goodbye, Twitter

Don't tell me we can't afford to solve the major problems of our day. So much wealth has floated upwards after decades of neoliberal economic policy that someone just blew US$44 billion on a vanity mission to take over a social media platform. It's official. Elon Musk personally owns Twitter. As of now, it is worth far less than what he paid for it. His first day as owner included firing Twitter's lawyer responsible for banning Trump from the platform. He plans many more firings. That social media platform is now pointless, as people justifiably abandon it.

I recommend the following:

1. Download an archive of your Twitter data:
   https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive
    
2. Join Dreamwidth blog site. They grew out of early (among several phases) anti-gay efforts from Russian-owned Livejournal, so they have a strong diversity commitment. This is mostly a "long form" site, where you can write about larger ideas in one piece without having to create unwieldy threads of conversation with character-count limitations.
   https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=1
    
3. Join Mastodon social message site. You probably haven't used a federated service before, so it may seem confusing because there isn't just one website. There are as many sites as there are people willing to create their own server for it. You join a server of your choosing, one that has policies that you like, then you have access to many other federated servers.  I happened to pick "Mastodon.online" for my home base, but there were others that I considered.  You do you.  :)
   https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/signup/
   
   There is not just a single way to view your account. Each server has its own website that you access with any web browser (I use Firefox), although there are program clients available too. For smartphone, there are many other apps for many platforms, but I use the Tusky app for Android.

If you're reading this post, then you already know my address on Dreamwidth. Here is my federated address so you can add me from your own Mastodon account.  Just paste this text into the search bar for your chosen site, then it should be able to locate me, so you can click and follow.

@MellowTigger@mastodon.online

Welcome to the new universe of social media.  I think it's good to have both long form (blog) and short form (message) options.