The longer you’ve been on Twitter (I joined in 2007), the more likely that most of your followers are inactive accounts. My guesstimate would be that less than 1% of my followers are actually active, and even fewer actually care about what I’m saying or posting. So why on earth, give a damn?
I’m in violation of Twitter’s guidelines because I do promote content coming from other social platforms. I do use Linktree and have my Linktr.ee URL set on @numericcitizen.
"Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended.".This new "Promotion of alternative social platforms policy" on Twitter deserves memorializing for the pure idiocy of it.
I would love @manton to speak out about how the current Twitter turmoils, people flocking to Mastodon, and the ability to follow people over there right from my Micro.blog feed is increasing Micro.blog engagement, subscriptions and general usage. Personally, I’m much more active than before.
Is this true?
12 years ago, Twitter’s office used a Mac Mini to tunnel into the servers. One day, an IT guy found it in the closet.
“Anyone know who owns this?”
“Unplug it. Someone will show up.”
Everyone lost access to servers. Huge crisis. It became known as the “Load Bearing Mac Mini.”
I finally found how to reconfigure my Mailbrew account to log in without using Twitter. Good thing. I don’t log in often in Mailbrew, but this morning I learned that I’d need to adjust many things when I close my Twitter account. As an example, this newsletter setup will need to be revisited to remove any references to Twitter as a data source.
Mailbrew is an excellent tool for generating newsletters, but it hasn’t been updated for quite a while (October of 2021, according to the change log). The developers behind Mailbrew are too busy working on their other product: Typefully, a web service for writing Twitter threads. I’m subscribing to both services. Typefully was cool when it launched but being entirely dependent on Twitter puts them in danger IMHO. I don’t use Typefully much, preferring Buffer for scheduling cross-posted content to Twitter, something Typefully doesn’t support.
It’s sad to see Mailbrew coming to a halt. Typefully will go down the drain with my Twitter account closure next year.
Found in my Micro.blog bookmarks collection:
Another good reason to quit Twitter and concentrate my energy here on Micro.blog.Culture is shaped by SEO experts and algorithms. Neither of which have our best interests in mind.
According to media and users on Twitter:
Many Twitter users added a Mastodon profile link into their bios as the Twitter alternative picked up steam. Now, any links to blocked Mastodon servers are disabled and accompanied by the text “Warning: this link may be unsafe.
And
Twitter on Thursday evening suddenly suspended several high-profile journalists who cover the platform and Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world, who acquired the company just a few months ago.
Hours after the suspensions took hold, Musk faced off with one of the journalists he suspended in a Twitter Space audio discussion before an audience of more than 30,000 listeners. The suspended journalist, along with several others, found a backdoor way onto the platform through the website's audio function.
“You doxx, you get suspended. End of story. That's it,” Musk said, explaining his latest policy to the group, before he left minutes after having joined the discussion.
Wow. What a shit show. After suspending targeted individual accounts, now it appears it is getting more systematic. Is there an employee at Twitter capable of saying no to Musk even if it means being fired? Or is Musk at the command and personally disabling those accounts?
Twitter is turning into USSR with a fake free-speech proponent leader.
Exit plans are important. My Twitter exit planning reminds me that we all should have some sort of exit plan for anything we use and depend on online. Every building has an emergency exit plan. Businesses who subscribe to cloud-based services need to plan their exit in case they no longer like their cloud provider. The same should be planned for using services like Twitter. Having a plan is one thing but maintaining it is quite another. I’m learning my lesson the hard way my friends. More to come soon.
Updated my bio today, adding a mention of being a Qwitter (someone planning to Quit Twitter). When I tell my wife that I’m going to close my Twitter accounts next year, she gives me a dubious look and says: why wait next year? 🫣😂
Whenever I want to go to Twitter, I should remember that Twitter is mostly a big dump of content originating from other places. So, why not consume content at the source instead? In my journey to a Twitter-free world, I’ll need to rebuild my habits of visiting the following places:
* Techmeme: for consuming news;
* RSS Reader: for consuming news and articles;
* Telegram: for consuming news;
* Mailbrew: for consuming content;
* Hackernews: for discovering content;
* Reddit: for consuming content, exploring and discovering new content;
A special mention about Mailbrew is required here: a portion of the content generated in my private newsletters comes from Twitter. I’ll need to revisit this sooner than later. Thankfully, Mailbrew supports RSS feeds as a content source. But then, maybe using my RSS reader will render Mailbrew mostly useless?
