Tweet or Toot - Fixing Social Media for Good

There’s a reason Twitter has defined this decade’s communications. It’s a great interactive medium, and it’s great fun. My personal original reason being on Twitter was promoting content and share technology experience. And yes, I continued then to use it when retired to communicate about chess, music, politics and technology.

Social to me means you follow the rules of civil discourse regardless of the degree to which you agree or disagree to an opinion in front of you. As always, you cannot expect everyone to like what you read no matter how you write it.

And again yes, I stayed on Twitter during the worst presidency in US history; a president who posted false information, conspiracy theories, right wing content, harassment and promoting the big lie about a stolen election. Which then ends in an insurrection on January 6th, boosted by Tweets. However, the thought to stay was freedom of speech and don't let morons take over. Always pushing back on harassment & false information. If you see something, speak up. That's how I grew up. I personally reported hundreds of such Tweets (not bragging but for context). Some with a result, but the majority was declined by Twitter to take any further action.

Now on the flipside of all greatness you still might find on Twitter platform, Twitter is still getting more poisonous. It rewards bad rhetorical behavior, it privileges outrage of any sort over reason of all sorts, it rewards conspiracy theory and became more influential than "real" news. Twitter encourages some to misunderstand each other. Twitter can become the devil on our shoulder.

And with the potential direction it takes with a right-wing new owner it might become even worst. A guy who - on his first day of responsibility - shares conspiracy theories from bogus blogs when horrific politically motivated attacks occur. And it doesn't help he deleted the Tweet later because the Tweet shows his mindset in a first place.

Last Friday (Oct 28th 2022), after a day on Mastodon, I deactivated my Twitter account, informed the community I followed and contributed and that was it! Elon's Twitter hopefully becomes an empty and/or isolated place.

If you like to dig into the topic of alternative social platforms which can't be taken over - so called federated server network aka fediverse (a?portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”)?for web publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, podcasts, video, streaming, blogging, or websites) - you might want to check out projects here. You will be surprised about alternatives you have.

Finishing this blog with

The Who (lyrics):

I'm free, I'm free

And freedom tastes of reality

I'm free, I'm free

And I'm waiting for you to follow me