The election is ruining my twitter feed

September 23, 2016 12:57 PM

Why are Trump and Clinton showing up in my Twitter feed all of a sudden and is there any way to get rid of them?

So I don't tweet, I just have a feed that I check in on every day - its a diversion, something to take me away from the everyday grind and indulge in some guilty pleasures of celebrity gossip and just have fun. I went on my twitter yesterday and I am bummed out to see tweets from Donald Trump AND Hilary Clinton. I do not follow either one of them and I checked to see if they were re-tweets, and they weren't. I don't follow ANY political figures. I am guessing they are ads of some kind? I am so sick of this election, the last thing I want is to see messages from them during the time of the day I'm trying to unwind and relax. I see that I can "dismiss" them, and I do, but today they were there again. Is there any kind of permanent way to make these stop? I really don't want to have to go on a Twitter hiatus until after the election, but fear I may have to.
Thanks in advance for any help.

posted by NoraCharles to Technology (11 answers total)

Best answer: Sounds like they are promoted tweets. You can block or mute the individual official Trump/Clinton accounts (where most but not all promoted Tweets re: the election come from) which is what I did. Otherwise, you can use Tweetdeck (which is first-party now) and create a mute list: mine is miles long and contains every election-related word you can think of. This won't stop EVERYTHING but it'll certainly cut down on a lot of it.

I think promoted tweets don't show up in Tweetdeck but I could be wrong (huge mute list.)
posted by griphus at 1:07 PM on September 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Tweetdeck is the ONLY way I will interact with Twitter, and I do not see promoted tweets at all even without a "mute" list.
posted by briank at 1:11 PM on September 23, 2016

nthing a suggestion to not use the Twitter website if you can AT ALL help it. 3rd party clients make the whole twitter experience so much better, from a real timeline to muting features.

(here's my vote that you take a look at Tweetbot, at least if you are on Mac or iOS.
posted by gregvr at 1:18 PM on September 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

I use Tweetdeck, the Chrome version which just sits in an open tab, on both Mac and PC and I'm very happy with it. No promoted tweets (which I DO get on my phone), plus it makes it easy to follow lists in columns of their own.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:40 PM on September 23, 2016

If you have Chrome, you can install an extension called rather, set up a filter for election keywords (Trump, Clinton, Hillary, election...) and it will pull in photos tagged with whatever you like from Instagram - cats are popular, but I am sure there are all kinds of cute animal tags, food, babies, sportsball, whatever you're into.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:01 PM on September 23, 2016

Best answer: If you're on the Twitter website, just hit the little X at the top right-hand corner of the sponsored tweet, and it gives you the option to block that account. I, uh, also reported Trump as "offensive" when I blocked it.
posted by SMPA at 2:10 PM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also if you don't want to use tweetdeck, a bonus to blocking promoted tweets of any kind is that they start getting weirder and weirder as you block more and more so eventually they may just end up entertaining instead of infuriating.
posted by griphus at 2:12 PM on September 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The note that says a tweet is promoted will show up at the very bottom of it, below the reply field. I've seen tweets from Donald Trump in my timeline today. Took me by surprise until I realized I hadn't taken leave of my senses late one night and followed him. .
posted by zarq at 3:33 PM on September 23, 2016

Best answer: This doesn't exactly fix the problem, but I also tweeted my displeasure at the Twitter admin account. Swear words may have been used.
posted by praemunire at 4:46 PM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

They could be promoted tweets; paid ads you can't turn off. They could be recommended tweets; random suggestions from Twitter you also can't turn off. You can hide both of those each time they turn up, but that's hardly a help. Or they could also be retweets from friends you follow, you can turn those off permanently by unfollowing those people or turning off retweets for them.

If you post a screenshot we could be sure for you.
posted by Nelson at 6:37 PM on September 23, 2016

Response by poster: Thank you all for your responses. Because I thought they were ads, I didn't think I could block them. I blocked them both last night. I just checked twitter a little bit ago and do not see tweets from either candidate. Yay!

I use Firefox and not Chrome, but Tweetdeck? I had no idea what I was missing - thank you for that tip as well.
posted by NoraCharles at 7:31 AM on September 24, 2016