have you quit twitter yet?

I have taken the coward's path (logged out but not deleted)

same

provided i have any self control and/or don't otherwise turn out to need my account for dumb grad school scholar self promotion this is probably it for me

I’ve never had a Twitter account, am happy to watch people quit though

xp
oh gawd academic twitter is kind of the pits, though I get feeling that pressure

Twitter is the best social media platform. Instagram is too much of a walled garden (you can't even post links!), Facebook is literally useless, but Twitter allows me to have enjoyable conversations with people (including many ILXors) and weed out all the bullshit I don't want to see with minimal effort. And I post links there to everything I publish, promote my book, etc., etc. Twitter is great.

I will never log off.

respect

Twitter is my preferred avenue for receiving promotion from musicians, movie-makers, comic book creators, etc, as well as some small-to-mid-sized scientific accounts, and then just like random "here's a cute picture of a possum!" type stuff. I don't see a lot of negativity in my feed. When I do, I unfollow. I don't see any point in quitting.

i will continue to enjoy Twitter until some dork asks me to pay for it or give them my real name and address or something

I used to bloody love Twitter and met some irl great people whom I still speak to and see. Now, the only tweets I see are on this site; when I do follow a link I always have the same sense of 'fucking hell, thank God I don't spend time here'. It utterly saps me of energy.

So mostly 'no, but I'm thinking about it' I suppose.

why I logged out: I have a (perfectly rational) seething hatred of elon plus I was overdue for a break anyway.

There was something going around (on twitter lol) about returning to Tumblr, which I would honestly consider as that was my best soc med experience but would probably feel very strange

HOOS is back? Maybe I'll start posting here more again

Wait, are we not supposed to use products run by companies owned by assholes now?

Obviously Twitter sucks in many ways. But given that I have nostalgia for the text-based internet and don't want to post images or video along with words, it's really the only social media option. And I've made a lot of musical connections there that resulted in real projects. Would love an alternative that didn't somehow turn to garbage, though.

xp with my primary online timewaster no longer palatable to me i've gotta waste my time SOMEwhere you know

Instagram is too much of a walled garden (you can't even post links!)

wow an occasion to think fondly of instagram, doesn't happen too often anymore

Wait, are we not supposed to use products run by companies owned by assholes now?

you can do whatever you want?

reading the responses, I do wish I'd made this a survey on which social media platforms people still use in 2022 as that's a more interesting q, though it would also be a pain to make all the poll options

Where is "I'm already banned"?

oh dang I didn't think about that! I think you can vote "I am Elon Musk"

the only social media i use is tumblr. don't go there

xp
wait a minute: banned from twitter, lives in Florida... 🤔

where am i supposed to post unreasonably niche observations now? a thought i've only just seen.

Fuck no I haven’t deleted my account. Twitter is fucking amazing and has been an enormous net positive in my professional life. Instagram and Facebook can go to hell though.

l-r: my 401k match, me

me reaction to the news that a social media platform will now be owned by an evil billionaire pic.twitter.com/1tEMrlyjvW

— bolty (@AmbJohnBoIton) April 25, 2022

I'm just going to simply mute Elon Musk as a topic and live with whatever happens.

Years ago. I thought recently of re-upping, but given the current news I'll pass.

twitter is a website for lazy narcissists who are wrong about everything

hell yeah

Will there still be a board of directors at twitter or will MUSK be dictator

I chose I will never quit even though I might quit someday. Elon buying Twitter didn't make me want to immediately leave, but I could imagine him running it into the ground. It's perfectly fine now and I'm on there a lot, following the news and my various personal interests. I actively mute anything that doesn't interest me or that I don't want to see, and I steer clear of personalities I outright despise.

elon hasn't bought it yet, deal will close in 3-6 months. so no point quitting now

Chose will never quit but depending on what changes get brought in I might. Change of ownership by itself not enough for me, tech giants always owned by horrible people.

I don't see the point of treating the overpriced battery on wheels man as an exceptional scumbag, they're all horrible.

Stopped using Twitter in late 2016, exactly 10 years to the day after I joined. Didn't delete my account, but basically unfollowed everyone. Occasionally use it when I want to find something out in real-time, or to read a thread which someone has linked to here. Don't miss it at all.

Deleted my account 3 weeks or so before Musk joined the board. Was no longer enjoyable or useful to me.

Agree with Calzino that Musk isn't more pernicious than other billionaires. For those who plan to stick with Twitter his plans to loosen the moderation of it are probably still troubling, tho.

I like it, I mainly just follow all the retro gaming people and it's all good fun. I follow some comedians too, but have generally found that I only enjoy Blain Capatch stuff. Hopefully whatever happens once the deal is in won't affect my usage, we'll see.

