Burying the bird for good.

Last Friday, I messaged some friends, "I just deleted my Twitter account. I should have done it a long time ago.” Like most folks I know, I stopped using Twitter around the time Elon started his mission of destroying everything, but I kept the account locked down to keep the username. That was my excuse anyway.

I have friends who are still posting there but it’s not for me. The husk that remains is an echo chamber and platform for all the worst qualities and ideals a person can have. There’s no way in hell I’ll ever sign up for a Truth account so it didn’t make sense as to why I’d want to hold onto an account for a platform that has turned into garbage, owned and led by someone I truly despise.

In addition—and I learned this a few days after I deleted my account otherwise I would have shut it down sooner—beginning Friday, November 15th, all content posted to the platform will be used to train Musk’s AI and can be sold to third-party companies to train their large language models as well. The terms of service will change indefinitely two days from now, and users will not be given a choice to opt-out.

T L ; D R : It's time to close your Twitter acounts and move on.

A handful of you may recall the large screen setup in the hallway of the Austin Convention Center during SXSW Interactive 2007. Twitter created an app that displayed posts in real time. From that moment on so much happened at an accelerated pace. The Internet was a rocket that would not stop and we all went along for the ride with Twitter as our social backbone.

Years later, my crew and I at Airbag created Twitshirt, one of the first apps to turn a tweet into a t-shirt. It was a great idea that was pummelled into the ground by the gigantic asshole Merlin Mann and his very angry mob. It was fun for the few days while it lasted.

Anyway, it hurts that all of that greatness was destroyed for no good reason or purpose, but all good things must come to an end. So, last Friday I said goodbye and and clicked the deactivate button. I encourage you to do the same.

I have accounts on the new networks with the same handle I’ve used for two-plus decades now, you can find me most days on Mastodon.