The Great Twitter/X Exodus

Or how to completely ruin a once popular social media platform

Based on what I've seen online recently, I think we are about to witness another phase of the gradual death of the once popular social media site that was formerly known as Twitter. So many people have left that site recently that there was this DW story about it.

There was initially a mass-exodus when Elon Musk first purchased the site in October, 2022. The exodus away from Twitter continued when Musk began to reconfigure the algorithm so users began to see far-right wing content from people like Jackson Hinkle and Tim Pool regardless of whether one followed those people or not. And some of these people not only pay for a subscription but they also get paid for their posts. Recently Tim Pool made a tweet that included a screenshot announcing that he was just paid $6665.78 while writing “X is fucking awesome!” Elon Musk retweeted Pool's tweet while adding “Get paid to post on X!” Liam Nissan retweeted that tweet while adding “Thank goodness Elon stepped in after Vladimir Putin stopped paying Tim Pool.” (That's in reference to Tim Pool's involvement with the Kremlin-funded TENET Media.)

He also began to reinstate previously banned accounts under the guise of “free speech” but many of them were far-right accounts, such as Nick Fuentes. Major advertisers like Disney began to pull out as well because—surprise! surprise!—they didn't want their ads placed next to posts promoting white supremacy or authoritarian dictators like Vladimir Putin. This led to Elon Musk defiantly telling telling these advertisers to “go fuck themselves.”

More people became alienated when Elon Musk began to openly support Donald Trump for president so they left as well. Now that the election is over, even more people are leaving. And it's not just individuals either. Publications like The Guardian and La Vanguardia have announced that they will no longer issue new posts on Twitter/X because they consider it to be a disinformation network full of racists and conspiracy theories. A few celebrities have decided to leave as well.

Political commentator David Packman explained in this video why he has mostly made the switch from Twitter/X to Bluesky while he made the comparison of his experiences on both platforms.

Initially people had migrated over to Threads until parent company Meta had announced that they would discourage and deempathize political posts. But lately people had begun to migrate over to Bluesky.

Over the years I've seen social media platforms come and go. I'm old enough to remember when Freindster, one of the earliest social media sites, went online and you could only join it if you knew someone who had an invite that he/she could email you that you would use to get an account. Having a Friendster account meant that you were totally the coolest of the cool people online. (In case you're wondering, I never had a Friendster account, which shows how cool I actually was back then. LOL!)

At least Twitter was way easier to join than Friendster—all you needed was an email address. I originally joined Twitter back in 2010 because I wanted to see what the hype was about. I signed up under the pseudonym “funkyartist” (mainly because I am an artist as well as a writer, photographer, and videographer). I initially hated it because, at the time, you were limited to just 140 characters and I had a hard time keeping to that limit. I still have horrible memories of the numerous times that I wrote a tweet, which hit the 140 character ceiling and I had to rewrite it two, three, four, even five times before I got it to conform to the 140 character limit. I used Twitter very sparingly and that was to announce my latest YouTube video or blog post.

When Twitter increased the character limit to 280, I used it more because I didn't have to spend as much time rewriting my tweets before posting.

Over the years I've seen all kinds of crazy stuff happen on Twitter, such as former Representative Anthony Weiner totally destroying his once-promising political career because he was caught repeatedly tweeting and texting photos of his dick to women numerous times. You'd think that someone with a last name like Weiner wouldn't stoop to tweeting and texting photos of his, well, wiener but he did and one of the recipients included an underage 15-year-old girl, which resulted in him serving time in prison and becoming a registered sex offender. (And speaking of Anthony Weiner, he has recently announced that he is going to stage a political comeback. Only time will tell if it means that his wiener will also stage a comeback of its own but that's another subject entirely.)

From 2015-2021 Twitter entered what I would call its dark age when Donald Trump decided to run for president and won. He was also a Twitter addict who spent much of his time as president putting out ugly, nasty, insulting, and even harassing tweets. I tried to deal with it by not following Trump at all. But that wasn't totally foolproof. If any of the people I followed liked one of Trump's posts, I would get that post in my newsfeed with a label saying “USERNAME liked this tweet.” If one of the people I followed decided to respond to a Donald Trump tweet, I would get that tweet in my newsfeed with a label saying “USERNAME responded to this tweet.” And if one of the people I followed shared a Donald Trump tweet, I would get it in my newsfeed with a label saying “USERNAME retweeted.” I ended up unfollowing a number of people because they wouldn't stop liking, retweeting, or responding to Trump's tweets just so I could save my sanity.

