Hi all,
Wow. Breaking one of my longest diary silences for this (I’ve written ~300 in 15.5 years here). Main reason for the silence is it’s been quite the crazy few months for me. Will try to keep it (uncharacteristically, heh) short.
For me personally the answer to the title’s question has been crystal-clear from the moment I heard of Musk’s imminent brutal takeover.
On paper I have reasons to be lenient or “Wait and See”:
- As a longtime EV driver+advocate who founded the EV Revolution group here, despite losing my personal like for Musk years ago I must appreciate the hugely important role Tesla has played in the battle to mitigate global heating and keeping oil in the ground - and Musk has obviously its frontman with all that that entails. So personal antics/stench aside, on a tech/performance level a company he takes over might do better in its narrowly-defined mission.
- I live in Seattle and work in global health. You might guess that my living has been paid for by certain billionaire philanthropists, who just like Musk like to keep all the meaningful cards in their hands. So what exactly am I complaining about here?
- Our middle son just started a (nearly) full-time job as a kick-ass policy wonk journalist for a revered local social-justice weekly. He uses Twitter for his living, there’s no alternative right now.
And yet, today I’ve “deactivated” my Twitter account without batting an eyelash. Why?
- At some point we must stop billionaire excess, and this is a golden opportunity to score a win. The Twitter takeover is for me like Putin’s 2014 takeover of Krim — an egregious, in-your-face move of a tyrant who feels impunity, and expects to face only Sternly Worded Statements in return. If Musk gets away with this, it sets the stage for him or another asshole billionaire doing something worse soon. Conversely — if Twitter bleeds a good chunk of its user base very quickly, that’ll be a message won’t it?
- It’s also a golden opportunity to start de-monopolizing social media. We keep whining about them but just like the proverbial frog in heating water, the pain-gain calculus to do something never adds up. Well, now it might, in particular if enough of us leave Twitter, sending a market signal to media/political professionals to try something else, something that’ll be safer and more equitable from the get-go.
Bottom line: I understand some people will need to continue being on Twitter for a living. Others might want to continue fighting the good fight there, and I respect that.
But me? My main impact on Twitter is being one of their millions of users. If enough plain users like me can at least get a big stinking egg right now on the face of vulture billionaire capitalism and corrupt Big Social — for me that’s an imperative.
Without further ado, the poll: