Why I quit Twitter
Primarily, Twitter was a place for like-minded people to come together and talk about shared interests. It wasn’t necessarily political unless you wanted it to be. I came for Astros talk, Houston sports in general, and a little politics on the side. I am not a right wing person. I have many of those in my life. There are some I love very dearly. One of the great things about life and about Twitter is that I had the power to control my exposure to those ideas.
Musk removed that power. He set up the app to switch us from our own feed to something he called “For you.” Ostensibly, the idea seemed to be to share other ideas and profiles that they thought you would be interested in. That concept seems fair enough. I enjoy reading new perspectives and finding new friends. That is clearly not what “For You” became. It became a way to project right wing hate and trolling behavior. This is not an indictment of right-wing beliefs or people. Remember, some of them are my friends and family. I have no desire to censor ideas or remove people’s platform to project those ideas unless they are promoting violence or promoting insurrection or revolution. In many instances, those are the same thing.
My only desire was to limit my own exposure to those ideas. I want the power to choose what I watch, read, and listen to. I don’t want my television randomly changing the channel to Fox News or Newsmax because it is obeying an algorithm called ‘For You.” I may not be the smartest man on the planet, but I think I am reasonably intelligent enough to choose what I want to read, watch, and listen to.
Instead, I get one woman that calls herself a terrorism survivor but somehow a lover of everything Trump. She posts pictures of him wearing camo, colonial gear, or worker clothes and asking us why we don’t appreciate everything he has sacrificed for us. Maybe it is because he is nowhere remotely close to any of those things. I see other profiles that continue to harp on the obvious election fraud in 2020.
So, the development of Twitter afforded me a few unappealing options. I could keep my profile and simply not go. However, that would leave even just a few people hanging. I could go and engage with those bozos, but again that would grow their brand and accomplish what they are out to do. I could simply read and not respond and seethe about it if even for one minute, or I could pull the plug.
My joy comes first. There is so much going on in our lives that I don’t want to waste one minute doing something that doesn’t make me or the people in my life happier. Good people will sacrifice their happiness for others. Great people will sacrifice so much more than that. Contemptible people purposefully go out of their way to suck joy out of life. I don’t want to silence them. I just don’t want to hear it if I don’t want to.
Maybe it’s because I have never posted anything on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) that I haven’t had those kinds of problems. I started reading things on the site to find out what was happening in Ukraine. I follow a number of journalists, analysts, and former military people to get the info that the MSM started ignoring once they got bored and moved on to other things. I find it invaluable for that reason.
I wish Musk would get bored and move on to something else and leave the rest of us alone.
1@BarbinDC—I go on Xitter for the same reasons. I follow people like Andrew Weissman, Joyce Vance, Bradley Moss and several others who give great insight into what’s happening, usually well before the MSM gets around to it (if at all.) As an example, Trump’s latest “vermin” comment was brought to light there first when it was glossed over elsewhere. I have to pace myself, though, because it is easy to get caught up in doom scrolling.
2Respect and agree with your decision.
3@TexasTrailerParkTrash: Doom scrolling has become my destiny. Between Twitter and YouTube, I spend hours every day trying to figure out what’s what between those who are convinced that victory is just around the corner and those who think the war will never end.
Then, of course, is the never-ending soap opera that is the Orange Defendant. Trying to keep up with all the goings-on in his many court cases is a full time job.
4I’m pretty much experiencing what Barb in DC is. I wouldn’t waste my time on it except for the Ukraine updates and videos that YouTube won’t allow. Other than that it’s worthless to me. However, I haven’t been bombarded with garbage, and if the Ukraine news stops, so will I. I’d much rather find it elsewhere, and I do get a lot from bloggers on YouTube. Also, I’m not finding other sites as user friendly, so while I have joined a couple of them, I’m not generally going to them.
5@BarbinDC—Joyce Vance has great articles about the Mango Mussolini and his trials on her substack site “Civil Discourse.”
https://joycevance.substack.com/?utm_source=byline&utm_content=writes
6You won’t regret this decision or miss the experience. I never really clicked with Twitter, so I bowed out when Musk first made his move to take control of the platform. The only thing that bothers me is that so many news articles can only be read by viewing them on Twitter these days. If I have to, I go there, read, and get out! Musk will probably shut down that option before long, but hopefully, journalists will find a different delivery vehicle for those of us who refuse to let Twitter taint our lives.
7You won’t regret this decision or miss the experience. I never really clicked with Twitter, so I bowed out when Musk first made his move to take control of the platform. The only thing that bothers me is that so many news articles can only be read by viewing them on Twitter these days. If I have to, I go there, read, and get out! Musk will probably shut down that option before long, but hopefully, journalists will find a different delivery vehicle for those of us who refuse to let Twitter taint our lives.
8For You (which is actually Elon Musk’s “For Me”) is bad enough once, but he puts it in two locations. The most difficult aspect now is that even if you check on someone, or some event that you follow, it’s loaded with trolls making sure you don’t miss their take, which is rarely informative, almost always inflammatory.
9It’s when it started switching back each time I logged on again. The default should be my timeline. I noticed the same woman was on top EVERY DAMN TIME. Could I mute her? Sure. Could I block her? Sure. The point is that I shouldn’t have to do any of that stuff. It causes a minute of aggravation. If that minute is taken up muting or blocking it is still a minute I won’t get back.
10Try Mastodon.
11For me, Twitter has always been and will always be, read-only. I appreciate it selectively on that basis and in the knowledge that nothing lasts forever. If you do not have an account, and use a scraper such as nitter, you do not get all the things that you complain of here.
All of which said, it is important to understand that Musk does not want to control Twitter: he wants to make sure that no one else can, even to the smallest extent.
12Nick @ #6:
“ I noticed the same woman was on top EVERY DAMN TIME. “
I noticed that too. There was some woman showing up with 3 replies to her post, and 5 likes. People with thousands of interactions disappeared, sometimes unfindable in the search. And I know how to find things.
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