The bile he spewed on Twitter was awful and I read reports of people who were unlucky enough to be named in a negative way in any of Trump's tweets would endure constant online harassment from Trump's most loyal followers. In fact there were times when Trump made the kind of tweets (which included violent threats) that would have gotten any other Twitter user banned but he got away with it because he was the president.

Even when Trump invited then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to the White House for a meeting he made a tweet just a few hours before the meeting accusing Twitter of not treating him well as a Republican and being very discriminatory. Despite that previous insult directed at Twitter, Jack Dorsey was very reluctant to ban Trump even after he instigated the riot at the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. It was only when he was confronted by his employees urging the ban did he agree to go along with it.

From January, 2021 to October, 2022 Twitter became a pleasant place to visit again since Trump was banned. It was almost like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when the Munchkins were joyfully celebrating the demise of the Wicked Witch of the East (which happened when Dorothy's house landed on top of her) and the Munchkins were smiling at each other and singing. While people discussed Trump, everyone on that platform was spared from having to deal with anymore nasty tweets from Trump. In fact I began to see people focusing on other things besides Trump like sharing photos of their pets or discussing some really cool vacation destination. I saw incredible works of art. I was introduced to some cool videos. Twitter became a laid-back place where people could just chill.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 people on Twitter expressed outrage over what happened. Then the Kremlin sent their bots to make tweets accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being a cocaine addict and claiming that the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis. The North Atlantic Fella Organization rose up in response to those bots where they took them on directly along with the official accounts of Russian government officials. Saint Javelin began selling Ukrainian made goods while commenting on the war on Twitter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came up with United24, which began to provide its perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Various individual Ukrainians began posting in English about what was really happening in their home country. There was an information war happening on Twitter that went along with the real-life war happening in Ukraine and people were determined to defeat the online Kremlin propagandists.

Despite the war Twitter was still a pleasant place to visit. But then Elon Musk decided, out of the blue, that he wanted to buy Twitter so he spent $44 billion to obtain the platform. Soon after the purchase he began to mess around with things that have previously worked (such as the blue check verification program, which used to be used to verify people's identity but is now available to anyone willing to pay a special $8 per month subscription fee) and fire a huge chunk of the staff (including those who were on the Trust and Safety committee, who looked out for bad actors infiltrating the platform). Of course he stupidly changed the name of the social media platform from Twitter to X, which totally destroyed a brand name that had been built up into something that most people recognized in the same way that people recognize Disney or Coca-Cola. He got rid of a recognizable brand name because, as I wrote earlier this year, he has this weird obsession with the 24th letter of the Latin alphabet. (He even named one of his children X.)

He also would periodically declare war on other companies based solely on his whims. He started to attack Substack soon after that platform had debuted Notes, which is similar to Twitter. Musk retaliated by suppressing links to Substack while claiming that Substack is “unsafe.” To this day tweets containing links to Substack are still suppressed by the reconfigured Twitter algorithms.

Wikipedia is another platform that Musk has gone after. Last year Musk had offered to give Wikipedia $1 billion on one condition: That the platform changes its name to “Dickipedia.” Needless to say, Wikipedia turned that offer down. He also displayed a surprisingly amount of ignorance of information technology for a man who owns a tech company when he openly wondered why Wikipedia needs to do so much fundraising when you can fit the contents of Wikipedia on a phone. This year Musk has urged people to stop donating to Wikipedia because it is too “far-left.”

Then he proclaimed himself as a fan of both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, which led to some more people fleeing the platform. It soon turned out that Musk only wanted to turn his platform into another far-right social media site like Truth Social, even though that one has been having severe financial problems. He has gone all-out on supporting Trump's reelection through his own America PAC while promoting Trump and MAGA nonstop on his social media platform. (He had even configured the site where you get his tweets regardless of whether you follow him or not.) There's a technical paper that's currently available for download that shows algorithmic bias on Twitter/X in favor of Republicans.

There's also the frequent juvenile stuff that Elon Musk posts that shows how immature he really is.

You could put a middle school age boy in charge of a multi-billion dollar social media company and you’d get a similar result. I know that his apologists will say that he can't help himself because he has autism or he has Asperger's. I don't buy that because I've met people on the various forms of the autism scale in real life who are far better behaved than Elon Musk is. That's because they grew up being surrounded by parents, teachers, and other adults who expected a certain level of behavior from them and they were told when they did wrong and they were expected to accept responsibility for their misbehavior. After all, Donald Trump acts just as impulsively as Musk and no one has ever used autism or Asperger's to excuse his behavior.

