If, like me, you don't intend to be posting to twitter any time soon, and it is conceivable to you that it might cease to exist in the not too distant future, you might want to download your twitter archive. You can get it from Settings -> Your account -> Download an archive of your data.

It took half a day or so for the download to be ready. Of course if things do start going downhill rapidly there that time horizon could increase.

The collapse of Twitter is a system breakdown. Mastodon and the fediverse represent something different: _system change_. From for-profit "Big Tech" to nonprofit, open source, community-owned public spaces.

System change is always harder than you think. It always incurs short-term costs, with hoped for long-term benefits.

The next few weeks will be really tough for the fediverse. Stick around, vibe with it, and you just might help us put a huge part of the web back in community hands. <3

Here’s an idea: let’s call people “people” on the fediverse instead of “users” whenever we can.

Compare:

“There are 42 users on this instance.”

vs

“There are 42 people on this instance.”

Which acknowledges our humanity more?

Language matters. We don’t need to perpetuate mainstream technology’s othering/colonial framing of “us” – designers/developers/other “clever folks” – and “them” – the users (usually one step removed from “dumb user” and usually the ones who get used).

#peopleNotUsers