My Twitter TL has thinned out considerable. Infosec accounts I follow don't seem to posting; Law people have migrated here; big blue check accounts are stuck, watching their numbers dwindle; my Twitter friends are over here; Lastly, I don't feel much like participating in Elon's circus. Not throwing in the towel yet, but the writing may be on the wall.
@scottjshapiro seen on my Twitter page this morning
@capemaydave @scottjshapiro
I woke up to a friend asking: “Are you sticking around here with him back?” 🤦🏻‍♀️
@marie_cast @scottjshapiro
His act is old and tired
@capemaydave @scottjshapiro
Without Murdoch and (maybe) even without Putin, let’s see how the old mobster does!
@scottjshapiro Main thing, you know where your towel is!
@scottjshapiro well I mean it's Sunday morning! But yeah EM can suck it

@scottjshapiro

Same here, I do check in on Twitter but less frequently and only for a few minutes.

The problem with Elon's circus is that as it drags it becomes increasingly draining emotionally. After a few white knuckle cycles of "is this it?" even that starts getting boring.

@scottjshapiro I’d say it’s time to arrange that towel into a tight bundle and get your Roger Staubach on.
@scottjshapiro After a week or so of being on both platforms, I finally cut the cord. Now I'm learning to follow hashtags, use lists and customize the experience here. I don't think I'm going to miss Twitter very much.
@scottjshapiro my Timeline changed so much that I can't anymore. I'm all for balanced information but its straight up right-wing politics post about 1/3 of the time, every 1/5 post is an ad, and none of my friends are on there anymore 🥺 looks like I've had to leave my old home.
@scottjshapiro The writing is on the wall in giant letters with fluorescent neon paint.
@scottjshapiro It’s hard to argue in favor of staying on Twitter as a way to oppose Musk’s oligarchic and anti-democratic marriage to Trumpism and Trump. Channeling Yogi Berra, it does not do to say a restaurant sucks whilst complaining the servings are too small.
@scottjshapiro I’ve noticed a huge shift in my Twitter timeline this past week. People are either not posting or are posting their contact info on other sites. It’s been a noticeable change.
@scottjshapiro I felt it happening weeks ago, the writings on the wall were clear. He destroyed a great communication tool, it was definitely time to leave to keep our sanity.
@scottjshapiro it was funny for a while but it’s run it’s course
@scottjshapiro
I’ve just been randomly going on Twitter to
1) see if more people I follow made an account here
And 2) see if anything else broken/funny is happening
@scottjshapiro I deleted Twitter shortly after joining here.
@scottjshapiro I'm staying on Twitter for now but spending more time here as I find people I follow.
@scottjshapiro Mine, too. Also — while I expect ads during the holiday season which we are fairly in — instead of Harry & David and gadgets, it’s all crypto and tech and business management snake oil. I do say the « business management » ones make me laugh.
@scottjshapiro My towel is thrown, not missing being played by algorithms and certainly not missing the snark. #<8^)
@scottjshapiro normally would be not big deal, but I am just thinking that platform has been so important to find out what happens and support people struggling all over the world that are fighting for democracy, freedom, human rights... I do not see an alternative in the near future.
@scottjshapiro If Twatter is such a circus how come this platform has an elephant?
@scottjshapiro New follower there and here. Was on hellsite for a few years, but left all social media after 2020 election. Quality of life kind of improved. Came back this fall due to midterms and Orange stupidity. In VERY short order it felt like visiting a childhood home, pleasant memories but meaningless now. I only have 10 followers there, but as soon as I find more of my follows here, I’m flipping the bird. I’ve been here a day, and it’s exactly the experience I want.
@scottjshapiro I'm over here now following voices that I want to hear from.
Still watching Twitter burn down...but still too many not yet over here yet
@scottjshapiro Just waiting for my archive and then I’m out.

@scottjshapiro
Why wait? You know where Musk is taking this.