Musk has also admitted to using ketamine to manage his depression. Some of his associates have said that some of his bizarre online behavior may be a result of using that drug.

All of this has led to more users abandoning Twitter/X because they are tired of Musk's online hijinks. Additionally, it seems to me that most people aren't into far-right social media sites. If Donald Trump wasn't personally involved with Truth Social, most people would ignore it just like they currently ignore Gab. People generally like social media sites that provide a variety of viewpoints on a variety of topics both political and non-political.

Meanwhile two top Senate Democrats are calling for an investigation of Elon Musk because of the fact that Musk, as a government contractor (through his Space X company), has reportedly had contacts with Vladimir Putin and his top aides, which could put national security at risk.

Mastodon, the open source Twitter alternative, has always been around even though I've heard complaints that it's far less user friendly than Twitter. There are some more user friendly alternatives like Substack Notes, Threads, and Spoutible that have come up but there is one platform that has received the most new user signups in recent weeks—Bluesky.

Ironically Bluesky was originally created in 2019 as a project by then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as a way of exploring how Twitter could become decentralized. The original goal was to find or develop an open and decentralized standard for social media that would give users more control over their data and experience. Jay Graber was eventually hired to lead the Bluesky project. In October 2021 Bluesky became an independent company. Twitter had severed all connections with Bluesky after Elon Musk purchased Twitter in October 2022. Jack Dorsey posted on Bluesky until just a few months ago when he announced that he has left Bluesky and deactivated his account there. He now has an account on the social media platform that he used to run—Twitter.

In the early days one could only get a Bluesky account with an invite code from someone who is already on the platform. Sometime late last year I had an online acquaintance who had extra invite codes for Bluesky so I grabbed one and made an account. At first Bluesky was relatively quiet compared to Threads, Substack Notes, or Spoutible. In fact I would only log in if I decided to show off my latest photos or videos, which was around once every other week. I thought it had potential but a social media platform is only as good as the quality of its users. I remember the most frequent poster on Bluesky at the time was writer Neil Gaiman. (He has since stopped posting on Bluesky after he was accused of sexual assault by five women.)

But then back in February Bluesky opened its registration to anyone with an email address so it became easier to join. Bluesky began to pick up a bit with more users but it was still pretty light compared to Twitter/X.

But now with the US presidential election over and Donald Trump being declared the winner, more people are switching from Twitter/X to Bluesky. I'm able to follow the same people whom I used to follow on Twitter/X.

Compared to Twitter/X, Bluesky is like a breath of fresh air. I'm not subjected to posts from Elon Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, complaining about too many immigrants coming to the US or whining about what he considers to be the trend towards a falling birthrate in the US and the world. (Usually people who complain about “falling birthrates” are really concerned only about the birthrate of white babies. Which isn't a surprise to hear this coming from Elon Musk when you consider the fact that he grew up in South Africa when it was under apartheid rule.) And, yes, all users are now forced to endure Musk's posts in the newsfeed because Musk is the owner and he had ordered his programmers to change the algorithm so that all users can see his posts regardless of whether they follow him or not.

Nor am I subjected to posts from far-right MAGA extremists whom Twitter/X tends to amplify with its algorithm that favors the far-right. If I want to be exposed to far-right viewpoints on Bluesky, I would have to actively search for far-right accounts, which is just like what it used to be on Twitter before Musk purchased the platform.

In a way Bluesky is so reminiscent of what Twitter was like before 2015 (when Donald Trump began his run for the White House) and during the period from 2021 (when Trump was banned ftom Twitter) to late 2022 (when Elon Musk purchased Twitter). People talking about politics in a respectful way. People talking about other subjects besides politics, such as what books people have recently read or what music have people been listening to lately or what movies they recently saw in the theater. People sharing really lovely photographs of nature scenes. People sharing pictures of their latest art projects. People sharing photos of their pets. People sharing photos of food. People talking about the latest in technology. In essence people are behaving in a civilized way on Bluesky.

Another great thing about Bluesky is that posts are shown in chronological order based on when they were posted online. There are no algorithms determining which posts should be displayed first, which is such a throwback to the way all social media sites used to operate. Thanks to the lack of algorithms I have a much greater chance of being exposed to something new, whether it's a new idea or some posts featuring some wonderful art or wonderful photography. The lack of algorithms also means that your posts aren't being throttled, which is a frequent complaint with Twitter/X these days.