Musk is worse/worst on Twitter due to the performative petulance in recent years even if that's mostly 'just' insults against others. But this is pretty much just the 'is Trump the figurehead worse than countless lower profile Republicans? Actually...' argument.

Worse no, more annoying yes. But annoyance is a valid reason to quit a social network, ofc.

No plans to quit. I'm rarely pissed off by content.

twitter is a website for lazy narcissists who are wrong about everything

my running assessment has been "Twitter encourages psychological projection to a point that it feels like that's all the site does"

Never signed in but read it. No ads!!!

Twitter can’t be all bad, it has @Cats of Yore

and fantastic one joke accounts like politicians hair on football managers

it was all downhill after Your Aunt Diane stopped tweeting in 2012

https://twitter.com/YourAuntDiane

I agree tech company owners are universally despicable, but this was the last major thing I read about Musk so I think there's a case to be made that he's even on the bad side of the tech billionaire spectrum: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesla-employees-fremont-plant-racism-california-lawsuit

otoh, I still have an IG account and I don't think Elon has facilitated a genocide yet, I'm typing this on a macbook etc.

https://i.imgur.com/IP36jUH.jpg

the chaff to wheat ratio on twitter is still too high though better obv than FB (actually FB has gotten better in this regard as I've unfollowed a million things and only look at posts from people I know, but I'm tired of the platform and UI now). that said, twitter has a unique ability to completely ruin my day so I'm going to stop looking at it so often. I avoided it for many years and only got really sucked in during the last year and a half.

Well ok but...twitter users are not the consumers of twitter products, which are advertising spots and user data. I don't really subscribe to this idea's most extreme versions—if you think of users as unpaid workers you have Terranova's "free labor"; if you prefer to think of them as the product being sold to the real consumers (advertisers) there's Smythe's "audience commodity"; or, popularly, "if the 'product' is free, you are the product." Those theories exclude a lot of what users get out of platforms & broadcast media, but nonetheless it's a fact that user-generated content creates the platform's value, so I don't think it's ridiculous to think about one's participation in social media as different from needing to consume goods and services under capitalism.

I'd say that a very small percentage of tweets are creating any value

sorry, I can't tell if that's just a joek or not

like, this was the first thing i saw when i logged in today: https://post.news/article/2J8SVsZ2IBvBJ2sXxIprQXFciTx

fucks sake.

lol get yer "You Don't Know Jack" trading cards here

mastodon is good imo

Getting better fast too.

As soon as people on ilx start posting Mastodon links instead of tweets I’ll have to switch

Tweetshelf is no longer free :(

I think this is related to Twitter charging to access its API, so sites that are built on it need to create revenue stream.

Tiwtter app got cross at my never checking it anymore, started sending me random tweets it thought I might like, so I uninstalled it.

is it weird to have not quit but to have the platform essentially beg/dare you to every day?

Feel like this needs a do-over. I'm pretty sure I voted that I'd never quit, but I left months ago. I was hoping for some End Days of Twitter excitement until a final blowout but it's more just drawn-out and boring.

i still haven't quit. there are a handful of people / pubs i find valuable. and nice art bot accounts and stuff that are too good to let go of for me, too good of a time waste and a distraction. also stuff like my regional office of the national weather service, who also posts on facebook, but good luck getting updates on chron order there. i thought mastodon might do it for me but it was too much work :|

Mastodon feels pretty similar to me. I don't quite understand people's issues with it beyond "I fear change". Having said that, I haven't got anything that feels like a community on there yet, but I put that down to me having run out of steam on most social media platforms - I didn't post much on twitter before I left and I haven't posted much on Mastodon, so there's no real reason for anyone to follow me if they don't already know me.

I keep thinking about joining tumblr for the lols, but I've thought about it for over a decade and never done it.

pubs i find valuable

Eh you can just call up for opening hours, no need to follow on social media.

is it weird to have not quit but to have the platform essentially beg/dare you to every day?

― rob, Tuesday, 4 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Hate that dog, but I'm still not quitting.

Same. It's the only place where I feel some sense of community with other people who make a similar type of music. No idea if that also exists on Mastodon or how to find it tbh.

My huge problem with Mastodon is there's no search. I know that's a fundamental decision for them and it's not changing, but search on Twitter is hugely useful in so many ways. That's what makes it very difficult to discover/visit all those communities that you're not part of

my bot host has had the plug pulled by twitter. it's as if 58,000 voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

After 8 years and 58440 bots... CBDQ has come to an end. Thank you to @GalaxyKate & to everyone who has made a bot. It's been a pleasure. pic.twitter.com/8C6gXzuRRX

— v buckenham (@v21) April 6, 2023

Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.

The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023

cool cool cool

Great meeting you today @elonmusk! We had multifaceted conversations on issues ranging from energy to spirituality. https://t.co/r0mzwNbTyN pic.twitter.com/IVwOy5SlMV

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 21, 2023

yes

Deleted my account today. I’ll miss Nancy Sinatra.

