Who Killed Twitter – My Opinion
|

Who Killed Twitter – My Opinion

Byrichard

Two authors wrote books. In these books they speak about whether Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk killed twitter. The answer is neither. If Twitter was alive and healthy it would never have been sold to an individual for four times its value, because its growth potential would have made this absurd.

Twitter died by 2007, with the advent of hashtags. That’s when twitter went from being a community of friends to being a community of strangers trying to get a million followers, and using hashtags to jump into conversations that they were not devoted to. At the first tuttle meetups and tweetups everyone knew everyone else from twitter. No one was a stranger to anyone else.

It’s when I went to a tweetup and I heard someone say “i’m not really a twitter user, I just came to the tweetup because it’s being hyped up.” That’s when twitter declined even more.

If we fast forward by a little more than a decade I believe that the pandemic killed Twitter, and Social Media. I believe this because before the pandemic normal people were on Facebook, and possibly Reddit and other social networks but they were not on Twitter. To a large extent they weren’t on FB either.

During the pandemic social media became more unpleasant. Trolling became more common. Trolling is the reason I dumped facebook for two to three years. Amplified loneliness is why I dumped Instagram and never returned.

The idea that Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk killed twitter is erroneous. Marketers did. Public relations firms did. People who took a utilitarian view of social media killed Twitter.

Twitter was fantastic, when it was a network of friends chatting with friends. It stopped being that in 2007-2008. I still used it but my ROI had declined dramatically.

Is this due to moving from London to Switzerland? I don’t think so. I just think that Twitter was best, when it had value to small communities, rather than marketers, public relations people and other groups with a utilitarian agenda.

Articles like this one are never written by people who live and breath social media. They are written by outsiders looking in. We could read them, but because of my perspective they have no value. By perspective I mean my attitude towards social networks and social media.

And Finally

Twitter wasn’t killed by Dorsey or Musk. It was killed by the people who took a utilitarian approach to social media. They turned Twitter from a tool for communities to have conversations, and build projects together to a place where marketers and public relations firms could hijack conversations, and make it about following celebraties, rather than conversations.

When Twitter pivoted from being a social network to social media, it became less interesting. I deleted my first twitter account by 2008 or so, and only returned because Swiss television interviewed me about the social network.

When Musk bought Twitter it was already worthless.

The End of an Era

There was a time when Twitter was Twitter, Facebook was Facebook, Instagram was Instagram and Whatsapp was whatsapp. Over time they have all been bought or rebranded, and the things that made them so fantastic were destroyed. Society saw social media as an addiction. This attitude destroyed social networks.

Dormant Social Media Life While Sorting Through Drives

Dormant Social Media Life While Sorting Through Drives

Byrichard

Recently my Social Media Life has become dormant. I do visit Facebook every so often but I ignore Instagram, barely touch Mastodon or the fediverse, and in general have stopped looking at social media for a social life. It’s not that my life offline has become vibrant. It’s that online is empty of meaningful engagement, especially in winter.

From the nineties right up to around 2018 or so social media was a place to meet and be social. It’s during the pandemic that social media seemed to die. I think that social media relies on meeting people in the physical world to have value. People on the social web use it when they’re on the toilet, or waiting for something else to happen. They’re just filling small gaps in their schedule.

Plenty of Potential Storage

The other reason is more positive. I have terabytes of storage spread across twenty two drives, or more and I am re-organising everything in order to see how much space I have free. I have at least twenty terabytes of data storage. I might have as much as fourty two terabytes of storage but due to file duplications I don’t have much space that is free.

Required for Video Projects

That’s frustrating, especially if you want to take video and can generate up to 64 gigabytes of data at a time. 64 gigabytes, because my Sxs cards have that amount of storage. The drone could have up to 512 gigabytes of storage if I put the right SD card into the camera.

Freeing Cloud Space

I can’t delete data from cloud storage solutions because I haven’t consolidated all of my photo and video files from iCloud, Flickr, Google Photos and one or two other services. If all of my files are organised chronologically then I can migrate from cloud storage solutions without worrying about losing images that might have been backed up only to iCloud, or Google Photos, or another solution.

By consolidating the data offline, I can manage data in the cloud with ease.

Shrodinger’s Storage Cat

For data to be safe you need to have two local copies, and one offsite backup. If you have a dozen, or two dozen drives then that data is like shrodinger’s cat. You don’t know whether it’s backed up (living) or a single copy (dead). Delete the wrong file and you might end up losing a few days, or a few months of data. By having a centralised main storage your small satellite drives become working drives. You use them while you’re working on a project, and once the project is over you move it to the main storage solution and either wipe and reuse that drive, or keep it as a backup. Shrodinger’s cat has left the storage device.

