A Farewell to Twitter
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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