Twitter is a whole other beast. I really can’t quite get over the fact Twitter doesn’t have an edit button. Still, it’s my favorite chosen place to follow the musings of some of the brightest people in the world and it remains the best place to follow for breaking news. But there’s a whole lot of other junk in there too now. “When you go into a house that has tons of clutter, how does that make you feel,” asks Dr. Eva Selhub, physician, author, speaker, and executive coach. She suggests blocking Twitter clutter at the source, “Clean up who is coming on your posts, the information that’s coming through to you. Is it lifting you up or bringing you down?”
Twitter’s built-in “Mute” feature is ideal for controlling the noise and clutter that’s getting through on your Twitter feed. To control it, go to your Settings page by clicking your photo in the upper right hand corner from a desktop device. This brings up a full menu on the left hand side.
- Choose “Muted words”
- Click “Add” and type in whatever word or words you want erased from your timeline.
- You can also set the amount of time to mute each word, from 24 hours to forever and you can change these settings anytime.
Going back to the main menu, take time to go through each of the categories. Customize your Privacy and Safety settings — things like tweeting with location information, who can tag you in photos, and hiding sensitive content are all important to review. Toward the bottom of this main menu, scroll down to “Your Twitter settings.” Here you can see all kinds of data Twitter has on you. Mine shows some strange stuff, like that I’ve been to India and Ireland (I’ve never been to either). It also shows advertisers that Twitter has shared my browsing information and interests with, in order to tailor advertisements. You can request that entire advertising list, as well as download your entire Twitter history — all from this menu.