#why i left twitter

[sylvyspritii]

Why I'm Leaving Twitter and Joined a Better Website

This is a Tumblr version of the essay i wrote on why i am leaving Twitter, you can read the original version on Google Docs here: https://tinyurl.com/sylvybyemusky That's right, it's over, i've made my decision, you can read (the short version of) my full reasoning right here The original text will start now (keep in mind it won't be formatted correctly because Tumblr handles pasted text strangely):

Tl;dr: I will still keep my existing accounts and i will check my DM’s so that clients can still contact me easily and also to save my @ from being stolen I’m done with Twitter

Refresher: i am a professional freelance video game music composer, hobbyist artist, and hobbyist Vtuber Everyone has a limit to how much they are willing to tolerate before it becomes too much, before it starts breaking our principles Under the leadership of Elon Musk, we have seen Twitter be transformed from a flawed platform of the masses, to something that resembles a circus of incompetence, hatred, and untrustworthiness

I made my first Twitter account back in 2015, back then, it was important for every freelancer to have a Twitter account, because “everyone was there”, and it was an easy way for clients to contact us Eventually, i grew to around 2000 followers, and then i decided to delete my account in around 2020 because i was unhappy with the direction the website was going in I came back, because i noticed that people kept asking me to “come back to Twitter” Already back then, i started to dislike the platform a lot, i have multiple reasons for that

Reasons why i already disliked Twitter before Elon Musk

All your likes are public now, it didn’t used to be that way, so you can say your privacy goodbye, so if you liked some controversial tweets, even before this update went live, everyone can see it now, even if it was 5 years ago, all your like history is saved, nothing is private, and there is no option to make it private

Your following list is public, and this means that everyone can see who you follow, this is also terrible for privacy, and you can be judged depending on who you follow, this is very bad, especially if you have stalkers

Not only are the last 2 points a danger for freedom of speech, but they are also a danger to freedom of assembly, and freedom to learn, because it discourages people to connect with people that are “not acceptable”, this can reinforce prejudices and discourages people from learning about things outside of their comfort zone, in fear of being “found out”, for example, people discovering LGBT+ identities and wanting to follow people to learn more information about it, can now be stalked and discovered by their peers and parents, and even punished for it, but this also counts for politics, art, and many other things

It discourages straying away from “the norm”, because everyone can now judge who you follow, and what you like, so if you are interested in broadening your horizons, you always have to be aware that you can only follow and like “acceptable things”, this is especially bad for business as well, because it makes it so that your work and life balance is more difficult to separate if you accidentally liked some tweets 5 years ago when you were not a professional yet I have heard multiple stories from my friends and fellow freelancers that people have stalked their likes and who they follow, and have used it against them to judge them, this is not the type of behaviour i want a website to encourage, options should be given to users to make them decide for themselves 3. “Recent tweets from x”, a notification in your notification tab that is purely designed to keep you engaged on the platform, it is not a real notification, and you cannot disable it, because it is designed to be annoying, to keep you on the platform for as long as possible, to maximise potential ad revenue

4. The many “unwritten rules” of Twitter, for example, if you post a link or a hashtag in your tweet, then the tweet will get deboosted in the algorithm, this means that, for example, if you put a link to your music, your commission sheet, or your Twitch channel when you’re streaming in a tweet, the tweet will appear less in people’s feeds, even if they follow you (I have heard this often from people that followed me, “i missed your tweet about the stream even though i followed you”, it is very common)

5. Twitter is not a space for reasonable debate, the short tweets lack context, and therefore, are often spread into threads of multiple replies, but only 3 of these replies will appear on people’s feed, this means that a lot of the times, a lot of the context of a longer text is missing, because Twitter hides many of the tweets that are part of the text Not only that, but the fact that every tweet in the thread is separate, means that people can take some tweets out of context and quote retweet it to cherrypick a specific sentence to argue with to make themselves look better, this encourages constant negative engagement focused on “dunking” on people for likes, retweets, and more followers (clout), rather than reasonable debate and discussion This has affected politics as well, and it becomes very obvious to see how this benefits populist parties, who are focused on fearmongering and short, memorable quips, a platform that promotes dark patterns for optimising negative and shocking engagement (for ad revenue of course) benefits them, and does not benefit political arguments that require more nuance, this makes screaming and dunking matches on Twitter a chaotic circus

