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There's no dedicated Twitter thread anywhere on the site because we don't appear to have a lot of users of that service. Even PortableApps' TweetDeck program is discontinued. But like Facebook before it, I'm deleting my account and posts.

What's wrong?

There are about 100 reasons but, as this is a technical site, I'll highlight some specific technical concerns:

• No real changes - It seems like a minor thing but the "undo" button was somehow what's touted as the new, important change that'll revitalize the service. This makes no sense to me because micro-blogging services (what these things used to be called before Twitter) were specifically created to avoid this kind tedious versioning nonsense that details changes to a given post. I recall seeing an exceptionally dry story about Wikipedia versioning so I can't wait for news people to fail at explaining this to their audiences.

• The algorithm - This is not a new problem but I somehow held out hope that this would get better: always giving a mic to the most incendiary folks and pushing their posts to the top. That wasn't a bug for Twitter leadership, that was a feature, and one you couldn't turn off. I don't see new policy to create improvements on that front. Quite the opposite.

• Not even really social - I tried on many occasions to have conversations with people on Twitter in some format and never succeeded. I recall a journalist tried to interview the old CEO via Twitter and how that completely failed. It's because the structure is fundamentally confusing.

• Poor interface - I greatly disliked using the Twitter website and even looked into ways to make it show up as the mobile interface on my standard web browser. When they said "mobile first" I feel like the website was an afterthought.

Alternatives

Tom's has the top 3 - I haven't had great luck with Mastadon but I do think it's the future and plan to come back to it in the months ahead. They've reported the #1 option "CounterSocial" is having some slowdowns perhaps because of the flood of people already moving off Twitter. We can't say for sure because Twitter has difficulty counting active users.

And here's 7 more.

How to close it down

There are several ways to leave the service including:

1. Setting your account to private (which will make posts only visible by followers)
2. Deactivating your account (still present but inactive)
3. Deletion, where after 30 days everything gets wiped)

Lifewire has a breakdown on this process.

There is a fourth option: if you need the account for some reason (say that for some people that's the only way they can contact you), there is a service you can use to maintain your account but just delete all the posts. https://twitwipe.com/

webfork wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 11:20 am Alternatives

Tom's has the top 3 - I haven't had great luck with Mastadon but I do think it's the future and plan to come back to it in the months ahead. They've reported the #1 option "CounterSocial" is having some slowdowns perhaps because of the flood of people already moving off Twitter. We can't say for sure because Twitter has difficulty counting active users.

For what it's worth, I like Reddit. The way it's organized into subreddits avoids being at the mercy of an algorithm. You can over time find communities you like (there are even incredibly niche things like /r/breadstapledtotrees) and subscribe to them. It's different from following users in Twitter since by definition it's organized by content instead of people.

For some reason, I have never gotten sucked into Twitter, maybe because this idea of following people never resonated with me.

I much prefer the Reddit approach of categorization by topics, or even Facebook groups, where you can join a like-minded group of people in whatever topics you are interested in.

Andrew Lee wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 4:44 pm I much prefer the Reddit approach of categorization by topics

SYSTEM wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 11:56 am For what it's worth, I like Reddit.

I've messed about a little there but I wasn't under any illusions that it was fixing the various problems of other networks. Still, those are two strong endorsements.

Tried several of times -- a couple of them in total disgust with Facebook -- but the tweeting never really grew on me.

I stuck with Facebook, after all, even if it looks like a ghost town nowadays. It's the devil I know and groups are pretty handy, as Andrew noted.

Telegram seems to be all the rage with tech stuff these days, but I also didn't really get the hang of it.

Keep meaning to try Reddit, too...

I read the news there, but sometimes I use it for work.
I want to clarify about the service you wrote about, what do you mean by "delete all the posts" personal messages will also be deleted or only publications?

Vero wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:08 pm what do you mean by "delete all the posts" personal messages will also be deleted or only publications?

Should just be publications, not PMs