Twitter is a hellsite at the best of times, and I have no interest in Musk’s version.
The failure of all the “free speech” (meaning fascist) Twitter alternatives is that there’s no fun in being an unrepentant asshole if you can’t be an asshole towards people who disagree with you. Liberals and other sane people stayed away from Gab, Getter, and Truth Social in droves, so the bullies got lonely and bored. Those sites flopped.
Musk thinks he can solve this by taking over a place already packed with victims to bully, like fish in a barrel. What he doesn’t understand is that Twitter is not a company, it’s a community, and you can’t buy a community. He can take over the site, but he can’t make us stay to get bullied. Moreover, he can’t force us to legitimize the bigotry and other extremism by allowing ourselves to be targeted.
Musk is like the new landlord who raises the rent, stops doing maintenance, and eyes conversion into a condo. Overnight, the place we called home is no more. Thing is, we can move out at the drop of a hat. And that’s what I’m doing: I’m leaving.
Where am I going? Possibly nowhere. If a viable alternative to Twitter springs up and a critical mass settles, I’ll join. For now, I’m /u/TruthSandwichBlog on Reddit and For now, I’m @TruthSandwich on CounterSocial, and I don’t intend to shut down this blog, either, so subscribing is one way to stay in touch.
You should be able to see an image of what my Twitter profile looked like on 2022/04/25. It shows that I posted over 180k tweets over the course of 3 years, most of them RTs of things I found interesting and thought others might benefit from. I’ve engaged with the famous and the not so famous. I’ve made friends and enemies.
Overall, I’m proud of what I’ve done and I’m happy with what I learned and the people I connected with, but I’m leaving Twitter, and so should you.
So long, and thanks for all the tweets.
P.S.
As a public service, I’m going to try to leave this post open for comment, so that anyone who wishes to can use it as a community blackboard to tell each other where they went. Good luck out there.
P.P.S.
I tried Reddit. It didn’t work out. So now I’m trying CounterSocial.
P.P.P.S.
On 11/19/22, Musk opened the floodgates of hell by reinstating Trump’s Twitter account. I took this as a hint that it was time to leave, so I’ve deactivated my account. I can be found on CounterSocial as @TruthSandwich and on Mastodon as @truthsandwich@masto.ai @truthsandwich@qoto.org @truthsandwich@toad.social.
Let me know where you end up, Sammy! I see some mutuals are going to “Counter Social”? Never heard of it.
That site keeps crashing under the new load.
Update on Counter Social: it’s run by a fascist who allows unmoderated bigotry.
Hard pass.
Yeah, I’m out too. I’ll stay on long enough to ask people I want to keep following how they plan to respond, and where they’re (hopefully) shifting to.
It’s really a shame that the fediverse manifestations are so shitty – I’d focus on diasp.org a lot more if its miserable primitiveness didn’t constantly frustrate and anger me. Because beyond that I’m quite happy with the platform.
Open my inbox and read “Musk buys Twitter for 44 billions” followed by this update… Im not surprised. TBH Twitter was already a shitshow, but now with Musk is probably saying “This is not even my final form!”
Im guessing Reddit is out of the question for you?
If you read the article above, you’ll find that I’m giving reddit a try. So far, so meh.