Twitter started banning Mastodon links. This is the last straw for me. I don’t want to contribute to another WeChat-like social network.
I will move on to post on https://mastodon.social/@weiwei9 and won’t post on Twitter anymore. You can also find me on Instagram. I’ll probably still browse Twitter and interact with friends there. But I encourage everyone to move on. The network effect is strong, and only people in the network can break it. Be brave.
There were a few moments I considered leaving Twitter:
- Musk closed the deal. It’d be ok if he kept most things as they were.
- Twitter Blue fiasco. I honestly don’t care about this very much.
- Ungraceful layoff. A layoff is always ugly. Musk did it especially badly.
- Firing of employees who disagreed with him. Firing dissidents is a red flag that foretold his later moves.
- Inviting Trump back. This would be my leaving moment if Trump started posting again.
- Banning journalists. This is the second strike in my mind.
- Banning Mastodon links. This is the third strike. I don’t believe Twitter, as a product, is a product I would sign up for anymore.
Mastodon still has a long way to go. The federated model is a barrier for people to start, but it’s also a measure to prevent another dictator situation. The user experience is not as good as Twitter’s yet but hopefully, we’ll see some rapid improvement given the attention and influx of users it gets. I’ve waited long enough and it’s time to make the leap.
Twitter has been a major information source for me. It’s a convenient way to keep a “pulse” for everything I want to know, from the world news to things I want to learn, to people I know in real life. But maybe that’s just an illusion. Maybe I will be better off reading more books and calling people I know. Let’s see.