Looking Forward

Years ago I bought an eight terabyte drive because I planned to consolidate my personal video and photo files but I never got around to it. This morning I finished moving the junk I had on that drive to other drives and I have now started to backup the video and photo data that I had temporarily kept on a five terabyte drive. I realised that I have more data than would fit on a five terabyte drive, but it also failed to mount at least once.

For years I had the same data on five to six drives but in my move towards centralising, and then backing up my data I made myself unsafe. I was left with just one copy of data. Now that I am backing up the four terabytes of data I have from the five terabyte drive to the 8 terabyte drive I have a little margin of safety.

Consolidation

When moving files from the 5tb drive to the 8tb drive the process is simple. Move the video folde to the video folder, photo to photo, and documents to documents. It’s when I start moving the secondary drives to the main drive to consolidate my photos and videos that the value is generated because this is when I detect duplicate folders, videos and photos. This is when the value comes in.

Moving four terabytes of data takes hours, but once that data is moved, and as I consolidate data from six or seven other drives I will copy only the files that do not exist on the main volume. I will then move the files that I have checked into a zz-backed-up folder.

Low Value

When I was trying to free space on drives I deleted the files from the drive as soon as they were copied over. Now I am moving them to zz-backed-up as a scruffy backup. The aim is to be able to recover files if the 8tb volume fails, but these are a stop gap. The next step is to backup the 8 tb volume.

And Finally

Nothing is backed up until you have at least two copies locally, and a third off-site copy. The next step is to copy the files from an older volume to a newer volume. Old drives fail, so having files on older volumes is a risk. When I finish consolidating files to the eight terabyte volume I will then duplicate it to a newer 8TB volume.

As a side project, once I have two or more drives that are free of data I could experiment with setting up a raid system.

Jumping On and Off Twitter

Jumping On and Off Twitter

Byrichard

There are two types of Twitter users. Those that are still using it daily, and angry with what Musk is doing, and those that quit weeks ago, and come back every now and then to see how things have changed, or stayed the same. I am surprised that to some degree the site feels the same and yet, of course, it isn’t.

I am surprised to see who stayed around, who is still using the site, and whether the community feels lively, or dead. It’s both alive and dead. It is Schrodinger’s cat. It is still alive and filled with news about how the COVID pandemic is not over. People who know the pandemic is not over have stuck around on Twitter.

Disengaged

When I go to Twitter now I do so as a tourist, rather than a local. I gave up on Twitter weeks ago. Now whether it goes down or not, will not change my daily routine. If it goes down tomorrow I will already have a replacement in place. I don’t know what it is, but I am less invested in Twitter. I know that its days are numbered.

Disliking the Fediverse

One of the biggest strengths of the Fediverse is that it’s distributed and we can integrate our blogs straight into peoples feeds if we feel like doing that. The drawback to the Fediverse is that it is a young community of strangers trying to impose their views of the world on others, rather than just having conversations. People are fighting for human rights, but I don’t mean in a positive way. They’re trying to convert and indoctrinate people into thinking their way, rather than reasoning, and building empathy. This turns me off of using the Fediverse.

The Unfamiliar

As I said yesterday, Twitter is a network where we have been friends with certain users for over a decade, and met them in person multiple times. On the Fediverse we have yet to spend years getting to know each other and building strong links. WE’re strangers, and we’re still looking for a community to become part of.

It is paradoxical that whilst social media is huge, communities are scattered and hard to find, so it’s hard to find a group that we want to commit too.

The Slow Timeline

Although this could sound like an empty problem, one of the issues with the fediverse is that I am following people, but I can often refresh the timeline for minutes or hours at a time, without seeing new posts. The Fediverse is still quiet, if you don’t find active people to follow. You can’t doom scroll, for the simple reason that the timeline doesn’t refresh permanently, like it does on Twitter.

The Clear Benefit

Although Twitter and the Fediverse being less engaging might sound like a bad thing, it isn’t. When social media is a constant distraction it becomes easy to spend hours a day being distracted. Now that social media is less sticky, we can get back into the habit of completing things, even without a fast approaching deadline. We have time to blog, to read, to watch tv, and more. Social media, as a personal life, is a thing of the past, for now, until new communities form.

