Larry Anderson

I done laid around and played around this old town too long, Summer's almost gone, yes, winter's comin' on, I done laid around and played around this old town too long, And I feel like I gotta travel on...

I know what Billy Grammer meant.

It hasn't taken long for the new owner to embrace the worst in Twitter, and I'm not going to stick around to see what happens. It's clear who he is, and what he is, and who his friends are, and none of it looks good to me.

I first signed on in the early days, when Twitter was tech geeks posting by sending texts to 40404. Then the general public found it, and then the celebrities and corporations piled on, and then the Nazis came, and here we are.

Everything has a life cycle. MySpace, Friendfeed, Jaiku, ICQ, App.net, and the list goes on. We're reaching the end of Twitter's, at least the Twitter we once knew. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that you shouldn't let your social media be ruled by any one person or corporation or private equity group. Silos are bad, and will eventually change hands or shut down.

If you came here from the link in my Twitter profile, know that it is the last time I'll post there. My tweets auto-delete after a set period, so eventually that tweet will also disappear. I'm leaving my account in place to ensure my username can't be taken by someone else, but it will be a zombie account.

If you came here from the autopost to Mastodon, you know where I'll be from now on. I've decided to throw in my lot with the Fediverse. I'm done with corporate social media. I should have left already, but I'm fixing that now.

Full disclosure: I will keep a separate account that I have on Twitter to follow emergency services in my local area. It's a valuable resource for times of crisis. That account, however, does not and will not post, and I'll be reevaluating it periodically.

We all have to decide what we want to support. I've made my choice. I'm not saying it is the only choice, nor that it's right for you, but it's right for me.

To those who say I can just mute and block: yes, I can. My previous Twitter account had a block list running into the tens of thousands. It gets tiring after a while.

Also, it's hard to feel smug about keeping the Nazis out of your living room when they're beating up your Jewish neighbors outside your house, and the local authorities are doing nothing to stop them. Better that you should get the hell out and try to take your neighbors with you.

Twitter, I'll miss what you used to be and what you could have been. But enough is enough.

See you in elephant land.

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Now that the Twitter acquisition has been completed, I have a few thoughts on reasons why a person might not want to leave Twitter and move to Mastodon.

1. You're a celebrity. Mastodon doesn't care. You won't get a blue check, because blue checks don't exist there. You won't get your ego constantly stroked. You're just a person, here with the rest of us plebes. Deal with it.

2. You're on social media to advertise. You'll find that Mastodon is not the most commerce-friendly platform around. If you're there to spam people, you'll get yourself (and possibly the server you're on) blocked.

3. You have extreme right-wing views. There are a few right-wing instances, but some don't federate with others, and a lot of other instances don't want to federate with them, because why would you want to federate with people who think you don't have a right to exist? Also, many instances are conscious of EU law since they're located there. Take that crap somewhere else.

4. You're a tech pundit. You'll find that Mastodon attracts a higher-than-average percentage of users who are technologically literate. Lots of Linux folks here. As with non-tech celebrities, you won't get your ego constantly stroked. Most of us have moved beyond hanging on every word from people like you. You will be challenged on your bullshit.

5. You have trouble with email. By which I mean you have difficulty with the concept of communicating with people who use a different provider than you do. As with email, on Mastodon people have accounts with different providers (“instances”) and they can talk to each other. Talking to or following someone on mastodon.social when your account is with, say, aus.social is no more difficult than sending an email from Gmail to Outlook.com. Remarkably, I've seen people complain about it. It's their call, but if that's your barrier to entry I can't help you.

And there you have it. Five reasons you might not find happiness on Mastodon. The rest of you, however—the rest of you will be fine.

Come on over. The water's fine. See you there.

Join Mastodon

#mastodon #twitter #social

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With everyone's favorite unstable South African billionaire poised to acquire Twitter tomorrow, I'm seeing a lot of speculation about what users are going to do. Here's my two cents:

As I've said before, I didn't join Twitter because of Elon Musk and I'm not going to leave because of him, but there are a couple of important qualifications. One, not leaving is not the same thing as being an active user, and two, whether I'm an active user will depend on what happens in the days to come.

To my first point, I'll keep my account alive but dormant if I don't like what I see from the new management in the coming days. I don't want my username to go to anyone else, so at most it will become an empty and locked account.

To my second point, while I don't hold out much hope, given that Musk has proven himself to be a bit fascist-adjacent, at least, there's always the possibility that the worst won't happen. It's a tiny possibility that you need an electron microscope to clearly see, but it's there. If he confounds expectations, I'll be the first to give him credit.

But I don't think he will, and for that reason I encourage everyone to migrate to Mastodon. That's where I'll be. Links to my profile are in the footer below and in my About and Contact pages. Hope to see you there.

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