Today, I decided to leave Twitter. I have been in doubt for a while; I wanted to see how the platform would develop after Musk’s take-over. Unfortunately, things have been steadily declining, and I am now at a point where I don’t want to support the company any longer.
I leave the platform with mixed feelings. I have used Twitter as my primary social media platform after I decided to say Goodbye to Facebook some years ago. I have enjoyed Twitter’s short-message format, ease of use, and ability to connect with many academics, artists, and creators worldwide.
As an “open” person (Open Research, Open Source, etc.) I have, for some time, felt the need to move towards an open social media platform as well. Friends have been pushing me towards Mastodon for a while, but I haven’t had enough mental capacity to handle another platform. The Twitter exodus has made me make some decisions quickly, and now I am online with the user @arjensenius. I have chosen the large mastodon.online server, which I am not sure is the best place to start from, but it felt most logical right now.
One of the reasons I persisted on Twitter despite all the last months’ horror stories from the company was that I wanted to complete my #SoundActions project. Still, that felt less important than making a change. So now the project will continue on https://mastodon.online/tags/soundactions.
It wasn’t planned that way, but yesterday’s sound action recording was the last one on Twitter. Blowing out a candle feels like the proper closing of this chapter in my social media life.