And Finally

One of the strongest features of the Fediverse is that writing blog posts has become akin to social media, because blog posts can either be shared as blog posts that people have to click through to read, or they can be posted natively, within the Fediverse. Although I am writing this blog post now, it is fully integrated to the Fediverse, and thus, part of the conversation. Now if we want to be visible, we have to integrate ourselves within the Fediverse. We don’t need to wait for search engines and so on to index our site. We wait for people to repost, and comment.

Twitter X-Roads – Twitter Crossroad

Twitter X-Roads – Twitter Crossroad

Byrichard

With the change in name from Twitter to X, and with the destruction of a recognisable brand mentioned in tens of thousands of podcasts, podcasts, episodes and millions of web pages I was curious to see how Twitter was, with the new logo. It took more than 24 hours to change the favicon, and whilst x.com does redirect to Twitter, it does not do anything else than redirect to Twitter.com. You can’t see your x posts there.


A Twitter X Roads – Twitter at a Cross Roads


I was web disaster tourism yesterday and today. I was going over to Twitter to gawk, and stare, at the app formerly known as Twitter, being disfigured to please the ego of a billionaire. One of the things that surprises me is that people are still using Twitter. I stopped months ago, by now, and I don’t miss it. The community that I was going for either left, before Musk, or after he transformed the site. I noticed that at least one website called it the Zombie network.


Social Networks Without Ads


When you get used to the Fediverse, you get used to timelines without ads. You get used to timelines without algorithms choosing what you do or do not see. You see things as they are posted, and in conversation order. Without ads life is nicer.


A few days ago I noticed that a fediverse instance raised two thirds more than it needed to break even. This is good news for that instance as this means it can expand, if and when required, and it can continue for two more years, if not.


And Finally


I am happy I gave up on Twitter weeks ago, because if I had not I would find current developments depressing. Instead I’m looking out of curiousity, and I’m surprised to see that people are still using Twitter, despite the high probability that the site we loved to hate, is on borrowed time. I’m just a web disaster tourist, looking at the site, before it is left for the way back machine to remember.

Luxurious Indifference – Watching Twitter Fail, as a Passerby

Luxurious Indifference – Watching Twitter Fail, as a Passerby

Byrichard

Since 2006 I have been using Twitter every single day for several hours a day, reading up to ten thousand posts per day. Every time it failed I would know about it. Weeks ago I decided to stop using Twitter, so when it fails I read about it in articles.


I am happy that I took a break from Twitter because if I was still thinking of it as a serious tool, I would feel heart break every time it failed. I would feel sad about the limit to 1000 tweet views per day, I would feel sad about the disabling of Tweetdeck. I would feel sad every time something new breaks.


There is nothing worse than being on a site that is declining, where you see functionality degrade and then disappear. The death of hope is painful. I follow the decline of Twitter, but I am not emotionally invested anymore


Worry When a Customer Stops Complaining


There is an old saying that when a customer complains, they want to keep doing business with you. The moment someone stops complaining, is the moment you are in trouble, because they have moved on. It’s when people don’t give you a hard time, that you have pushed them to breaking their relationship with your product.


People Leave Twitter for Bluesky


The Reddit AMA breakup


I saw a headline today that said that Reddit moderators are thinking of no longer hosting and facilitating AMAs. Reddit too, has pushed its most loyal users to far, so they have decided to take a break from helping the company gain value, at their expense.


The Reddit AMA Moderator Walk Out


The Absurd Limit


Imagine that you’re a social network, and imagine that people love to use your network for hours a day. Now imagine that you decide to tell them that they can only see a thousand posts before they’re cut off. In theory that could be 1 to fifteen minutes of browsing, depending on how much time they spead on each post.


For a comparison Facebook and Facebook Instagram encourage people to binge, seeing hundreds of posts that are irrelevant, to keep them around, so that they see ads. Remember a social network benefits from getting you to waste time, and failing to achieve your goal. That’s why I stopped using FB (Facebook) and IG (Instagram). My ROI, as a user, had gone down the tube.


This reminds me of the joke, “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature”.


Identi.ca


In 2008 we had identica and it was a great, open source alternative to Twitter, with no users and little engagement. It has survived to this day but it failed to gain enough traction to be a viable alternative to Twitter. Things are different today. There is a critical masss of users. This means that when social media giants misbehave people have somewhere to flee to. Users are finally empowered. We are no longer stuck under the thumb of Venture Capital Social Media. That ship has sailed and now we are empowered, once again.


