I am not – nor have I ever been – a rapid adopter. Whether it’s a new technology, a new author, a new game or – as in the case here – a new social media platform – I generally wait to see how it meets its target market. No innovator gets it right on release and the process of fighting through patches, subsequent releases, hotfixes and redesigns is just not how I prefer to spend my time.
X – the social media site formerly known as Twitter – is a great example. I was a very late adopter. As a general rule, I’m skeptical of social media. Any technology that makes it so easy to shout at the general public guarantees a proliferation of poorly thought-out content.
Nevertheless, once I joined and was able to put together a decent follow list, I found it to be extremely valuable as a source of breaking news, political updates and thought-provoking opinion pieces. So long as I stayed on my “Follow List” and minimized exposure to the General Feed, I was rarely exposed to what so many people describe as the “X Toxic Hellscape”. My primary struggle with “Twitter / X” involved the need to wade through an endless progression of silly ads for ridiculous products and I controlled that by blocking the sites posting them.
That ended today when I finally made the decision to deactivate Twitter / X and fully commit to Threads.
Three things prompted the change:
- I’ve been playing around with Threads for about 3 weeks now and I’ve put together a very solid Follow List that allows me to get most of the content I was getting on Twitter / X. That will only get better over time.
- Elon Musk has become truly unbearable from a social and political perspective. I simply cannot allow myself to support a company owned by a man that I consider to be a chaos agent who is actively working to undermine institutions that I believe in and have, in my early professional days, proudly served.
- The Twitter / X decision to remove the Block Button was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I refuse to support a social media site that won’t allow me to curate / customize my feed.
Short to long – I felt an ethical imperative to leave Twitter / X and did so as soon as I found a reasonable alternative.
Good riddance – don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
Cheers