I joined Twitter back in 2007. Early days. It was great as a micro-blogging platform. People mostly just logged about what was going on in their lives. Most alr

I joined Twitter back in 2007. Early days. It was great as a micro-blogging platform. People mostly just logged about what was going on in their lives. Most already had a digital presence elsewhere as bloggers and such. And there was a lot of experimentation going on. Then things picked up and there was a massive influx of people and companies. That's when things changed. In and of itself, the public debate isn't a bad thing: it's, above all, a function of a larger, more diverse audience trooping in one place. The fact of the matter is that Twitter, as a private company, never had any incentive to create the affordances to cater to the complexities and intricacies that come with hosting the public debate. On the contrary. I just stopped using Twitter at the end of last year, for the sake of my own mental well being. That doesn't exclude me from being concerned or being reflective about the topics and current events that are on everyone's mind these days. Not being on Twitter helped me reclaim mental bandwidth to reflect on my own life, here and now, and allows me to consider the world in a critical and compassionate way without sapping my energy.