Last year I quit X and joined Mastodon; this year I’m quitting Instagram and joined Pixelfed. The times, they are a-changing.
Last year, on 1 January, I quit Twitter. It’s only been a year since I’ve been off the platform, but it feels like longer. Not sure why. It’s not because I miss it; I’m far happier with Mastodon.
I left because of its new owner, Elon Musk. I didn’t have any problems with Musk before he bought Twitter and renamed it X; he simply struck me as just another tech billionaire who bought companies, then claimed he was the brains behind them. Bought PayPal, then claimed he started PayPal; bought Tesla, then claimed he started Tesla. Okay he did start SpaceX, and a few other companies. But once he bought Twitter, he quickly became its chief troll.
Which is the one thing I don’t abide in social media: Trolls. I block ’em.
I didn’t always. Back in the ’90s, when instead of social media we had bulletin boards, and I was interacting with people on America Online and Bethany Online, I naïvely tried to debate the trolls, of all things. Somehow it didn’t occur to me they were being dicks for the evil fun of it all. So I tried reason. Got me nowhere. Eventually I gave up, told the moderators on them, and got them banned. Whereupon they created new accounts and harrassed me again… till I got ’em banned again. And again.
When I got into social media, the one thing I appreciated most was moderators. I wanted somebody to police the trolls. And they did! They were great. They also had a huge job on their hands; there are an awful lot of awful people out there. It’s no surprise that bots wind up doing most of the moderating. But of course bots aren’t intelligent, and can’t tell the difference between “I was killing it in the stock market today!” and “I’m going to kill you and your family; I know where you live.” (Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if this very blog post gets automatically blocked, just for me writing that.) Bots have one job, and they suck at it. That’s why I appreciate human moderators so very much—and not just because they’re helpful at correcting bot overkill.
Musk not only canned a bunch of moderators; he’s a troll. And you’re not allowed to block him. That’s when I knew it was time to leave.