Musk bought Twitter just as the social media bubble burst. Now that we have so many alternative tools to choose from social networks owned by Social media giants have no value. I hope that as Venture Capital Social Media implodes, so the world’s attitude to social media as an addiction declines. Social media is not an addiction. Social media is about people chatting with each other, nothing more. It’s the Social Media giants that pushed the Social Media addiction narrative, to behave immoraly. I’m glad to see them losing traction.


And Finally


As I stated, at the start of this post, Twitter is a sinking ship, and it would be sad, if we didn’t have the Fediverse and all of its instances to replace it. We also have BlueSky and BlueSky will thrive. It has to limit new user signups. This is a fantastic situation for them to be in, because it means that people are looking for alternatives, in several directions at once.

Social Media Silos

Social Media Silos

Byrichard

Years ago we heard that Facebook was a silo. What was meant by this term is that FaceBook would pull content into its social network and behave like a portal, without allowing people to leave. It encouraged people to see the World Wide Web as Facebook and nothing else. For a while it worked.


Zynga and The Death of Conversation


When FB was young, and vibrant it was a network of friends having a chat, until Zynga came along. When Zynga came along it went from being a conversational website to a gaming site. It became a waste of time in the eyes of many. It went from being a way of connecting with uni friends and colleagues to being a source of time wasting.


As if that wasn’t enough FB was used to manufacture consent for the Far Right groups. It helped Brexit, it helped Drumpf. It even helped genocide and experimented with making people depressed. It never apologised.


It bought Whatsapp and Instagram so I stopped using both apps.


Twitter Requires a Login


Quite a few of the Right Wing Websites require a login. Some of them are even geoblocked to restrict who can see, and participate in conversations. Although Twitter was text based it was a web portal for many, for a decade and a half. It had become a niche website where people went for a chat, shared news and current affairs, and kept up to date with people and topics that interested them. Musk destroyed that convivial atmosphere, which had already atrophied beforehand, but he made it worse.


Required Login


Another Perspective


The SubRedditor Victory


Last night and this morning I read that Reddit has seen its valuation decline as a result of the protests by subredditors. I see this as a victory. I don’t care about third party apps, or other reasons for the protest. I supported the protest because I’m tired of social media giants and venture capitalists purchasing web communities, and treating them as cash cows, rather than communities.


Twitter, Facebook and Reddit are, or at least were, communities. Communities should not be up for sale. Communities should be alive, healthy and vibrant. They should be about conversations and connecting people.


This morning, and last night I saw that the New York Times has yet another article about how to help teenagers ween themselves off of their social media addiction. For decades I have writtena about social media as a lifestyle, as a modern way of socialising. For decades Venture Capitalist Social Media has told us “Social media is bad”, “social media is addictive”. If it’s either of these things it is because of the social media companies that choose to ignore ethics, morality and corporate social responsability, rather than because the medium is bad. Social media is a blank canvas. We make it healthy, or unhealthy, by how we interact with it. VCSM is toxic. There is no doubt about that, but that’s why it’s good for FB, Twitter and Reddit to silo themselves. Keep the toxicity within.


Valuation Decline


The Early Web and Now


In the early days of the World Wide Web we could pay for a server, and then we could install PHPpb and other web forum software on our sites and we could self host, or contribute to the communities that meant something to us. The same is true in 2023. The tools are better. We have the Twitter/Facebook clone with Mastodon, Calckey and the Fediverse. We have Kbin and Lemmy for the threadiverse, so we can join or start our own instances. Finally we have Peertube and Pixelfed as YouTube and Instagram replacements. The future is open source and crowdfunded. Remember that this is the natural status quo. The Social Media giant age was an aberation on the World Wide Web. It’s nice to see that it has ended.


Attract, Don’t Repulse


There is a paradox in the social media giants pushing users and developers away just at the moment when seducing users, and developers is most important. Remember that Jaiku was like Twitter and Identi.ca was like Twitter. Both failed because Twitter had more gravity, so it attracted people to it, and they never left, until a few weeks ago. Reddit, Instagram and Twitter are easy to clone with the tools that we have available today. Today social media companies should be doing everything they can to keep people from jumping ship. The social media giants are showing apathy towards their users, and their users have somewhere to flee too.


And Finally


Now that the Social Media Giants are making mistakes and driving people away I am excited. I am excited by the prospect of being able to join smaller, more niche communities, and bouncing around from instance to instance, rather than being stuck on one of the giant monoliths. Now is a time when we can build and experiment again, on a human scale, a SuperSoaker scale, rather than trying to fill a syringe with a firehose.

