Why am I still there?

I joined Twitter (I will never say ‘X’), unbelievably, in March 2008. I was sceptical of “microblogging” at the time but in those days, I was willing to try anything once. Back then I was a research scientist and as it turned out, there was a sizeable community of scientists posting useful and interesting content. Sure, it was something of a time sink and perhaps we spent a little too long there. Yet somehow, interesting and relevant material seemed to “float to the top”. Where it really shone was the conference hashtag and when the API was readily available to all, we were able to generate some pretty nifty summaries of scientific meetings (https://github.com/neilfws/Twitter).

At some point though, many tools go from being a time sink to a waste of time. Back in 2010 when it became clear that my favourite online space, FriendFeed, was to be shut down, there was no sentimentality on my part. Delete account, archive data (https://github.com/neilfws/friendfeed/tree/master/archive), move on.

Twitter is not shutting down, at least so far as we know and not right now, but it has become a waste of time. The Twitter experience today goes something like this. Navigate the clunky login process: new sign-up links placed inexplicably above the sign-in for registered accounts, the two pages with username on one, password on the other, the occasional security theatre of “suspicious activity” which is apparently resolved by entering a username rather than an email address. Grimace at the “X” splash screen, then grimace again at the default and inaptly-named “for you” feed.

We’re in and – there’s nothing there. Well maybe that’s harsh. There are still a few people that I follow, and some of them are still posting regular content. Is it unmissable content? Rarely. Accessible elsewhere? Yes. Does Twitter function as it used to, as an alert service? Not really. Direct messaging? Almost two years since I received one.

Is there engagement around the content? Barely any. So many people have left the platform that the network effect, required to boost and amplify the interesting items, has gone. Well done everyone – your principled stand has only served to make the platform even worse for those who chose to stay.

What would I miss, were I to “deactivate” my account (deletion, of course is not offered)? I still get a laugh out of News or Fall Song? (https://x.com/NewsOrFallSong) and Scarred for Life (https://x.com/ScarredForLife2). I still get occasional insights from the AFL statistics community – although nothing that I couldn’t read via their blogs.

I wouldn’t miss the sense of “why am I even doing this” that accompanies every login, nor the deafening silence which greets most of my increasingly ‘old man yells at cloud (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud)‘ posts. I doubt that I’d even bother to download my data before leaving, since I’ve never viewed Twitter as archival. Whatever became of that Library of Congress proposal anyway? I wouldn’t migrate to Mastodon (if it’s a social media tool beloved of academics, you can bet that it’s unusable), nor Bluesky (the anti-Twitter echo chamber).

All of which thinking out loud leads me to think that in the very near future, I’ll be saying goodbye to Twitter. It was useful and fun, until it wasn’t.