I'm Out

 After something like sixteen years of Twittering, I left it after Elon Musk's arguably hostile takeover of the service. I had long since tapered back from frequent use as Twitter became more a place for political soapbox shouting. The Twitter that worked for me was the one of the early years when the user base was relatively small and mostly likable geeks who were polite to each other. I was never one for "Twitter marketing" either.  I never cared for users who only posted without actually following anyone or interacting. As it grew to enormous size it lost it's small town charm and became something else. Now it's one megalomaniac's oversized sandbox. He can sit there and play without me.

I’ve never been a fan of all-purpose social media websites. For one thing, they always operate in the most clunky manner and, more importantly, they allow one business to dominate the interactions of many niche social groups. Thank goodness there still a few stand-alone forum websites around, though most have been greatly abandoned in favor of totalitarian social giants like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and such. The little forums that appeal to my specific interest areas will continue to have my interest and support. I don’t do Facebook or Instagram, and only have a MeWe account because of one specific group there.

I’ve watched the Internet grow up over the past quarter century and it’s followed the same pattern as much of the physical world, it seems. Small town Main Street was devoured by Wal-Mart, Maggie’s Coffee Shop gave way to a Starbuck’s location then small book shops closed because of Amazon.com. Now independent (non-totalitarian-run) social forums have greatly been eaten by huge social media monsters. It’s like almost anything people do and enjoy is grabbed by some big profit-oriented entity and they start making the rules. I think it’s about time Internet users started to realize the beauty of the small and independent again. Is there a way to create a power-monger-free worldwide electronic network? I don’t know. But it sounds like a good idea to me.

...