The Paradox of Instagram’s Twitter
|

The Paradox of Instagram’s Twitter

Byrichard

Within the last two days I saw a headline that is either amusing or tragic. The headline is that Instagram is creating a twitter clone, or even a Twitter competitor. This is amusing, or tragic, because Twitter and Facebook have always been competitors. You had the network of strangers that became friends, with Twitter, and the network of uni friends that became estranged years after graduating with Facebook. 


Chronological


Both of them had chronological timelines with people conversing with each other. One was about events, pictures and more, and the other was about chatting, between tweetups. 


Facebook and Twitter Are Now the Same


The notion that Instagram would have a twitter clone, today, is ludicrous because Facebook and Twitter are the same thing. Facebook owns Instagram, so the notion that Instagram needs a competitor to Twitter is ironic, since Twitter and Facebook are now the same thing. I could develop the idea further but won’t.


The Rush to Rescue the Shipwrecked


Twitter is having a Titanic moment and nearby ships (social networking solutions) are rushing on to recover all the people in life boats or floating in the water. That rush is paradoxical, since it has expanded social media once again, to become a network of networks, rather than a monolith. 


The Fediverse


I think that the Fediverse offers the best solution because it offers plenty of instances that can focus either on specific niches, or just host accounts, and people can look for like-minded posts across the networks.


Contributions and Instance Specific Adverts


I saw something about people wanting to advertise on the Fediverse and I don’t think they should, especially not in the main feed. To do so would be to destroy what the fediverse is. A network of networks of people conversing. We can contribute financially to the instances we’re using, to help cover costs. For instances that are more popular, and more expensive to run the solution would be to have ads that show up only within that instance. It should be for the community to decide whether they want ads, or donation covered costs. 


Twitter and Facebook Are Clones Already


Seven or eight years ago when you looked at Twitter you would see twenty to thirty tweets with shortened URLs. Over the years individual tweets were given images, and animated gifs, and eventually videos. They even began to take up an entire screen height for just one tweet. Over the last decade and a half Twitter and Facebook became the same thing. The idea that Instagram is cloning Twitter, when Twitter cloned Facebook, and Jaiku, is absurd. 


Meta Chat Options


To illustrate how absurd the “Twitter clone” idea is look at Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and even Facebook. They’re all conversation tools, some for private groups, others for public groups, and others for friends, families, professional circles, hobby circles and more. Instagram Twitter is, yet another conversation tool. 


The Consequences


Twitter stopped having a unique selling point years ago. What made Twitter was the community. By destroying that community feeling Musk encouraged people to spread to other social networks. People are trying to clone Twitter, but most social apps are the same today. A timeline with people sharing videos, photos, articles and more. 


And Finally


Instagram is now part of Meta, and Meta destroyed its reputation without ever apologising for its mistakes. I will not use Instagram’s “twitter” for the simple reason that I do not use any Meta products because I do not trust them not to play social engineering experiments, yet again. Meta takes social networks, and turns them into boring glossy magazines, rather than networks of friends of friends. Facebook was demonstrated to be untrustworthy and never worked to fix its reputation. 

Happiness and Social Media
| |

Happiness and Social Media

Byrichard

It is the turn of the Washington Post to discuss whether people are happier after leaving social media. As with every other article I have skimmed on the topic it discusses addiction and more without discussing the reason for which social media might be bad for one’s mental health. 


Remember that social networks, discussion groups, and collaborating with people in different rooms, countries, timezones is normal, and has been for decades. What makes social media different from other social networks is that social media is algorithm and profit driven, rather than community centric. 


As I skim through this article I see discussions about self-perception, bullying behaviour and more. What I see is not a commentary about social media, but rather a commentary on the cruelty of normal people on the social web. As I like to say, the problem with social media is that the bullies we used to spend time on the web to avoid, have made their way onto the web. The web is now as unpleasant as meat space, as some called it. 


The article discusses body image and instagram but there’s something that people forget, or never experienced. Instagram was a photo sharing app, between friends and friends of friends. We didn’t share images of ourselves, or if we did it was because we were at events together. Seesmeetups and tweetups were events where we would have photos of ourselves, with others. If we posted images to instagram they were of landscapes, travel and more, not individuals. Body image didn’t even come into it for us. 