Move your community to safer ground and deactivate. Don’t let Musk have any more data or your user count.

@scottjshapiro throw in the towel!

The sooner more folks do it the better.

@scottjshapiro same, I have no desire to support Musk
@scottjshapiro I'm running an importer every day to move follows over to here, and every day there are new people making the jump. May I suggest committing to only using your bird acct to promote this network and help people make the move?
@scottjshapiro people talk to you here. They have conversations. It's not one big shouting match with nobody listening. Twitter used to be like this before they introduced the algorithm.

@scottjshapiro Did you notice: no advertisers?

I say don't even touch a Like button there. Some think that is giving it up to the crazies, but they neglect that the OWNER is crazy and can do whatever he wants.

The site should be considered UNDER SIEGE.

Starve it! Of users, of advertisers, of everything but the crazies themselves.

@scottjshapiro my Twitter feed was always authentic. I don’t see much shift other than some of the folks who I was following quit but it has allowed me to see tweets from folks I was following whos teeets I never saw. But I’m not in the tech industry so as a casual user my time line is actually better because I am not seeing as much noise but instead more conversations from interesting thinkers
@scottjshapiro My experience as well. Not seeing posts elsewhere necessarily, but definitely feels like velocity of posting is down.
@scottjshapiro and what’s an interesting phenomenon is that here on Mastodon I’m seeing exponentially more conversation about Twitter and Musk than on Twitter
@scottjshapiro I finally committed today and deleted the app in response to Elons challenge
@scottjshapiro what I’m interested to explore or rather wondering or actually concerned about is amplification. I get it that Mastadon is anti-viral anti clout and im with that. But I do think a value of Twitter was its usefulness in shifting culture and helping get necessary messages and voices amplified in times of need and crisis in real time. And that piece of the equation is where I’m feeling might be missing?
Radical Diversification

My approach, for now, to Twitter's decline.

Dog Shirt Daily
@benjaminwittes @scottjshapiro for the record, a net loss of Wittes WAS one of my concerns to making the switch. :)
@bfissa @scottjshapiro I suspect you are VERY rare in that regard, but thank you. That’s very kind.
@benjaminwittes A thoughtful post, and a thoughtful approach.
@scottjshapiro the copium in the high-follower accounts is something.
@scottjshapiro matter of time. Won’t die, but morphing from public square to circus.
@scottjshapiro somehow most of my TL filled with gleeful viciousness. The boiled frog comes to mind. No thank you. I’m enjoying it here — much like the vibe of early bird site.
@scottjshapiro Watching things subtly break is fascinating however.

@ncweaver @scottjshapiro

Yeah I’ve noticed a bunch of weird small bugs/jank appearing over the past few days. I assume they’re artifacts of an eventually-consistent system design that’s now missing some of the services required to actually become consistent.

@adrien Sounds like a reasonable hypothesis. Some subsystems are breaking, some are just really slowing down.

I bet there is a lot of automatic performance monitoring that is just going to /dev/null now, because there is nobody to fix things.

@scottjshapiro , I just deactivated my account. I don't have a big account so it was easy. I joined Twitter to get information about the state-of-the-union as well as pandemic guidance. It came to be more but there is also the more that is toxic and the toxicity now seems to be the point.
@Dr_Elizabeth97 @scottjshapiro I'm prob right behind you, Elizabeth. I was just thinking how much I've been enjoying my Mastodon timeline this a.m. Maybe I'm following a more interesting, diverse group of people here.
@Dr_Elizabeth97 @scottjshapiro It just dawned on me... the algorithm. Here, the only algorithm is me, my selections. So I see more things that interest me, from a broader range of people, than I do over there, where factors that influence my timeline may be weighted differently per the algorithm.
@morekindness @scottjshapiro, we have escaped the evil!!!!
@Dr_Elizabeth97 @scottjshapiro 😂 We're freeeee!!!
@morekindness, yep and I get to look at a lot more beautiful photos of nature and the cosmos.