9 ms·

Leaving Twitter

73 points by cdme 3y ago

f233f2 3y ago
[flagged]
- nkozyra 3y ago
  Well that's not at all what the post says. But let's pretend it did. The point of social media - as a user - is specifically to see the kind of social connections that I - as the user - want to see. If I can't control that to an extent I once could, I'm bailing. There's no duty to engage with dissenting opinion on a social media app.
  - f233f2 3y ago
    The article does not say that he's being forced to engage with dissenting opinions.
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      It actually does.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      I left Twitter last November (I did return briefly for a silly joke in December when utterance of the dread word ‘mastodon’ was briefly banned). Now, I’ve always found Musk intensely irritating, but this wasn’t an issue prior to October or so. Then it started shoving his nonsense in my face, and suggesting I follow him; I was somewhat surprised to discover I had not blocked him previously, and remedied that, but the point is that old-Twitter was actually pretty good at keeping stuff that you didn’t want out of your face. New-Twitter, not so much. It’s a lot worse now, of course, with idiot blueticks’ inane replies promoted to the top.
kcmastrpc 3y ago
I'm uncertain how these types of posts are supposed to be taken seriously. Is it normal for people to make a big deal about their personal decision to stop frequenting a particular restaurant or store (or website)?
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > Is it normal for people to make a big deal about their personal decision to stop frequenting a particular restaurant It's extremely common for people to complain when a restaurant they frequented and enjoyed turns for the worse, yes.
  - mjmsmith 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    when I'm screwed by some business I'll tell anybody who will listen and I hold the grudge for years lmao
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rovr138 3y ago
  > I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all, for the foreseeable future, because I think it does matter. If you’re someone active in your community and always there and suddenly you stopped, do you think people would notice? They do. If they search for you and find this, it’s telling them you’re okay, just not there anymore, and why. If you don’t care. That’s fine. To the people that do care, this explains why.
- fifilura 3y ago
  If that restaurant has a lot of regulars that you interact every day, it is reasonable to say "Good bye, I am not coming back".
- 3y ago
unboxingelf 3y ago
> But I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all, for the foreseeable future Commit and delete your account then. Folks love to complain but rarely follow through.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > Folks love to complain but rarely follow through. Traffic down 14%-19% (depending on source) in the last year indicates people are following through. https://www.pcmag.com/news/twitter-traffic-on-downward-trend-since-elon-musks-takeover https://www.pcmag.com/news/twitter-traffic-on-downward-trend...
  - unboxingelf 3y ago
    I mean the lot that complains publicly often does not follow through. I deleted my circa 2009 account earlier this year. It was fun while it lasted, just like MySpace.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    Would love to see a graph going back over the past decade. Otherwise how can you tell if there are multiyear cycles in Twitter's engagement or if the trend had begun long before Musk's takeover? Would also need to see an analysis of other social media sites to see how their engagement has fared in the same timeframe to tell if it's a broader trend or Twitter specifically.
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      > Otherwise how can you tell if there are multiyear cycles in Twitter's engagement or if the trend had begun long before Musk's takeover? If you have access to SimilarWeb (where the data came from) you can see it's a new trend. I can't share that but they do a free trial if you want to check it out.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Commit and delete your account then. Folks love to complain but rarely follow through. The account is now locked. But deleting your account leaves it open for trolls to take over the username and pretend to be you.
urda 3y ago
For myself: I've been really happy moving over to Mastodon honestly. It's been a breath of fresh air.
- nonameking2026 3y ago
  Does it have free speech?
  - ericfrazier 3y ago
    It does not in any way.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    For those who want it; there are instances which don’t really defederate at all. If you’re into weird Nazis, they’re absolutely available. Most people, realistically, want some moderation in their social media, and the major instances cater to that.
this_user 3y ago
At this point, I find the constant stream of people complaining about Twitter and posting long-winded goodbye speeches much more annoying than the supposed changes of the service under Musk.
- rovr138 3y ago
