Why I don't go to Twitter anymore

I used to spend an extortionate amount of time on Twitter, upwards of three hours a day scrolling what was mostly a feed of noise. It wasn't all unproductive though, I did relish interacting with the Vintage Computing and Retro Gaming communities on there but alas even their appeal wasn't enough to entice me to stay once Twitter became entirely possessed by the Devil.

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My disenfranchisement from the platform came several years before the self-declared "free speech absolutist" Elon acquired it; although his doing so sounded the final death knell for my active involvement with what was Twitter.

In 2018, I was invited to join the Mastodon server phpc.social and in October of that same year I set up my own server, although at the time using the light-weight Pleroma due to Mastodon being more complex to setup^[1]. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience making many mutual connections and finding a community of people in the Fediverse that was similar to the tight knit Vintage Computing and Retro Gaming communities I had been a part of on Twitter.

Unlike many others who came to the Fediverse, my transition to using it as my main social network wasn't entirely intentional. I had dipped my toes and found something much more pleasant than I was expecting. Until then my only experience of Social Media was through the lens of a programatic feed and deviating from that in order to interact with groups of people I shared interest in took effort. By contrast, once you get over the initial shock of joining, the Fediverse feels welcoming and comfortable like a cosy old cafe.

The events of October 2022 and the ongoing dumpster fire as documented by Twitter is going great^[2] have solidified my intention to keep away from that platform. In November of 2022 I deleted Twitter from my phone to intentionally reduce the time I spent scrolling its feed to zero; over the course of the next few months a lot of the people I had regularly chatted with on Twitter also setup a presence on the Fediverse (with a few returning to IRC or migrating to other platforms), this migration grew to include a significant number of the Vintage Computing and Retro Gaming communities and in doing so reduced the need for me to visit Twitter further.

Now when I am shared a link to Twitter (which for a period of time wouldn't work unless logged in), I often find the comments people make on the posts to be disgusting, verging on a level I have only ever before seen at 4chan. It doesn't surprise me that Twitters Ad revenue is down 50% what self-respecting marketing exec is going to want their content promoted against ignorance, bigotry and hate?

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Much like MySpace, one day I visited for the last time, never to return.