I left Myspace because the community left, I left Jaiku because it shut down. I left Google+ because it shut down. I left Facebook because it became filled with adverts and reminded me of the life I wanted but didn’t have. I left Instagram for almost the same reason, but also because I was seeing adverts, without feeling human connections with humans, anymore. 


I left Twitter for political reasons. I don’t like what Musk stands for, but I also hate what he is doing to the platform. 


People love to speak about social media as if it was addictive, and as if it was bad for mental health. They are missing the point. The point is not whether social media is healthy or unhealthy, because at the end of the day it’s just people socialising. If they were in a bar or pub we’d think nothing of it. If they were on a balcony or in a garden we’d see them as just socialising. People have lost sight that social media is a group of friends socialising. 


They think that social media is about likes, views, about re-shares and more. It isn’t. It shouldn’t be. Social media is a network of friends of friends, and to leave the network is to leave behind that network of networks. 


Twitter, Facebook and Instagram destroyed that network of networks, and now they’re trying to fix what they broke, whilst blaming what they broke on personal weaknesses, like addiction. Being social, as I have said for decades, online, is not addiction. It’s normal socialising via a different medium. 

The Futility of Blogging

The Futility of Blogging

Byrichard

I have been writing blog posts every single day for one hundred and fourty five days and rather than feel more inspired, and get a big audience, I am writing for an audience of one. Some days I am filled with inspiration and I write the blog post in twenty minutes or less. Other days it takes me an hour or two. It’s hard to write every day because some days are interesting, so there is something to talk about, and other days are dull. 


Mindful


I spend more time blogging because it’s a chance to look inwards, and outwards. it is an opportunity to spend time thinking and formulating ideas. It does count as mindfulness but only if we use the Day One app on the iPhone. On the laptop it doesn’t count. This should be fixed. 


Bickering


Twitter and Substack are in the news at the moment because they’re arguing. Substack is bringing out a “Notes” product, to fill the microblogging niche, and Musk is not happy, but Musk had Revue, before he terminated the project, so he’s arguing for nothing. Rather than excel at what it does Twitter is sliding backwards. Substack has 34 million users, and Twitter has 130 million if you look at who follows Musk, and 240 million if you look at other figures. Twitter could easily be overtaken. Twitter probably will be overtaken, as it has gone from being a source for collaboration and inspiration, to a place for bickering. 


Yesterday I posted a few tweets. Not a single reply. Twitter is now a ghost network. Those that would converse with me have left, so Twitter is losing its “stickiness”. It is losing users. 


A Bike In The Car


I put the bike in the car yesterday. It fits easily and this is great. It opens up the regions around which I can cycle, without having to cycle along some of the busier roads. I could drive to Palais and try to do some riding there, as I have been wanting to do for years. I can go to the top of the Jura and range around there. It provides me with more flexibility for more adventures. 

Twitter, As a Joke
| |

Twitter, As a Joke

Byrichard

Twitter went down and I didn’t notice, yet again. According to The Verge it has been down five times in five weeks. It goes down so regularly that it feels as if they have allowed the Netflix Chaos Monkey to run freely around Twitter code. They say that they need to rewrite the entire site.


Twitter had plenty of downtime many years ago but these were growing problems that were eventually resolved. It would go for months or even seasons without serious issues. They had learned how to make Twitter reliable. Now that so many staff have been fired the people with less experienced are stuck, trying to understand the old logic, and failing.


They want to rewrite the entire website. I wish them good luck. I don’t see how they can when they’re firing people, and overloading those that are left behind, with work.


“This paved the way for a single engineer to be staffed on a major project — one that is linked to several critical interconnected systems that both users and employees depend on. “

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/6/23627875/twitter-outage-how-it-happened-engineer-api-shut-down


Google Reader, Jaiku, and plenty of services have lived, thrived and eventually been abandonned. Twitter is not something I rely on anymore, so whether it lives or dies, at this point, doesn’t matter.


I am no longer invested in the social network. I am no longer invested in social media, because social media has shown that it is a glossy mag, rather than a social network. Glossy mags are not social networks. They are advert sellers. I loved Twitter. I expect nothing now.


And Finally


I don’t want to use Twitter anymore for the same reason I stopped using Facebook and Instagram. I don’t trust those in charge to be moral. I expect that our data and attention will be exploited. We will be used.


I am not a user. I am a community member. Destroy the community, like you did with Facebook and Instagram, and I will migrate.


My issue with Twitter is not that it goes down, but why it goes down. I also have issue with who owns and controls it. No social network should be controlled by the Far Right, especially when algorithms affect what you see.