6. Twitter boosts negativity and shock to optimise engagement for ad revenue, it does so by constantly sharing “recommended tweets” in the timeline for you to engage with, and often, these tweets are negative, an argument, or a controversial opinion, it is often bait, whether the original poster knows it or not, their tweet is boosted in the algorithm in order to increase the amount of engagement it gets, this is to ensure that users stay on the website, or think about the tweet, because negativity often sticks more in people’s mind that positivity, this is a psychological trick to keep users thinking more about Twitter, and thus using Twitter more, and the goal of this strategy is simple; ad revenue, it’s all designed to show metrics to investors and ad companies, to show them how much people use Twitter, so they can justify receiving more and more money by exploiting the misery of others

There are many more reasons. And this is just the beginning, this was all before Elon Musk came to power I do not have faith in Elon Musk

I consider Elon Musk to be an irresponsible businessman, unfit for leadership He is unpredictable, sporadic, pushes his national, moral, and political values in his website, does not respect his employees (he fired 6000 employees, which were kicked off with no warning, leaving them vulnerable without a job), does not respect freedom of speech (it’s just a marketing term for him, he has been banning journalists left and right from the platform for criticising his decisions, and not just journalists, but normal users as well, even criticising Twitter Blue (Twitter’s new subscription service) is not allowed anymore), he is short-sighted, petty, transphobic (he refuses to support his own trans daughter, and even blames “neo-marxists at educational institutions” (a conservative national populist conspiracy) for making her transition), he is manipulative, a conspiracy theorist, NFT supporter, crypto supporter, untrustworthy, and a liar

I could go on, there are many more reasons why Elon Musk has lost my respect

If you’d like to read more about Elon Musk’s mistakes, i recommend reading these articles; https://www.freepress.net/blog/elon-musk-worlds-worst-businessman And this one is especially important for my fellow LGBT+ followers: https://www.them.us/story/elon-musk-pride-month-tweet-likes-anti-trans

I’d like to make it clear that my arguments here are in no way, shape, or form, meant to be political They are criticism of Twitter and Elon Musk, as a platform, and no matter where you belong on the political spectrum, the direction of Twitter has undeniably become more negative for almost everyone Making music is my job, i require clients and reach to do my job properly as a freelancer, and Twitter has become more and more of a platform that discourages that, both for users and businesses Just to make it extra clear just in case: i do not talk about politics or drama, i am merely sharing info

Elon Musk has automatically disabled DM’s for everyone, except if they are Twitter Blue subscribers Twitter Blue is a subscription service that directly supports Elon Musk I consider the people that subscribe to Twitter Blue to be a part of the problem, they willingly support the undeniable negative actions of Elon Musk, and i firmly believe that if you are currently a subscriber to Twitter Blue, you should consider ending your subscription, because Elon Musk does not deserve your money Elon Musk introduced a limit to the amount of tweets you are allowed to see per day, encouraging dark patterns of you coming back every day since that’s when your limit gets reset, this is to keep you addicted Elon Musk has changed the company name to X, resulting in multiple legal disputes, and a lot of confusion Elon Musk has supported racist and LGBT+phobic people and politicians And there is so much more I’m leaving

I am just done I am done tolerating all this madness just for my career I don’t want to be on a website that does not respect me, my mental health, or my career The only reason i am still on Twitter is because it is “required”, because “everyone is there” Twitter is popular, this means that for freelancers like me, it is expected of me to be there, and i cannot deny that a large part of my clients have approached me through my Twitter DM’s, rather than email (potential clients, if you’re reading this, consider emailing me! I check my email every day!)

Twitter has become a hostile and unsustainable environment, both for personal and for business reasons, and i am leaving By “leaving”, i do want to clarify that i will not delete my accounts, i will keep my accounts, but they will not be active anymore, they will serve as a way for clients to contact me through DM’s, but i will not be active anymore on all of my accounts (@sylvysprit @sylvyspritart @sylvyspritii)

Instead, you can find me on Cohost and Tumblr, 2 social media websites that i prefer over Twitter My Cohost can be found at https://cohost.org/sylvysprit My Tumblr can be found at https://www.tumblr.com/sylvysprit (I also have personal accounts there, you can find them pretty easily, but they are not meant for my casual music fans or clients)

I have many reasons why i like Cohost, i’d like to share a short post about why i have decided to subscribe to Cohost Plus, a subscription service to support Cohost’s development financially https://cohost.org/sylvyspritii/post/1763282-yeah-i-did-it

