In 2006-2007 when Jaiku and Forums had threads, these made conversations flow. When Twitter was a chatroom conversations flowed too, until the arrival of the hashtag. The issue with the hashtag is that it brought in people who are toilet social media browsers, rather than habitual social media participants. I could have written users, but that is part of the issue with Social Media and Utilitarianism.
Two decades ago, back in 2007 or so I thought about the conversation about ROI for PR firms, brands and more on Twitter and every time I asked, “But what about ROI for human beings, normal users?
I had and have reservations about Bluesky. I worry about the venture capitalists funding the site and I worry about the community on the site. Today I wrote a post that was meant to show empathy but it got me flamed. The flames were just two posts, but that flame is enough for me to deactivate my account, at least until the flamers have given up.
I was flamed like that on Twitter in 2020 or so, and on the Fediverse more than once, which is why I almost gave up on the Fediverse.
Yesterday I finally took the step of deactivating my account, and then reactivating it, and then this morning deactivating it again. Normally when I lose interest in a social network I just forget about it and I’m done. In this situation I didn’t forget about it though. I went a step further.
Three factors pushed me towards this decision. The first is that Musk wants to use our tweets to feed AI and I don’t want my tweets to be used that way.
Almost every day, whether on Facebook open groups, or Fediverse instances I post something, and someone feels the urge to say “You’re wrong” and if I answer a stream of trolls and flamers will pile in.
Yesterday someone asked “How do I do A on site B” and I gave two links to articles speaking about how to do A on site B. I was then told that it was not helpful, and then when I answered back a flame war started.
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.
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.
Twitter and YouTube want to make it impossible to block report, or ignore ads. The reason I dumped Facebook and Instagram is that I saw more ads than content by friends. In fact I saw posts by five to ten friends, out of four hundred, but unlimited amounts of ads. This reminded me of how small my Instagram reality was, but also that others were wasting my time to make money for themselves.
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.
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.
It’s interesting that we can stop using a website that is so integral to our lives for years. During the pandemic I quit facebook because I was flamed and trolled at a time when I needed friendship and support. Facebook has been known to make people depressed. During lockdown I decided to quit Facebook and Instagram.
Quitting FB and IG I quit them for two reasons. The first is that I no longer got anything positive out of them.