  > supposed changes Hasn’t Musk and others at Twitter/X said that they HAVE made changes? What’s the ‘supposed’ here relating to?
  - pc86 3y ago
    I think it relates to the fact that very few of these changes affect users directly, especially if you make it a point not to follow political hacks on either side of the aisle. My timeline has never had politicians or celebrities in it, I follow well over a thousand active accounts, and my feed is indistinguishable from what it was half a decade ago.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      I’m baffled by this; how are you using Twitter? As far as I can see, the replies under _practically everything_ are full of spam from idiot blueticks; this seems like a pretty dramatic change.
      - optionalsquid 3y ago
        I think it depends on what accounts you read: If I only look at replies to accounts that I followed prior to Musk's takeover, then not much has changed. But that is likely because I only followed niche accounts. The moment I look at more popular accounts (news or what have you), then I see an overweight of blue-tick accounts that rarely have anything worthwhile to contribute
      - 3y ago
lapcat 3y ago
I'm glad that Evans has a "final straw", but I find it strange that the last week, which he mentions a couple times in the article, was the final straw for him: > We saw this at its logical conclusion in the last week, with deliberate misinformation promoted > It wasn’t, as this week, telling us all to read a very obvious misinformation account This kind of thing has been happening ever since Musk took over Twitter. For example, a year ago: "Elon Musk, new owner of Twitter, tweets unfounded, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack" https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-new-owner-of-twitter-tweets-unfounded-anti-lgbtq-conspiracy-theory-about-paul-pelosi-attack.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-new-owner-of-twitt... And while Musk did eventually delete the tweet, he was still unrepentent: "This is fake – I did not tweet out a link to The New York Times!" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586871691686223872 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586871691686223872 So there's nothing new happening now that wasn't happening all along, the past year, except perhaps that Musk has started tweeting about something that Evans personally cares about.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  And sometimes that's all it takes: tripping over that topic you know a lot about and realizing that if they're that wrong about this, maybe they're that wrong period. Call it "reverse Gell-Mann amnesia effect."
- nonameking2026 3y ago
  Elon is not twitter, he is sometimes a troll. Have you removed the troll from your own eye?
  - kagakuninja 3y ago
    Elon gets his posts artificially boosted by The Algorithm, and he plans to remove the block feature, because "It doesn't make sense". Also, Xitter apparently puts more hateful shit onto people's "For You" feeds now.
    - freedomben 3y ago
sgirard 3y ago
It started off well. I thought this idea was insightful: "This is often the real challenge to tech incumbents: once the network effects are locked in, it’s very hard to get people to switch to something that’s roughly the same but 10% better - they switch to something that solves one underlying need in an entirely new way." Then it devolved into a rant about Nazis.
pc86 3y ago
I'm trying to acknowledge my bias in that a) I still use Twitter, and b) I don't really see it as demonstrably different in any way than it was a year or two or four ago, with the exception of a lot of people complaining about it being SO much worse. So with that being said, what is unique about Twitter in that so many people feel the need to announce their departure like this? I stopped using Twitter for years in the mid-10s after 4-5 years of daily usage and certainly didn't write a blog post about it, and I started my freelancing career there. I've gotten jobs and met IRL friends on Twitter, it was an important part of my life especially ca. 2009-2012 or so.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  This guy is a professional opinion haver (aka analyst/journalist) which is why we get his opinion about it. Have there been many others because this one’s the first I’ve read and seems well thought out? I too left Twitter but just resurrected my Mastodon account and got on with life.
- meristohm 3y ago
  Some people (speaking as one) like to speak self-righteously about decisions they make. "I think everyone else should do what I do." Seeing that in writing, it sounds ignorant and foolish; how unimaginative to think that everyone else, if they even exist, has the same preferences and ways of interacting with others. To counter this impulse and recognize what I'm feeling so I can better decide what to do, I journal and meditate and go on observational walks, something everyone should of course be doing. Wink.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I stopped using Twitter for years in the mid-10s after 4-5 years of daily usage and certainly didn't write a blog post about it, and I started my freelancing career there. How many Twitter followers did you have, and how many people would read your blog post? Evans has 389,000 Twitter followers, so his departure does have some salience to people other than himself.
- jasonpeacock 3y ago
  My experience with Twitter was also mostly unchanged, I left because I choose not to support the new ownership. It's a classic example of "Then they came for _ and I did not speak out because I was not a _ ..." Leaving Twitter is how I can speak out, in my small way.
xdfil 3y ago
[dead]
toyg 3y ago
This piece boils down to "I was with Musk all the way, until he touched my pet topic on which I only tolerate my kind of disinfo".
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  I don't even use Xitter, but I hate what Musk is doing to a once great company. But maybe you are OK with more hate speech and disinformation.
  - toyg 3y ago
    Oh no, I've not really used Twitter for a long time - even before Musk took over, it was a cesspit. What I find hypocritical is people reacting only to their pet-topics, on which they're themselves happy to spread disinfo (the Corbyn jibes) - because it has to be the right disinfo "or else".
ejb999 3y ago
twitter is not an airport - no need to announce arrivals or departures.
- nonameking2026 3y ago
  He has VIP tickets and probably a cool hat
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > no need to announce arrivals or departures. Similarly, no need to walk around telling other people it's not an airport.
mrtksn 3y ago
I know it's an unpopular opinion but hear me out: 1) Now the lists are prominent feature, pick accounts that specialise and put them in lists. I find it especially useful if I want to keep an eye on stuff that I don't necessarily want to engage everyday. For example, I have a list of conspiracy theorists and misogynist who are quite influential but I can't stand to see their BS all the time. I also have a list of economists that I would like to be able to glance over when there's some developments. 2) Community notes, which was developed as "birdwatch" pre-takeover but never released, is actually super useful. 3) Seeing the number of views is very interesting to have an idea about the reach of something. It's probably very inaccurate considering what constitutes a view but its useful to compare one content to another 4) Removing the headlines of link previews makes you click it before forming an opinion. IMHO headlines are harmful. 5) I love that Musk was exposed as free speech NIMBY. His position is now cemented, can no longer claim being free speech absolutist and be takes seriously. 6) And the Nazi stuff that Evans mentions, IMHO is harmless because it's challenged. I'm much more free speech absolutists than Musk and I don't believe that de-platforming people, making them congregate in specialised platforms helps anybody. They just get crazier and crazier and then shoot people or conspire to do things. It's much better when this happens in open and they BS is called out. I don't know if Twitter pushes that many nutjobs to everyone or I end up seeing so many because I have a list full of them but I think it's important to be exposed to all kind of trends in the society - even though some of those are extremely unpleasant. Every now and then, they have a point or they are the only ones that address a pain point of concern and can get lot's of supporters when that happen. If you keep eye on these issues you can act before its too late. And if some those people actually attempt do something harmful, that's the law enforcements job to take care of it. Maybe it's bad business but it's a better product and I don't see any point of leaving it. A cesspool you don't see doesn't seize existing. An anti-vaxxer trend, for example, will end up effecting you even if you don't have a Twitter account because there are people actively working for it and leaving a platform will simply make their job easier.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > 4) Removing the headlines of link previews makes you click it before forming an opinion. IMHO headlines are harmful. This doesn't make any sense. If I click it, I see the headline. Why is the context of a picture any better than the context of a headline + picture? Musk was transparent about this - he only cared about the aesthetics.
nomdep 3y ago
> "The last year swapped stasis for chaos. Stuff breaks at random and you don’t know if it’s a bug or a decision." For a couple of months, yes, but why is he using the present tense? > "The advertisers have fled" I whish! There are still to many ads in my timeline > "and no-one knows what will be broken by accident or on purpose tomorrow. The example that’s closest to home for me was that the in-house newsletter product was shut down" uh? newsletter product? I don´t care if there is a bug from time to time, what is he expecting? > "Meanwhile, beyond the chaos, there has been no sense for the actual users of where we’re going. What should those newly hard-core engineers be shipping? A ‘super app’? A universal content platform with no external links? Your financial life? Seriously?" At this point I has to double check if by "being on Twitter since 2007" meant he worked there, but no, he has never worked at Twitter, he is just talking about opening a free account. And yet I writes "where we’re going" as he and Twitter where one. Maybe it was a copy/paste mistake or a typo.... or maybe he is delusional. > "And then, there are the Nazis." His definition of Nazi is probably VERY encompassing but still, what the heck is he smoking? I also have a Twitter account since 2007, and in the first few years it made a huge difference in my personal and professional life. Although I remember those years as "peak" Twitter, current Twitter is good enough and MUCH better that the stinking toxic pile it was between 2014-2022... I don´t get the hate
