Why I left Twitter
Yes, I am calling it Twitter. I discovered the social platform in September 2018 and was very excited entering a network of people who seemed very nice and supportive. I spend a lot of time and energy to build up a small audience, but I fear it was all in vain. Since the purchase of Twitter by you-know-who, things have gone really bad. I really see no point in spending my time there any more. Here is why I left Twitter.
What I loved about Twitter
As I said in the beginning, when I joined Twitter, it was a very nice and supportive network and what people were telling me, that was the case since the beginning. I really liked the small size of the feed and always found something interesting to read. After leaving Facebook in 2021, Twitter completely overtook my social media focus. When you-know-who bought Twitter in 2022, I already saw this coming.
I also maintain quite a lot of communication with friends over Twitter, which was always very convenient, coming close to a real life chat with people all around the world. I will certainly miss that.
What I hate about Twitter
Well, it’s new CEO really. You-know-who thinks he is saving the world, but doesn’t care what he is destroying in the process. I am not talking about Twitter alone of course. For a guy that promotes freedom of speech, he is constantly censoring people speaking up against him. By firing the ethics team at Twitter and allowing racist and antisemitic personas back onto the platform. Considering his tweets, he clearly supports all kinds of racist and conspiratorial topics.
He took an active (way too active) role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and in general has too much power. What I really don’t get is how people see him as a genius as he is constantly messing things up and has been mostly lucky so far. To make a long story short: he generally is not a good person and I do not want to use his service(s).
Where to find me in the future
So I decided to not use my account anymore. I am still figuring out if I delete it or just don’t use it anymore, as there is the argument, that you should keep your alias. I will do this by the end of this year, so I am free of Twitter in 2024. We’ll see if I miss it or not. It is somehow a bummer, but I can already tell that other platforms are way friendlier. So where to find me?
So first of all, I will be at Mastodon, as this is a truly open source Twitter alternative and the archaeological community is quite active. Within the first couple of weeks I matched my followers from Twitter (which took me quite a while) and have now even succeeded them. For the time being, I will also try the even younger BlueSky service, but I keep being suspicious. Will I see you there?
🐘 https://mastodon.online/@ArchaeoBasti
🟦 https://bsky.app/profile/archaeobasti.bsky.social
