Notes of a Twitter Emigre

Screen shot of my deactivated Twitter account.

Back in 2009, I was working for a non-profit organization in Washington, DC. The people that we served were often in the political business, so social media--especially as a thirty-something professional--was something new and fresh and, most importantly, a way to network and interact with other people in the field. I got onto Facebook as a way to connect with old friends, and Twitter was a way to become part of a larger community of people that were interested in the things that interested me at the time: politics, analysis, and goings on in the DMV.

Over the years, social media became at times a tool to build my network and social circle, at other times an escape from difficult personal experiences, and I found myself on Twitter most of all because it was a place where I found community as a baseball fan, a painter, and someone who was vexed by the country's descent into the dangerous politics that we find ourselves in today. At times I pulled back; I gave myself a break from Twitter in July 2020, and once the Biden administration came into office, exhausted by four years of daily crisis, I unfollowed quite a few political accounts and focused myself on following sports and artistic creators. But I kept using social media, and especially Twitter, because it was helpful to be connected with people who shared my interests and ideals (or at least, was more helpful than hurtful).

When Elon Musk first bought Twitter in November, I thought that the doomsaying arguments may have been overblown. After all, it seemed like it was in his best interest for the platform to continue to earn advertising revenue and to keep the current rules and policies for content moderation in place. Needless to say, that didn't happen. The series of events since Musk took control of the company just before Halloween have been well-documented, so there's no need to rehash them here. But there are several points that were important in guiding my own thinking (source: NBC News):

October 28th: Musk completes his acquisition of the company and almost immediately fires the CEO and policy director. Within days, he lays off about half of the company (including critical people in the engineering and content moderation functions), and sends an internal email requiring staff to agree to work "extremely hardcore" and posting a picture of him and a number of employees at the office in the wee hours of the morning. He also tweets a link containing misinformation about the assassination attempt on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which a politically motivated attacker severely injured her husband Paul at their San Francisco home.

November 9th: Musk announces his plan to replace the current verification program, in which notable people with above a minimum number of followers can have their identity validated and display a blue check mark, with a paid program by which any user can receive the check mark. Several instances are reported of fake accounts misrepresenting themselves as corporate accounts, including that of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

November 19th: After fielding a poll on Twitter, Musk reinstates Donald Trump, twice-impeached, defeated former president of the US who is under multiple criminal investigations for financial crimes, theft of classified documents, and insurrection, onto the platform. Trump was banned from Twitter after he used the computer system to foment the January 6, 2021 insurrection. (Twitter polls are unscientific; do not differentiate between automated "bot" accounts and those of actual users; and present substantial response and other biases.)

At this point, I locked down my Twitter account, removing all profile information, making the account nonpublic, and referring traffic to my newly created Mastodon account. At this point, I was reluctant to completely shut off the account, because I had made a substantial investment in time to build a follower count of more than 1,700 people, and particularly as I had built contacts in the baseball research and art community. However, I began to see friends, contacts, and other people whom I followed set up Mastodon accounts as well. I also put myself on the waiting list for a Post account, and set that up when I received an invitation.

December 12th: Musk tweets a message that is a simultaneous call to violence against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, and trans people. At this point, I could no longer justify participating in, or providing my content to, a platform that condones such calls to violence (full disclosure: I work at NIH and have, and do, publicly support Dr. Fauci as one of the most important scientific voices during the COVID-19 pandemic, and am close to LGBTQIA people, whom I likewise have and do publicly support). As of December 12th, my Twitter account is deactivated. It's worth noting that while I asked Twitter to send me my data on November 19th, I never received a copy of it.

So, now that I've been off Twitter for about six weeks, what is the experience like? (You can find me on Mastodon here, and on Post here.)

First thought: I'm much more active on Mastodon than Post. I don't see much difference between the two experiences, and given the limited amount of time in a day and my general aversion to redundancy I don't like posting the same information to multiple platforms. I'm also very attracted to the federated, noncommercial posture on Mastodon, and the lack of an algorithm. (More on that later.) I'm also uncomfortable with the Post business model. The fact that there's a business model at all is kind of bothersome; one of the reasons why Twitter has become the hellscape that it has is that it's a business driven by advertising and data sales. I'm also uncomfortable with the idea of tipping people for specific pieces of content. I do support my Mastodon instance, and one or two people who run their own instances, with very small monthly amounts but that's it. It's about the equivalent of buying three lattes a month.

Second thought: I do not miss Twitter. At all. The absence of an algorithm means that the people whom I follow I find organically, and the people who follow me do the same, not because the algorithm "suggests" them. The practical outcome of this is that the content of my feed is less rage-inducing--because as has been well documented, algorithms promote engagement by inducing such emotions as rage, anger, and fear. I find this to be true even with a topic like baseball--which, given that it's the American "national pastime", should be a joyous topic. But on Twitter, I found that the algorithm was serving me content about baseball that was designed to make one angry: rehashing allegations that the Houston Astros cheated in 2017, or that one team or another got fleeced in a trade, or that the MLB Commissioner was a bum. That's not happening now. And when there are disagreements, I find that they are addressed in an open and honest way.

I'm also finding that the audience I'm finding is much less US-centric, and much more diverse in terms of gender identity, race, and socioeconomic status. Even though my follower count is only a fraction of what it was on Twitter, the quality of the engagement is higher.

There's a distinct feeling that's similar to what it was like to be on Twitter in 2009, which is a good thing. I can remember being energized by the feeling of meeting new people every day, and I hope that, whether Mastodon is "it" or not, that we can create new forms of social media that lead us to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

With that in mind, you can find me here on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@AdamKorengold - see you there!