There are many more reasons why i like Cohost Cohost is a website that respects the privacy and mental health of its users, their principles are strong, and their leadership is transparent and easily contactable Twitter’s downfall is inevitable, and it is up to you to decide which platform deserves your attention and/or support, and personally, i do not believe that Threads or Bluesky will be better than Twitter, because they do not fix the inherent issues of Twitter regarding its algorithms, business model, or negativity spiral for engagement, and i do not have much faith in the Fediverse either, because it is too difficult to understand for the average user Tumblr is alright, it’s popular, and has a strong legacy and track-record, it’s still going strong in 2023, but they tend to make too many unexpected and unwanted changes (NOTE EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE TUMBLR VERSION OF THIS POST: I'm talking about the 2018 stuff, if they can get that fixed, Tumblr will be the obvious winner in the War of Twitter Succession) Cohost is the platform i have decided is the most aligned with my desires for what a social media platform should be, so i have decided to support them

You can join Cohost right here: https://cohost.org I recommend reading the manifesto of the Cohost developers as well, so you can understand exactly what i mean when i am talking about the clear principles of Cohost as a platform: https://antisoftware.club/manifesto.html Cohost’s transparency regarding their finances is also something i respect: https://cohost.org/staff/tagged/financials

It’s up to you to decide which website you want to support, i am not forcing you to do anything, but i do hope that i have informed you properly about my decision to leave Twitter, and hopefully, you will consider joining other social media websites as well, it’s good to future-proof, in case things come crashing down

If you have come this far, then i’d like to thank you for taking your time to read this I wish you a very nice day, and the best of luck in your life

[miles-tails-prowers-crotch]

See this is why I left twitter

[creekfiend]

if even MORE stuff shows up on my dash that I did not ask for I swear I shall simply start biting people

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[thedreadvampy]

Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.

"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."

translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"

It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!

very this

[miles-tails-prowers-crotch]

This is why I left twitter honestly

[uncanny-tranny]

Not a day goes by where I do not think about the advent of medicine like PrEP and wonder just what the people - especially queer people - who passed from HIV/AIDs during the AIDs crisis would think

And then, I read this survivor's testimony and it just makes me emotional. I think this is the closest answer we have. HIV has changed, and we must always remember the people who didn't see that change before it happened.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[synnthamonsugar]

not bungie deleting the bi mara and lesbian eramis pics ...........

[miles-tails-prowers-crotch]

Y'all are idiots but not as much as this guy

Right wing influencer vs maths & community notes

[ganondoodle]

there goes my favorite drawing software ...

i defended their plans for the version2 and all, bc i didnt see much wrong with it and liked csp alot, but i guess i should have become a hater back then already

after that one big mistake that sparked so much outrage they really said but how can we actually lose EVERYONE, they saw deviantart doing it and thought BET I CAN DO IT FASTER

(they say they dont use user data but are basing it on stable diffusion of all things, they literally only ask people to think morally/ethically when using it to not use stolen stuff like thats ever worked with anything ever, plus "we cant guarantee that there will be no copyright infringement" OH YOU DONT SAY)

[floorpancakes]

[pcktknife]

i can't with some of these ppl bro 'jinx never said anything to imply she was gonna kill herself so vi had no reason to pick up on it' (paraphrasing) HUHHHH?

[tuttle-did-it]

Hi true story: the reason I quit twitter quite a few years ago (pre-Covid) was because I was getting constant abuse, almost exclusively from men. I was bombarded with abuse comments about how they were going to ‘find out where I lived, kill my dog, come to my house, rape me and then slit my throat and rape me again.’

I made my account private, but they still managed to somehow contact me. Reported them to twitter. They said they’d ‘look into it.’

I reported them to the police, obviously the police do nothing. The attacks keep coming. All because I had posted a Pro-Choice post and a Black Lives Matter post.

I signed out of twitter and never went back on.

But suddenly, one day, the abusive messages start coming to my phone. Netizens had somehow figured out my contact information and were threatening me through text messages.

They said they knew where I lived and were going to come fulfil their promises. Sent Google maps images of my street.

Again, I reported out to the police. Again, the police said there was nothing they could really do other than take the report.

I changed my phone number and for the next year+ every time I left the house, I was terrified I was going to be attacked and my dog was going to be brutally murdered as they promised. Every time my housemates went out of town, I was terrified that someone was going to come. This went on for over a year.

I only felt safe after I moved.

I was completely off all social media until I joined here just last year.

All Elon Musk has done with his new ‘changes’ (verification debacle, lifting bans in trolls/psychopaths for ‘free speech as long as you agree with him’, now these additional changes, etc) is make it even more likely that more people will be victims of this kind of abuse. There is no longer a department to complain to with twitter if this is happening.

This will not get better. This will get so much worse. Please stay safe.

Meanwhile, at Twitter... :/

This... is not good.

And how the hell do you protect yourself from receiving these DMs if you don't want them?

...I don't relish the prospect of taking my Twitter account private... but if I have to, I will.

As for the voice and video chat? No thanks. :/

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[silo1013]

salvaged from the office fire in 1998