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > There are still to many ads in my timeline Yeah, but they're for dropshipping companies called Flgahzx. I wonder how low the ad rates have gotten.
  - buggeryorkshire 3y ago
    Same, but also more mainstream ones where the promoted tweet is from a year ago - I wonder if they're repromoting completing campaigns to boost the stats?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > For a couple of months, yes, but why is he using the present tense? Go to Slack’s status twitter, and it shows you three incidents from the last four years, not even in order. Go to some other twitter accounts, and it redirects you to a login screen. I mean, this all feels pretty broken; maybe it’s intentional and the product person is just an idiot, but really, who knows. Go to https://status.twitter.com https://status.twitter.com, and you get a cert error. Accept the invalid cert, and you get _redirected to another status page with a different, also incorrect, cert_. And so on. It’s still pretty broken. As yet another Twitter-account-since-2007 people, I’m gone. For now I’m keeping a dormant account on the basis that he might get bored and go back to the imaginary car tunnels, and Twitter sold off to someone more sensible (presumably Automattic, inheritor of all washed-up social networks), but Naughty Old Mr Car’s wacky world is not for me.
thefz 3y ago
Fine, leave a completely not vital (nor important, IMO) platform and be done with it. Can we discuss something else already?
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > Can we discuss something else already? I'm curious why you read this and then commented on it if that's really your opinion.
OrvalWintermute 3y ago
> And then, there’s Elon. > I once called Elon Musk ‘a bullshitter who delivers’ - he says a lot of stuff, and yet, there are the cars and the self-landing rockets. People generally struggle with one or other of these - they will refuse to accept the problem in selling a car that can’t drive itself as ‘full self driving’, or they will say ‘he didn’t found Tesla!’, forgetting that he’s run it for the last 15 years. Most of what you see at Tesla or SpaceX really is his creation - but half of what he says is bullshit. > Until recently, though, the bullshit was mostly about cars or tunnels. It wasn’t repeating obvious anti-semitic dog-whistles. It wasn’t telling us that George Soros is plotting to destroy western civilisation. It wasn’t engaging with and promoting white suprematists. It wasn’t, as this week, telling us all to read a very obvious misinformation account, with a record of anti-semitism, as the best source on Israel. Of course, it had bought a Blue Tick. ... > If you see a man claim that he’ll have ‘full self-driving’ working ‘next year’ for half a decade and can’t make fun of that just a little, you are probably blinding yourself too, but it does’t matter much. And maybe you don’t care much about this, or have decided not to see it. But I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all, for the foreseeable future, because I think it does matter. I didn't really like reading this bit. I don't know where it comes from but Elon has accomplished a great deal, and I am no Elon fanboi
taylodl 3y ago
I stopped using Twitter in 2016 when they started their policy of applying the platform rules differently depending on your real-world community status. Nope. You know what? I'm still alive and I couldn't care less about the Musk takeover.
neotrope 3y ago
Businesses are leaving because twitter is increasingly about culture wars and the risk of brand damage is too high. Twitter will soon have multiple pricing tiers and I suspect they will get more aggressive by limiting functionality for non-paying users.
tamimio 3y ago
I never get these type of articles, if you don’t like X (no, I mean as a variable, not twitter, goddamit Elon!), just don’t use it. Social media been and still the worst type of interaction you will get on the internet, that’s why I barely use any and I have a healthy mindset, I do join and be part of other communities that I can relate to in my field, your discussion will be mostly focused on your and their interests, sure you might argue about stuff, but it’s still within one goal and interest, social media on the other hand, is everything bad in society will be surfacing and shoved into your face.
hiidrew 3y ago
https://warpcast.com/ https://warpcast.com/ is the best alternative yet

