My Life After Twitter: Reflections on a More Peaceful Digital Landscape

It’s been more than four months since I left Twitter. I'm now ready to share a few thoughts about this. Does four months without Twitter in my digital life make a difference? You bet.

• Quitting Twitter wasn’t easy, but it was well worth it. Many of Elon Musk’s decisions that followed my exit only assured me that my time on Twitter was up. It was probably up for a longer time than I'm willing to admit.
• My digital landscape definitely feels less noisy. I no longer feel the urge to open Twitter and scroll for the latest tweets.
• My fear of missing out didn’t last long. Telegram replaced a portion of what I was looking for on Twitter. More than ever, I depend on RSS feeds. These feeds are now consumed through Inoreader. This proves that Information sources can be found elsewhere without much effort.
• Sure, there was a few Twitter accounts that I could no longer follow, and for a while, before Twitter ended free API access, Inoreader offered me a way to read these accounts. However, it’s no longer the case , and I can live with that.
• Micro.blog plays a replacement role but with a totally different community with a totally different vibe. I get much better engagement with this micro-community than on Twitter. The latter was impersonal for the most part.
• Strangely enough, my interest didn’t pick up even though I was initially enthusiastic about having my Mastodon account. I rarely open a Mastodon client. Some of my content is cross-posted on Mastodon, and I get some feedback from time to time, mostly about my photos coming from Glass, which are cross-posted to Mastodon using Micro.blog cross-posting feature. And that’s about it. And that’s fine.
• Bluesky is coming (a similar service based on a federated social network), and I’m not sure I’ll even pay attention. Who knows. If Mastodon isn't clicking with me, why would Bluesky? I think I'm being more selective with social networks, centralizing platforms.
• Spending less time on Twitter (and skipping the Mastodon phenomena for now) means I have more time for my creative projects. In addition, it is a great way to focus on one of my main goals for 2023 (as documented in my Digital Garden).
• I find it surprising that so many companies are still publishing on Twitter (only half left the platform and are no longer advertising on it, apparently), Apple included. Maybe individuals left in drove (or did they?), but companies? This report seems to say that some are leaving. But is that it? And what about social organizations, media, or government agencies? Is centralizing platforms required for this critical mass to attract these entities?
• One final observation: I find the stories about “verified” users losing their blue check mark pretty amusing. Some are freaking out about this. If I had those guys in front of me, I would argue this: you don’t need to get verified, validated or blue check-marked to exist! Get over it, move on and look forward, for god’s sake! Leave Twitter to those scumbags. Many pundits knew Twitter was about to implode the minute Elon Musk took over. It’s happening right before our eyes—time to move elsewhere. Forget Parler because it is shutting down too. Good riddance.

I couldn’t be happier without Twitter. I’m resisting, without too much effort, I might say, to spend time on Mastodon or elsewhere besides Micro.blog. Doing so would be a waste of time.

You can find my tweets archive right here, thanks to Micro.blog tweets archive feature.

If you are still on Twitter, consider reading My Five Steps Plan for Leaving Twitter. Who knows, maybe you'll find that a world without Twitter is not bad at all.

Five Steps For Safely Leaving Twitter

Thanks to Elon Musk, I decided to leave Twitter and move on. Here’s my five-step plan for safely leaving Twitter behind.

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin