Twitter is Dead

Today, as reported in the Guardian and elsewhere, Twitter suspended accounts of several journalists who had reported on Elon Musk and have also suspended accounts related to Mastodon as well as banning or “shadow-banning” people who talk about or link to their Mastodon profiles.

Everyone should now be “reconsidering” their engagement with Twitter at this point. Personally I’ve stopped Tweeting. I’ve been removing links to my Twitter from across my other identities on the web. I’ve also been encouraging the organisations I’m involved with to move their social media engagement to the #Fediverse / Mastodon / ActivityPub and away from being Twitter-centric.

By the way, I’ve been on Twitter since 2006. For context the iPhone debuted in 2007. I’ve spend a significant portion of my social media energy on Twitter. So it’s painful for me to say this, but Twitter is now dead – dead to me, at least.

I’ve been on Mastodon since 2016. After witnessing the migration of people to Mastodon and other open federated platforms over the past months and how well the federated approach has been working, I’m more convinced than ever that this is the way forward. I think closed services like LinkedIn can also continue to play a role in the social media landscape but when it comes to filling the hole Twitter leaves, the #Fediverse is the way forward.

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