Leaving Twitter

73 points by cdme 3y ago

f233f2 3y ago

[flagged]

nkozyra 3y ago
Well that's not at all what the post says. But let's pretend it did. The point of social media - as a user - is specifically to see the kind of social connections that I - as the user - want to see. If I can't control that to an extent I once could, I'm bailing. There's no duty to engage with dissenting opinion on a social media app.
- f233f2 3y ago
  The article does not say that he's being forced to engage with dissenting opinions.
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    It actually does.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    I left Twitter last November (I did return briefly for a silly joke in December when utterance of the dread word ‘mastodon’ was briefly banned). Now, I’ve always found Musk intensely irritating, but this wasn’t an issue prior to October or so. Then it started shoving his nonsense in my face, and suggesting I follow him; I was somewhat surprised to discover I had not blocked him previously, and remedied that, but the point is that old-Twitter was actually pretty good at keeping stuff that you didn’t want out of your face. New-Twitter, not so much. It’s a lot worse now, of course, with idiot blueticks’ inane replies promoted to the top.

kcmastrpc 3y ago

I'm uncertain how these types of posts are supposed to be taken seriously. Is it normal for people to make a big deal about their personal decision to stop frequenting a particular restaurant or store (or website)?

nkozyra 3y ago
> Is it normal for people to make a big deal about their personal decision to stop frequenting a particular restaurant It's extremely common for people to complain when a restaurant they frequented and enjoyed turns for the worse, yes.
- mjmsmith 3y ago
  [flagged]
- dingnuts 3y ago
  when I'm screwed by some business I'll tell anybody who will listen and I hold the grudge for years lmao
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rovr138 3y ago
> I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all, for the foreseeable future, because I think it does matter. If you’re someone active in your community and always there and suddenly you stopped, do you think people would notice? They do. If they search for you and find this, it’s telling them you’re okay, just not there anymore, and why. If you don’t care. That’s fine. To the people that do care, this explains why.
fifilura 3y ago
If that restaurant has a lot of regulars that you interact every day, it is reasonable to say "Good bye, I am not coming back".
3y ago

unboxingelf 3y ago

> But I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all, for the foreseeable future Commit and delete your account then. Folks love to complain but rarely follow through.

nkozyra 3y ago
> Folks love to complain but rarely follow through. Traffic down 14%-19% (depending on source) in the last year indicates people are following through. https://www.pcmag.com/news/twitter-traffic-on-downward-trend-since-elon-musks-takeover https://www.pcmag.com/news/twitter-traffic-on-downward-trend...
- unboxingelf 3y ago
  I mean the lot that complains publicly often does not follow through. I deleted my circa 2009 account earlier this year. It was fun while it lasted, just like MySpace.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Would love to see a graph going back over the past decade. Otherwise how can you tell if there are multiyear cycles in Twitter's engagement or if the trend had begun long before Musk's takeover? Would also need to see an analysis of other social media sites to see how their engagement has fared in the same timeframe to tell if it's a broader trend or Twitter specifically.
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    > Otherwise how can you tell if there are multiyear cycles in Twitter's engagement or if the trend had begun long before Musk's takeover? If you have access to SimilarWeb (where the data came from) you can see it's a new trend. I can't share that but they do a free trial if you want to check it out.
lapcat 3y ago
> Commit and delete your account then. Folks love to complain but rarely follow through. The account is now locked. But deleting your account leaves it open for trolls to take over the username and pretend to be you.

urda 3y ago

For myself: I've been really happy moving over to Mastodon honestly. It's been a breath of fresh air.

nonameking2026 3y ago
Does it have free speech?
- ericfrazier 3y ago
  It does not in any way.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  For those who want it; there are instances which don’t really defederate at all. If you’re into weird Nazis, they’re absolutely available. Most people, realistically, want some moderation in their social media, and the major instances cater to that.

this_user 3y ago

At this point, I find the constant stream of people complaining about Twitter and posting long-winded goodbye speeches much more annoying than the supposed changes of the service under Musk.

