Good riddance, Twitter

This week, I quit Twitter.

I had an 11-year old, verified account with over 30,000 followers, I’ve been to the Twitter offices twice, once when they were a 30-people company for a meeting with Ev Williams.

Last week was the last straw. Their hostile stance towards their early users is breathtaking in just how openly they try to fuck us over.

Instead of properly fighting their harrassment problem, they’re openly siding with Nazis, conspiracy theorists and anyone else really who brings them “engagement”.

Instead of widening the options for access, despite their dwindling user numbers, they axe access for third party clients.

Instead of making a new version of their client for macOS, this 4,000 people company decided to no longer make one (after buying the maker of the best app).

Instead of taking a stance to protect their users, they keep a sociopathic CEO in place, with Jack Dorsey going out of his way to constantly explain away his utter spinelessness and lack of action (“We have do to better!”).

Fuck you Jack Dorsey. Fuck you, all you douchebros and douchesisters running Twitter.

You’re abusers. You ceaselessly optimize Twitter for the most possible abuse of its users to drive “engagement” and keep those eyes on the timelines with a never ending barrage of abusive crap.

You keep showing tweets from people your users never chose to follow.

You keep invading people’s privacy by syndicating favorites, which no one ever agreed to.

You keep trying to stir up controversy but willingly allowing criminal assholes to abuse your users just so you can get into the press.

You had a choice, and you chose to willingly and by your own devices, to be assholes.

Twitter’s business model boils down to, “convert negative emotions into money”.

Side note: If you work at Twitter, you’re fueling a cult that makes a profit (well, not sure about that actually) by emotionally abusing people. And the leadership of your company is abusing you, too. Your work is designed to make people miserable, enraged and feeling terrible—all so that your advertisers can sell more stuff.

I’ve deleted my account. I will miss the friends I made, but I will not miss the abuse. There’s a line that was crossed recently with Alex Jones and with removing support for various API functions, a move designed to deliberately target power-users and early adopters who prefer 3rd-party clients over the Twitter apps and their force-fed crap.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Social media can be fun. With friendly people, and with no engagement pressure, and no algorithms force-feeding you content designed to make you feel bad.

I found a new home in Mastodon (follow me there if you like: mastodon.social/@thomasfuchs).

Good riddance, Twitter. Hello meaningful conversations.