I joined Twitter in 2008, and I enjoyed using it until 2021. I started re-evaluating my use of it then, as I found that I was enjoying it much less than I used to. The benefits I had derived from it were harder to detect. I started to wonder if it was time to let it go.
My reevaluation of Twitter intensified in October of 2022 and has continued to do so since then. It did not take the new owner long to reveal himself to be a tool. His slash-and-burn style reminded me a great deal of Trump's first term. The changes to Twitter were for the worse. Together, they made the service much less appealing.
Despite this, I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. I started scaling back my use of Twitter while exploring Mastodon. Based on how I had been feeling about Twitter before the new ownership, there was no way I'd ever pay for it. If the new owner carried through on his threats to bury the tweets of those who didn't pay him, I'd leave. Until then, I'd continue to maintain a limited presence while migrating to Mastodon.
Then Twitter decided to kill off access for my third-party client of choice, Tweetbot. Tweetbot has been the only thing that made Twitter bearable for several years. Without a functioning version of Tweetbot, I don't see myself using Twitter the way I used to.
In the short term, I expect to limit my use of Twitter to sharing links to posts I've written. That still seems to provide some benefit in the form of traffic, though I expect that may soon change. Using Twitter to interact with others as I used to isn't something I plan to do without Tweetbot. For now, I'll do that on Mastodon.
Longer term, who knows? That will depend on how much worse it gets. I've given myself a deadline of April to determine some next steps. I don't plan to delete my account before then, but it will become much less active.
You can find me on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@vjack. If you already using Mastodon, my handle is @vjack@mastodon.social. Pasting that into the search box of the web interface of your Mastodon account will take you to me.
Image by author via NightCafe
