At some point, over a decade ago, social media became my chief news outlet. Twitter was great for this as I would see stories pushed onto my feed I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Alas, all good things must come to an end and Twitter is definitely coming to some sort of tumultuous end.

The guy who bought it regularly boosts violent people and engages in horrible behaviour in some kind of bid to remain relevant. People who were kicked off the platform are now being welcomed back so they can freely engage in the atrocities that got them kicked off in the first place.

I’ve seen a lot of the accounts I follow openly question how much longer they can remain on a compromised platform. Each social media enclave has its unique atmosphere, and the allure of Twitter meant it brought in many people under a social justice umbrella. Being able to microblog quick snippets to a wider audience was a fast way to get pertinent information out.

My first foray was to surround myself with other creatives at the time and treat it like an alternative Facebook. Eventually, I was drawn to the public commons aspect of the site. The Idle No More movement played a large part in this as I was able to get information from within the movement without the lens of established media washing away all nuances. Finding and following activists on the ground in Ferguson, and seeing real time abuses on Wet’suwet’en land by the RCMP

Conspiracy theorists always existed on the website, as well as racists, misogynists, homophobes, and every other sort of deplorable. Nascent hate movements like Gamergate and Comicsgate preyed on impressionable, often male, users and were an introduction of sorts to what we see all over the platform in 2023. They laid the groundwork for the massive swell of swarming by hate influencers. The bleating of “actually it’s about ethics in gaming journalism” ran as hollow then as “actually it’s about protecting kids from grooming” does today.

At this point there doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative to Twitter, which is why many of us continue to stick around, despite the abuse. The constant firing of important company staff members seems to contribute to an untold number of glitches. I still use it to get important community updates I would otherwise miss if I only followed traditional news sources. However, the sense of “community” is quickly dissipating (my big conspiracy theory is that it’s intentional due to who bought it). Replies from friends don’t always show up as a notification, even though abusive replies will pop up without delay. Friends and many of the people I follow take frequent breaks from the app, for their mental health, as they experience nonstop abusive harassment and swarmings.

There was a push to get people on Mastadon and that fizzled. TikTok is fairly labour intensive by comparison. Instagram, being owned by Meta, has many of Facebook’s problems (being awash with ads and finding it difficult to see your friends’ posts in order). Maybe we need to bring back RSS feeds, cut out the “micro” part of micro-blogging and have everyone go back to using blogs. At least then we would limit Twitter-style pile ons and produce content that benefits us, rather than providing advertisement space for an immature billionaire.