17th September 2021 at 11:45

I shared yesterday that I’ve been using Front to manage my Twitter replies and DMs and Sara asked me to write about how I have Twitter stuff setup at the moment, so here goes.

I’ve got documented issues with Twitter. It has a severely bad impact on my overall mental health and I’m addicted to it. I wish I could get rid of it completely, but unfortunately, the industry I work in insists on centering everything on Twitter, so I am in effect, held hostage by Twitter.

I refuse to use the main site and apps anymore and participate in the algorithm that dismantles communities by driving controversy. I also refuse to participate in the fucking awful takes of Tech Twitter Personalities™.

The setup

Let’s dig into the nuts and bolts. Because I still need to engage with Twitter, I want to do it from afar. All I’m interested in is:

1. Posting
2. Replying to mentions
3. Having control of my DMs

To tackle points 2 and 3 I’m using Front. It’s actually a support tool, but I’ve found it really useful because it lets me run Twitter like an inbox. I fucking love email, so this setup is perfect for me. I can set rules, snooze items, tag items and be super organised, just like I am with email. I now push my Gmail stuff into there too.

It’s not cheap though: $38 a month because you have to have at least two “seats”, which is daft. But, the way I see it, $38 a month is nothing if it helps my thinker stay healthy.

For posting, I’m using IFTTT. For this blog and my music blog, I have an RSS recipe that reads my feeds (this feed, music feed), the auto tweets the title, url and content. I can also post directly from Front. Perfect.

For Piccalilli, I decided to tweak it a bit. I still use an RSS applet, but I created a specific Tweets feed that allows IFTTT to post the title, summary and url. Works a treat.

IFTTT also make you pay for running multiple applets, but again, it’s worth it. It’s $3.33 for unlimited applets. I fucking love IFTTT as a service and use it for a few handy automations, so again, more than happy to pay that.

Hopefully this helps someone else have a healthier relationship with the hell site that is Twitter.

Take it easy ?