rovr138 3y ago
> supposed changes Hasn’t Musk and others at Twitter/X said that they HAVE made changes? What’s the ‘supposed’ here relating to?
- pc86 3y ago
  I think it relates to the fact that very few of these changes affect users directly, especially if you make it a point not to follow political hacks on either side of the aisle. My timeline has never had politicians or celebrities in it, I follow well over a thousand active accounts, and my feed is indistinguishable from what it was half a decade ago.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    I’m baffled by this; how are you using Twitter? As far as I can see, the replies under _practically everything_ are full of spam from idiot blueticks; this seems like a pretty dramatic change.
    - optionalsquid 3y ago
      I think it depends on what accounts you read: If I only look at replies to accounts that I followed prior to Musk's takeover, then not much has changed. But that is likely because I only followed niche accounts. The moment I look at more popular accounts (news or what have you), then I see an overweight of blue-tick accounts that rarely have anything worthwhile to contribute
    - 3y ago

lapcat 3y ago

I'm glad that Evans has a "final straw", but I find it strange that the last week, which he mentions a couple times in the article, was the final straw for him: > We saw this at its logical conclusion in the last week, with deliberate misinformation promoted > It wasn’t, as this week, telling us all to read a very obvious misinformation account This kind of thing has been happening ever since Musk took over Twitter. For example, a year ago: "Elon Musk, new owner of Twitter, tweets unfounded, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack" https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-new-owner-of-twitter-tweets-unfounded-anti-lgbtq-conspiracy-theory-about-paul-pelosi-attack.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-new-owner-of-twitt... And while Musk did eventually delete the tweet, he was still unrepentent: "This is fake – I did not tweet out a link to The New York Times!" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586871691686223872 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586871691686223872 So there's nothing new happening now that wasn't happening all along, the past year, except perhaps that Musk has started tweeting about something that Evans personally cares about.

shadowgovt 3y ago
And sometimes that's all it takes: tripping over that topic you know a lot about and realizing that if they're that wrong about this, maybe they're that wrong period. Call it "reverse Gell-Mann amnesia effect."
nonameking2026 3y ago
Elon is not twitter, he is sometimes a troll. Have you removed the troll from your own eye?
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  Elon gets his posts artificially boosted by The Algorithm, and he plans to remove the block feature, because "It doesn't make sense". Also, Xitter apparently puts more hateful shit onto people's "For You" feeds now.
  - freedomben 3y ago

sgirard 3y ago

It started off well. I thought this idea was insightful: "This is often the real challenge to tech incumbents: once the network effects are locked in, it’s very hard to get people to switch to something that’s roughly the same but 10% better - they switch to something that solves one underlying need in an entirely new way." Then it devolved into a rant about Nazis.

pc86 3y ago

I'm trying to acknowledge my bias in that a) I still use Twitter, and b) I don't really see it as demonstrably different in any way than it was a year or two or four ago, with the exception of a lot of people complaining about it being SO much worse. So with that being said, what is unique about Twitter in that so many people feel the need to announce their departure like this? I stopped using Twitter for years in the mid-10s after 4-5 years of daily usage and certainly didn't write a blog post about it, and I started my freelancing career there. I've gotten jobs and met IRL friends on Twitter, it was an important part of my life especially ca. 2009-2012 or so.

meheleventyone 3y ago
This guy is a professional opinion haver (aka analyst/journalist) which is why we get his opinion about it. Have there been many others because this one’s the first I’ve read and seems well thought out? I too left Twitter but just resurrected my Mastodon account and got on with life.
meristohm 3y ago
Some people (speaking as one) like to speak self-righteously about decisions they make. "I think everyone else should do what I do." Seeing that in writing, it sounds ignorant and foolish; how unimaginative to think that everyone else, if they even exist, has the same preferences and ways of interacting with others. To counter this impulse and recognize what I'm feeling so I can better decide what to do, I journal and meditate and go on observational walks, something everyone should of course be doing. Wink.
lapcat 3y ago
> I stopped using Twitter for years in the mid-10s after 4-5 years of daily usage and certainly didn't write a blog post about it, and I started my freelancing career there. How many Twitter followers did you have, and how many people would read your blog post? Evans has 389,000 Twitter followers, so his departure does have some salience to people other than himself.
jasonpeacock 3y ago
My experience with Twitter was also mostly unchanged, I left because I choose not to support the new ownership. It's a classic example of "Then they came for _ and I did not speak out because I was not a _ ..." Leaving Twitter is how I can speak out, in my small way.

