At the beginning of November, I quit Twitter. I first joined the site in 2013, periodically taking temporary breaks for one reason or another but otherwise being a daily, or many-times-daily, user. (I once accidentally deactivated long enough that my first account was permanently deleted; I created a new one.)
When I quit for good, I wasn’t making any statement about Elon Musk’s new ownership, though I did write about some concerns in these pages earlier this year. While I wasn’t excited to advance whatever his goals were in buying the platform, even in my miniscule way, my reasons for leaving were entirely personal.
Weeks later, Twitter appears to be in trouble. Musk’s mass layoffs and subsequent erratic behavior have reportedly left the company with significant gaps. A doomed subscription experiment allowing anyone to get a verified user badge allowed, for example, a “verified” but fake Eli Lilly account to announce that insulin would be free and a similar Nintendo account to tweet out an image of Mario giving everyone the middle finger. Advertisers, who provide most of Twitter’s revenue, were pausing or fleeing altogether.
