everything about anything, but you can at least read facts and opinions from different people who actually know something, and then create your own point of view based on these different opinions, it's called criteria.
Regarding all the current matters in the United States, Cryptocurrency, the world economy, and the political situation in Europe, I try to stay informed via Twitter. I follow accounts related to gold advocates, banking and wall street, left and right wing politicians and journalists, cryptocurrency, NGOs, immigration, startups in US and Europe, social issues in Europe, racist influencers, history and some other topics, but always trying to get both sides - if not more, because sometimes we are talking about polygon shaped issues.
The key here, is staying informed.
What are you staying informed about? Who's shaping your views, or better yet, who's shaping your truth and manipulating your reality?