twitter experience (English version)

Something about Twitter, my experiences 26/12/21 (English version)
I became interested in twitter between 2009-12, with two different accounts, but as happens when you join any social, you try to understand how it works, who frequents it, the various purposes, if it can be useful for you.
The first reminder was the Obama campaign and the TVs mentioning the intelligent use of this tool, how thanks to these He (the future president) in a mutual exchange, was successful. I still remember the enthusiastic words of the correspondent Giovanna Botteri RAI3 USA for Obama, "Extraordinary, with little money, financiers, thanks to twitter, this new social messanger, the candidate is gaining popularity". As usual, all the media present us with the façade but the reality is VERY different.
Obama has been a character built over decades, predestined, financed and supported by the Open foundation and its founder, press and media. The image of the accidental character, the passer-by, is the desired portrait to offer to the media.
Another character who has had the largest following for years has been a singer, that of the One Band, also in that period, various Hollywood stars have brought popularity, then journalists, agencies, utilities, official accounts of governments, ministries, institutions, and so on, the twitter population has grown from a few million to half a billion.

In the early years, Italian Twitter seemed like an Indian reservation because Facebook was absolutely dominant and the few characters allowed, 150, were not considered enough for formulating a thought. There were no trolls, little spam, almost zero insults and arguments, and an environment of civil discussions.
The 'gurus' of twitter and social media had already started to flow, how to get more followers/followers, marketing and how to behave and so on.
I had my first real "baptism" between twitter and reality in 2012 when I attended a 2/3 day conference with various speakers, some journalists on twitter emergencies and usage.
In fact, whatever you think of twitter's policies, which have changed several times over the years, the computer tool allowed a hybrid transmissions between the web message, the mailbox and SMS, potentially to be used as an emergency radio tool for public warnings in case of cataclysms, civil protection emergencies, volcanoes, sea, earthquakes.
We all know that it is used for advertising, marketing books, products, promotion of one's own activities; the political exchange, in Italy, came much later, when it had established itself as another Big Tech platform.
Popularity grew when TV and radio stations realised they could have immediate feedback on their broadcasts and a vicious circle of comments and then replies or mentions on TV was created, with the users in search for popularity exalted to the maximum (my message on TV! Two seconds of celebrity!).
For the last two years or so,if not three, we have seen censorship, bans, expulsions in massive scale from social media, including the famous one of a US president at the end of his term, I never imagined this could happen.
In 2019 I followed and had access to certain privileged information that originated in twitter, just before the censorship began, to my knowledge, apart from some forums and maybe Reddit, this was the main channel. News, sites, then completely erased from the memory of the network.
So I belong to the millions of users disappointed by this platform for its restrictive policies, censorship, control, registration methodology, data manipulation, shadowbanning (the most horrible thing you can have as penalty after being banned for life).
At the same time I have not abandoned it because there is a niche, a small number of accounts with special information, geopolitical analysts, journalists, investigators, historians, someone from the sciences, someone from computer security and analysis, economics, some friends for whom it is worth reading and interacting.
The myth of secret direct messages between accounts is a myth; if you have something secret you cannot use twitter, is this clear?
The worst side of twitter is not the lack of privacy, the existence of online disputes, the blocks; in my opinion the dark side is that it is used by A.I. to analyze and manipulate us and social engineering, that there are real "campaigns" to promote certain events and behaviors, a public case on record was the "Arab Springs", since then these "lords" of socials FB, Twitter, Google etc. were feared by various rulers, politicians, for the possibility of manipulating the "algorithm".
When in Italy they speak of an algorithm it seems as if they are talking about the deus ex machina, obscuring the minds of the listeners; the algorithm is a programmer, a social engineer who through software controls, cancels certain messages with keywords, certain users and promotes others, as happens on TV, film director, where certain people will never appear, not because they are stupid or lack arguments, culture, they simply have to be ignored for their messages. Algorithm in classical terms is something else entirely,the procedure that a program follows according to events, simple algorithms and increasingly complex ones, automatism, in case of, represented by flowcharts or other graphs or symbols. In any case, the algorithm is not a supernatural, obscure entity that has fallen from the sky to shut down a guy's account or obscure certain hashtags as has happened several times this year. One cannot accuse mathematics of being political when the numbers, the social metrics, on the other side of the screen, are changed at will; certain searches give zero results even though one knows that the person, the article, the fact exists; it is not the fault of the algorithm per se, but of the man who manipulates it.
In spite of all the horrendous manipulation that exists on twitter and which would rightly make anyone abandon it, there are messages and accounts that escape this logic because they are not very visible, irrelevant in terms of popularity or of no interest to the censors and the algorithm.
I use twitter lists almost from the beginning, while the twitter-wall is manipulated by the algorithm which decides which accounts should appear first, the most visible, and last chronologically, my lists follow certain accounts by theme. For example, a regional list, a list of opponents accounts, a list on finance and economy, the third sector (no profit world), trolls and so on. I have no intention of cataloging the world, but it is a means to do research, see certain topics at glance, the interesting thing is that the lists can be followed.
Months ago I started a new list on geography and geopolitics and the amazing thing was that I had more members following the list than the number that I included in the list, a success that was incomprehensible to me, except that the topic and those subscribed had a remarkable reputation. There are accounts/users that are special and worthwhile, like when you buy a newspaper you despise and hate but there is a writer or journalist you particularly esteem, so is twitter.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
(some changes - AI+me)