A Short Twitter Detox

I took a short twitter detox for two days. For two days I didn’t look at tweets, replies and more. For two days if I wanted to rant I couldn’t. For two days I couldn’t see replies. For two days I couldn’t read people complain.

It is good to take a break from twitter sometimes. I don’t believe in social media addiction. Social media is a conversation. If you can get addicted to having conversations then the world is messed up. Twitter is a social network, not an addiction.

What triggered me to take a twitter break, aside from the ownership change and the negativity I see on a daily basis, is the inability to change from the “home” feed. Until recently we could swap between algorithm driven timelines and chronological ones. The ability to switch between both has been made much harder.

Twitter is making the same mistake as Facebook did, which Facebook then did to Instagram. It decided that Twitter will now be a Right leaning tool for propaganda and disinformation, rather than a chronological timeline of tweets by friends and friends of friends. It will throw in sponsored content.

And Finally

You can get Twitter Blue for 8-11 USD per month, to get the blue tick, or you can get WordPress Premium for 8 dollars a month, if you pay for the year in advance. This allows you to monetise your content and more. It also gives you full acess to a blogging platform, rather than simple microblogging. For four dollars per month you get the personal option, and you can get a personal blog. There are cheaper options. The point is that 8 USD per month for a product like Twitter is extortion, especially given the volatility of the site.

Mastodon is also an option, that is free/donation based depending on whether you choose an existing server, implement your own, and whether enough donations have been made to be sustainable.