I'm not deleting because I don't want some weirdo to grab my old username at some point, but I used a hodgepodge of scripts to mass delete tweets, retweets, replies and likes the best I could. I don't see anything still visible, but the counter at the top of my profile says I still have 2000K+ tweets somewhere in the system. No idea where.

lol 2000+ not 2000K+

Yes

Quit last month, I still have an active account but have not looked at it since then. Don't think I'm missing much at this point.

kept my account, just cos.
but never visit anymore.

Last I looked it was 99% a variant of engagement farmers posting algebra problems and claiming the answer was not the one everyone thought and respondents getting in heated arguments over it

I've set my account to private but not deleted it, and I occasionally look (like, once a week, if that often) but never post. I'm on Bluesky now. There's like one guy I wish would migrate over to Bluesky, but I know he won't.

I've very much changed my use of social media. I've kept Twitter and started with BlueSky but definitely have less of a compulsion to check either (compared to when Twitter was at its best). I've less of a sense of "I'm missing out".

a lot of my fave top tier twitter posters are still going strong and I have not seen one of them announce they are moving to bluesky. And these are the funniest and most fucked up ones that drew me into twitter in the first place. I don't really care which fucking arsehole owns it. Running an ugliest arsehole competetion amongst big tech billionaires is not for me, they ALL need executing.

I know some of the people you mean, and Twitter is the right place for them as their business is challenging/trolling/dunking on the terrible cunts who are on Twitter, Bluesky has such a culture of blocking that they would be completely unable to operate there, and not really welcome ("stop posting tweets") even if they were. However I have to say from popping over there from time to time that they seem to post less, and seem more listless and distracted when they do. Having Labour in government and not being the only people going studs in on them doesn't help either.

Justice 4 Loomer

Over the past year, I would periodically deactivate my account for a couple of weeks and then activate it again while I still had time to do so. But I just realized today that it had been over 30 days since I last deactivated, which means my account is now gone. Fine with me! I just didn't have the courage to yank the cord myself.

If I ever do want to look at someone's chronological feed (or replies to an individual tweet), I can just use xcancel.com.

Been reading about a week's discourse on the various Odyssey translations, which is simultaneously interesting and annoying.

Why would you leave?

That sounds good, sadly all I've read is the "is knowing what the Odyssey is privilege?" discourse which has been pretty funny but not so illuminating

Multiple truths.

bluesky is just too boring, i keep forgetting it exists and not opening the app for multiple days in a row. twitter sucks but at least it’s addictive

all the best apps are the ones you forget exist and never open, thus increasing your quality of life.

Yeah but I like my vices to be sucky and addictive

Music and history people are on Bluesky and I just want to talk about music and history, also lots of gay and trans stuff which isn't exactly me but makes me feel comfortable to be around. Just follow music accounts and block all the resistance libs / #FBPE crowd and you can have my nice only moderately addictive and not sucky experience.

Actually Bluesky is getting a bit better as there is just more people but without that engagement by annoyance that many platforms go for (from an insecurity that the product isn't enough on its own).

Wonder if Bluesky now is what twitter was like in the early days! Low-ish engagement but 'wholesome'?

Watching Dr Louks be on twitter and thriving is inspiring.

Guys, I adore your enthusiasm towards reading my thesis, but please stop requesting it on the university’s depository. I can’t lift the embargo as publishers prefer/require it and I’ve been getting hundreds of emails per day for over a month. I’m really sorry!

— Dr Ally Louks (@DrAllyLouks) December 30, 2024

good for her, I guess. I think I am better off not spending much time thinking about Twitter main characters.

There are like 3-5 people on Twitter who are both still posting and whose posts I still want to see. Sadly I feel I need to keep it to receive the odd DM for music stuff.

Zero compulsion to look at bluesky, which is good. I actually like it solely as a place to put random thoughts that have no place elsewhere and they no one will ever see.

I remember when Twitter was like that, a sort of word hole that nobody I knew used. I used to post on it when high or whatever, then around 2014 I started a new job and my boss was mega into Twitter and asked what my handle was on my first day. Had to go and delete a load of shit before giving it to him.

I got Twitter in early 2009, linked it to my phone number and "post by SMS" (dunno when they got rid of that) - then I moved back to China, my phone number expired, someone else got it. So when family members tagged me in something this person would get a text message, assume it was spam and reply to it with "FUCK OFF" - which would then be posted as a reply on Twitter. Eventually my mum asked me gently about it and I had to get a new VPN and try to figure out wtf was going on. Not sure any of them believed me when I explained it.

lmao

at some point years ago I forgot my username and twitter wouldn’t let me recover my password without it.