It was a coincidence that I quit Twitter on the same day that Apartheid Man spent 44 billion dollars to buy the social network / microblogging site. (That’s enough money to give $1,200 each to every one of the 37 million U.S. residents currently below the poverty line.) Specific policy changes implemented by the new owner might have eventually led me to quit, but the fact that he purchased the site isn’t the reason I left. Just to be clear.
This is a screenshot from one of Twitter’s emails to me, explaining how gross violations of their “safety policies” don’t actually violate the site’s safety policies.
What sent me over the edge at last was an email from Twitter Safety — the division of Twitter that evaluates abuse reports and notifies users that no action will be taken on the report because every kind of abuse is apparently fine. This particular email was about a report I’d filed a day or so earlier, and the email said what I expected: “After reviewing the available information, we want to let you know [username] hasn’t broken our safety policies.” Further down the email, a list of “safety policies” was helpfully included, and the list specifically mentioned the exact things I’d reported, “Harassing someone or encouraging people to harass someone” and “Wishing harm on someone”. It wasn’t just this one email, no. That one was the last of several identical ones I’d received recently. I reported an account that exists solely to promote white supremacy and white nationalism, but Twitter Safety said it was a-okay. I reported a tweet that begged anyone with a gun to start shooting shoplifters (and of course the image in the tweet depicted Black shoplifters), but Twitter Safety said that wasn’t against the rules either. I had also reported multiple tweets for misgendering transgender people, which is specifically prohibited under Twitter’s Safety Policies (“misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals”). But no, Twitter told me in the email, breaking their specific rules is not actually against their rules.
I could no longer bring myself to be a part of a site that’s a festering pool of regressive hate, even if there are some good things on there too.
There were, of course, other reasons to quit Twitter. For example, there is the oft-lamented phenomenon of “doomscrolling” (learn more) — the act of continuously scrolling a social media site (usually Twitter or Facebook), despite each new post being just as depressing or horrifying as the last. I lost track of how many times I opened the Twitter app to see a constant string of jarring and depressing headlines, like “Tennessee GOP To Legalize Child Marriage” (the bill was later amended), or the nearly-daily notices that another Black man was casually killed by a police officer (example). Russia killing thousands of civilians in Ukraine. Zero action from any governments or corporations about the climate emergency. Billionaires still hoarding obscene amounts of wealth. Why do we do it? I’m never sure. That alone wasn’t enough to get me to quit Twitter — I’m a fairly resilient person (“jaded” might be a more accurate word) and my emotional state does its own thing with or without social media. But it’s probably enough for many people.
There is also the widely denounced policy of allowing powerful people to get away with infractions at a greater rate than non-powerful users. Which is exactly like life outside the internet, so why would someone stay on a site that serves to amplify the lies? (Note: it required massive, sustained campaigns by thousands of regular Twitter users before any action was taken against dangerous serial liar Alex Jones or professional bully and would-be tyrant Donald Trump, among others. Most offenders are still on the site, many with “verified” checkmarks.)
One of my tweets from 2018. This is the kind of thing I’ll miss — being able to respond to a news item instantly, as soon as the thought appears in my head, and push it out to anyone who chooses to follow me.
All that said, there were reasons to stay on Twitter too. For me, personally, it was the best place I’ve found to follow a variety of activists and progressives to keep up with what’s happening on the ground when it comes to social justice. Feminism, anti-racism, and climate justice are my top three I suppose, but several other issues are right up there. There simply isn’t another site or app that easily gives me that.
And I will miss the ability to quickly broadcast/publish a thought, opinion, question, epiphany, or interesting news item to my couple of dozen followers. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a tweet with over 300 likes! Probably my most ever. That’s one thing I simply cannot do on my own website. Here, it takes a few minutes to set up a new webpage or edit an old one, and then upload it to my host server. It simply isn’t built for instant publication. (Not to mention that no one’s “following” me here.)
Yes, I did search for replacement social media sites, and found next to nothing.
For my friends and/or acquaintances who’ve said things like “social media is what you make of it” and “it’s fine if you carefully curate your feed” (or similar things)... No. That’s not true at all. That’s like saying: “Sure, the cult I belong to systematically abused thousands of children for decades, but I still give them money each week for the few good things they do, and I only show up at the non-child-abusing activities.” No moral person can justify that, not while the organization continues using that exact money to protect the abusers. Staying on social media sites that actively encourage, protect, or ignore extreme cases of hate, harassment, and misinformation, all while profiting from the advertisements that support said abuses? I can’t justify it for myself.
Note: I did quit Twitter once before, but that was due to technical issues that the site refused to acknowledge or fix. (My account had hundreds of old tweets that I couldn’t access, just as one example.)
Related: Why I Quit Facebook. For The Last Time. (2019)
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