I have been wanting to write a post like this for some time, but now is as good of a time as any to talk about Twitter. More specifically, I want to talk about the state of my usage of Twitter. Twitter is in an interesting position in terms of its public perception (especially of the person who bought the company), and its survivability as a major social media site. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, there has been this weird shift on the overall climate whenever I scroll through my Twitter feed and explore trending topics. I will get to this later in the post, but I want to talk about how I came to use Twitter and how I enjoyed using Twitter over the years. Then, I will talk about my future on the platform itself and everything I noticed since the Twitter takeover.
The main reason why I started using Twitter is because I hated using Facebook. Also, I wanted to use a platform where I can share my uncensored thoughts on things that I could not necessarily post on Facebook. I was drawn to talking about certain things such as university, football, and video games. I followed users with similar interest to mine and users came to seek me out as well. Twitter became my jump-off platform for this very blog, which in some ways is a long-form version of Twitter where I can post more long-form content. Twitter became the platform with my biggest audience, and my most usage of any of my social media over the years. I enjoy the fact that I can search for anything that piques my interest and see many different takes on the issue, whether it is funny, serious, or just plain insane. In my opinion, Twitter became the public square of the internet, and it was important for some entities (whether they are normal people or organizations) to have a presence in the hopes of virality and/or conveying important information.
Everything changed for Twitter in October 2022 when Elon Musk completed his acquisition of the company. I hoped that there would not have been any significant changes to the website, but boy was I wrong. It seemed obvious that Musk bought Twitter as a meme purchase 'for the lolz' and he did not seem to have a real plan on making Twitter more successful. Based on his tweets, he seems to spend an unhealthy amount of time on Twitter making unfunny jokes and trying to endear himself with people on the far-right of the political spectrum. To me, Elon Musk is some sort of muskrat man-child who is attempting to co-opt the overall public discourse of him. He seems to be so desperate for attention and approval, which is sad (and hilarious at times).
Twitter itself has gone downhill as a platform since the Elon Musk takeover. Musk terminated many Twitter employees responsible for the maintenance of the site, and now the site does not even work properly on many occasions. There are so many spam accounts tweeting about bullshit crypto scams and porn. There also seems to be many more posts promoting hatred and far-right propaganda (and so I have the mute/block function on Twitter working on overtime). There are also discussions about removing verified checkmarks and having to pay for a monthly subscription for a premium-tier version of Twitter called 'Twitter Blue'. There is this whole thing about mislabeling media organizations as 'government-funded media', implying that some media organizations (such as the CBC) are state-run, like China's CCTV or Russia's RT. This is what I mean when I say that there has been a weird shift on Twitter. Using Twitter feels more volatile, and I am noticing more tweets on Twitter of a negative nature, with more offensive and obscene content that maybe would have a violation of Twitter Terms of Service not even a year ago.
Where does this leave me? I genuinely thought about quitting Twitter altogether, but I still find some enjoyment mindlessly scrolling through my Twitter feed. The Twitter user base is still big enough for me that I can effectively promote things such as my blog posts. Also, there isn't a true, dedicated alternative to Twitter with a big enough user base to actively sustain itself. I thought Mastodon would be the platform to maybe rival Twitter, but I do not think it is nowhere near big enough to start eating into Twitter's market share. I guess for now, I will still use Twitter, but things can change as often as Elon Musk's Twitter posting rate. I need to see how the wind blows on where all the decent people are going to go.
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