The people on Bluesky also take a dim view on Elon Musk's favorite Twitter/X accounts migrating over to Bluesky in the hopes of starting online fights. One of them, a pro-Putin, pro-Trump, pro-MAGA guy known as Gunther Eagleman attempted to do just that on Bluesky.

One of his posts ended up getting hidden by the Bluesky Moderation Service for “Intolerance.”

Gunther Eagleman's time on Bluesky didn't end well for him—his account was reported so much that he was completely banned from the platform for harassment.

I think it's great that more people are ditching Twitter/X and I don't blame them for not wanting to deal with the antics of Elon Musk and the far-right accounts that he has those algorithms pushing. As for me, the only reason why I continue to visit Twitter/X is because, thanks to the far-right favoring algorithms, I'm able to find pro-Trump and pro-Putin propagandists to highlight in this Substack, such as Juanita Broaddrick and Joey Mannarino, as a way of making people aware that they exist and they need to steer clear of them since they only spew vile propaganda. As for me, I think I'll continue to visit Twitter/X looking for more content for this Substack until I either somehow get kicked off of that platform or the whole platform shuts down for good—whichever comes first. Twitter/X still remains the best place to find these pro-Putin propagandists without having to join Gab or Truth Social, especially since the latter is having serious financial problems these days.

Meanwhile Twitter/X has changed its Terms of Service, which includes requiring users to allow the platform to use the data that the users posted on that platform to train AI models and making users liable for $15,000 in damages if they use the platform too much. This has led to even more people fleeing Twitter/X for Bluesky and other platforms.

On top of it, Twitter/X under Elon Musk is hostile to linking to external sites. Linking to other sites have long been a hallmark of online activity since the rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. But now it's different. Paul Graham tweeted “The deprioritization of tweets with links in them is Twitter's biggest flaw. It bothers me more than all the new right-wing trolls. Trolls I'm used to, but what draws me to Twitter is to find out what's going on, and you can't do that without links.” Elon Musk responded to that tweet with “Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply. This just stops lazy linking.”

Graham responded with “If I write a new essay and tweet a link to it, that's ‘lazy linking,’ but if I tweet that I've written a new essay and then put the link in a reply, that's somehow better?”

Musk hasn't responded as of this writing. But now expecting people who want to share links to make them write an initial tweet with no link then write an immediate response to that tweet in order to include the link makes more work for the poster who only wanted to share a link. But failure to do it this way means that your post will be throttled by the algorithm simply because it includes a link to an external site. Meanwhile other social media sites continue to allow you to write a post and include a link with that post so you only have to write one post instead of writing a post then writing an immediate response with the link. All I know is that Elon Musk's way of discouraging the sharing of external links is only going to further hasten the departure of more users from that site, especially among writers, journalists, videographers, artisans and crafters, and numerous others who only want to share links to their latest works online.

Twitter/X doesn't have a great future with more and more people leaving. Consider this: Elon Musk paid $44 billion to buy Twitter. Today it is worth $9.4 billion—a steep drop of 80% of its value. If that weren't enough, there's speculation that Musk’s antics on Twitter/X has affected one of his other companies, Tesla, as more people become so turned off by what Musk has posted on Twitter/X that they have decided to look elsewhere to buy a new electric car.

At this point the only way that Twitter/X has a chance of survival in the long run would be if Elon Musk puts it up for sale and it gets purchased by a new owner who would change Twitter/X back to the way it used to be (including getting rid of that stupid X name and reinstating the bird mascot). But there is no indication that Musk is about to sell Twitter/X in the near future so it looks like that platform will continue to decline in popularity and relevance until it eventually collapses and goes out of business. As Vatnik Soup founder Pekka Kallioniemi wrote, “By the way, if you think Elon cares about people leaving X - he probably doesn't. He already got exactly what he wanted from this platform.” It led to Dave Troy to respond “The other reason is that Bluesky is just the Sprite to his Coke. Its funder Blockchain Capital is run in part by Kirill Dorofeev—who also works at VK [VKontakte, which is the Russian equivalent of Facebook]! 🇷🇺”

That's pretty interesting to learn that Bluesky has a Russian investor but, so far, that fact hasn't deterred people from continuing to ditch Twitter/X for Bluesky. As to whatever the ultimate outcome will be for Twitter/X, Elon Musk will still continue to be a multi-billionaire no matter what happens to his social media platform so one shouldn't ever feel sorry for him.

In the meantime you can still find me on the following social media sites:

Twitter/X: funkyartist
Bluesky: kimberlyannkeyes
Threads: kimberlyannkeyes
Spoutible: kimberlyannkeyes
Substack: kimberlykeyes

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