xdfil 3y ago

[dead]

toyg 3y ago

This piece boils down to "I was with Musk all the way, until he touched my pet topic on which I only tolerate my kind of disinfo".

kagakuninja 3y ago
I don't even use Xitter, but I hate what Musk is doing to a once great company. But maybe you are OK with more hate speech and disinformation.
- toyg 3y ago
  Oh no, I've not really used Twitter for a long time - even before Musk took over, it was a cesspit. What I find hypocritical is people reacting only to their pet-topics, on which they're themselves happy to spread disinfo (the Corbyn jibes) - because it has to be the right disinfo "or else".

ejb999 3y ago

twitter is not an airport - no need to announce arrivals or departures.

nonameking2026 3y ago
He has VIP tickets and probably a cool hat
nkozyra 3y ago
> no need to announce arrivals or departures. Similarly, no need to walk around telling other people it's not an airport.

mrtksn 3y ago

I know it's an unpopular opinion but hear me out: 1) Now the lists are prominent feature, pick accounts that specialise and put them in lists. I find it especially useful if I want to keep an eye on stuff that I don't necessarily want to engage everyday. For example, I have a list of conspiracy theorists and misogynist who are quite influential but I can't stand to see their BS all the time. I also have a list of economists that I would like to be able to glance over when there's some developments. 2) Community notes, which was developed as "birdwatch" pre-takeover but never released, is actually super useful. 3) Seeing the number of views is very interesting to have an idea about the reach of something. It's probably very inaccurate considering what constitutes a view but its useful to compare one content to another 4) Removing the headlines of link previews makes you click it before forming an opinion. IMHO headlines are harmful. 5) I love that Musk was exposed as free speech NIMBY. His position is now cemented, can no longer claim being free speech absolutist and be takes seriously. 6) And the Nazi stuff that Evans mentions, IMHO is harmless because it's challenged. I'm much more free speech absolutists than Musk and I don't believe that de-platforming people, making them congregate in specialised platforms helps anybody. They just get crazier and crazier and then shoot people or conspire to do things. It's much better when this happens in open and they BS is called out. I don't know if Twitter pushes that many nutjobs to everyone or I end up seeing so many because I have a list full of them but I think it's important to be exposed to all kind of trends in the society - even though some of those are extremely unpleasant. Every now and then, they have a point or they are the only ones that address a pain point of concern and can get lot's of supporters when that happen. If you keep eye on these issues you can act before its too late. And if some those people actually attempt do something harmful, that's the law enforcements job to take care of it. Maybe it's bad business but it's a better product and I don't see any point of leaving it. A cesspool you don't see doesn't seize existing. An anti-vaxxer trend, for example, will end up effecting you even if you don't have a Twitter account because there are people actively working for it and leaving a platform will simply make their job easier.

nkozyra 3y ago
> 4) Removing the headlines of link previews makes you click it before forming an opinion. IMHO headlines are harmful. This doesn't make any sense. If I click it, I see the headline. Why is the context of a picture any better than the context of a headline + picture? Musk was transparent about this - he only cared about the aesthetics.

nomdep 3y ago

> "The last year swapped stasis for chaos. Stuff breaks at random and you don’t know if it’s a bug or a decision." For a couple of months, yes, but why is he using the present tense? > "The advertisers have fled" I whish! There are still to many ads in my timeline > "and no-one knows what will be broken by accident or on purpose tomorrow. The example that’s closest to home for me was that the in-house newsletter product was shut down" uh? newsletter product? I don´t care if there is a bug from time to time, what is he expecting? > "Meanwhile, beyond the chaos, there has been no sense for the actual users of where we’re going. What should those newly hard-core engineers be shipping? A ‘super app’? A universal content platform with no external links? Your financial life? Seriously?" At this point I has to double check if by "being on Twitter since 2007" meant he worked there, but no, he has never worked at Twitter, he is just talking about opening a free account. And yet I writes "where we’re going" as he and Twitter where one. Maybe it was a copy/paste mistake or a typo.... or maybe he is delusional. > "And then, there are the Nazis." His definition of Nazi is probably VERY encompassing but still, what the heck is he smoking? I also have a Twitter account since 2007, and in the first few years it made a huge difference in my personal and professional life. Although I remember those years as "peak" Twitter, current Twitter is good enough and MUCH better that the stinking toxic pile it was between 2014-2022... I don´t get the hate

