Bye Bye Twitter

I did it!

I deleted Twitter. I had wanted to do so earlier, but ever since the great Twitter hack of 2020, they had disabled the ability to export your data (which is a violation of the GDPR, by the way; what I wouldn't give for decent privacy laws in the US...).

It feels a bit weird. I've had a Twitter account since 2008. It's something I still got value out of in 2020, unlike Facebook, which I happily jettisoned a while back. But I don't trust Twitter with my data, and I don't trust myself on their platform. I used it in a reactionary way, which involved a lot of screaming into the void about how ridiculous our world is.

I'm planning on using Mastodon going forward, but the smaller community and lack of fucktards like Trump on the platform means I'll be able to truly use it as a micro-blogging platform. That will be much healthier for my brain and I'll be able to deliver more value to any followers I manage to gain since I'll be more thoughtful about what I post. In addition, Mastodon has much better data portability and is completely open source. I could (and maybe will) spin up my own instance and still be able to connect with the larger fediverse.

I'm sure I'll still pop onto Twitter occasionally when I see a link to something interesting on Reddit (one of the last major social media vices I still have), but no more random, reactionary tweeting for me!

It's toots from here on out.

Join the fediverse yourself and give me a follow!