nkozyra 3y ago
> There are still to many ads in my timeline Yeah, but they're for dropshipping companies called Flgahzx. I wonder how low the ad rates have gotten.
- buggeryorkshire 3y ago
  Same, but also more mainstream ones where the promoted tweet is from a year ago - I wonder if they're repromoting completing campaigns to boost the stats?
rsynnott 3y ago
> For a couple of months, yes, but why is he using the present tense? Go to Slack’s status twitter, and it shows you three incidents from the last four years, not even in order. Go to some other twitter accounts, and it redirects you to a login screen. I mean, this all feels pretty broken; maybe it’s intentional and the product person is just an idiot, but really, who knows. Go to https://status.twitter.com https://status.twitter.com, and you get a cert error. Accept the invalid cert, and you get _redirected to another status page with a different, also incorrect, cert_. And so on. It’s still pretty broken. As yet another Twitter-account-since-2007 people, I’m gone. For now I’m keeping a dormant account on the basis that he might get bored and go back to the imaginary car tunnels, and Twitter sold off to someone more sensible (presumably Automattic, inheritor of all washed-up social networks), but Naughty Old Mr Car’s wacky world is not for me.

thefz 3y ago

Fine, leave a completely not vital (nor important, IMO) platform and be done with it. Can we discuss something else already?

nkozyra 3y ago
> Can we discuss something else already? I'm curious why you read this and then commented on it if that's really your opinion.

OrvalWintermute 3y ago

> And then, there’s Elon. > I once called Elon Musk ‘a bullshitter who delivers’ - he says a lot of stuff, and yet, there are the cars and the self-landing rockets. People generally struggle with one or other of these - they will refuse to accept the problem in selling a car that can’t drive itself as ‘full self driving’, or they will say ‘he didn’t found Tesla!’, forgetting that he’s run it for the last 15 years. Most of what you see at Tesla or SpaceX really is his creation - but half of what he says is bullshit. > Until recently, though, the bullshit was mostly about cars or tunnels. It wasn’t repeating obvious anti-semitic dog-whistles. It wasn’t telling us that George Soros is plotting to destroy western civilisation. It wasn’t engaging with and promoting white suprematists. It wasn’t, as this week, telling us all to read a very obvious misinformation account, with a record of anti-semitism, as the best source on Israel. Of course, it had bought a Blue Tick. ... > If you see a man claim that he’ll have ‘full self-driving’ working ‘next year’ for half a decade and can’t make fun of that just a little, you are probably blinding yourself too, but it does’t matter much. And maybe you don’t care much about this, or have decided not to see it. But I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all, for the foreseeable future, because I think it does matter. I didn't really like reading this bit. I don't know where it comes from but Elon has accomplished a great deal, and I am no Elon fanboi

taylodl 3y ago

I stopped using Twitter in 2016 when they started their policy of applying the platform rules differently depending on your real-world community status. Nope. You know what? I'm still alive and I couldn't care less about the Musk takeover.

neotrope 3y ago

Businesses are leaving because twitter is increasingly about culture wars and the risk of brand damage is too high. Twitter will soon have multiple pricing tiers and I suspect they will get more aggressive by limiting functionality for non-paying users.

tamimio 3y ago

I never get these type of articles, if you don’t like X (no, I mean as a variable, not twitter, goddamit Elon!), just don’t use it. Social media been and still the worst type of interaction you will get on the internet, that’s why I barely use any and I have a healthy mindset, I do join and be part of other communities that I can relate to in my field, your discussion will be mostly focused on your and their interests, sure you might argue about stuff, but it’s still within one goal and interest, social media on the other hand, is everything bad in society will be surfacing and shoved into your face.

hiidrew 3y ago

https://warpcast.com/ https://warpcast.com/ is the best alternative yet