It did not take long for the “Twitterverse” to respond to the purchase of the platform by attempting to fragment the Microblogging community. I’ve been watching a lot of different things happening and it seems like an apropos time to talk about it.

Should you stay or do you go?

Isn’t that what the Clash sang? I think I’ve heard a lot of strong arguments for both, but the question in my mind is who owns the intellectual content that you have created and uploaded to the platform. The Terms of Service that you had could be changed at any time. We have already seen that policies have changed quickly by the new CEO without regards to the affect that it has on the user base.

I have a lot of content on the platform. It consists of Posts, Media, Likes, Direct Messages (DMs). Should I be concerned? Some pretty tech savvy people, like Leo Laporte have used services to remove all of their content from the platform, including unliking tweets, unretweeting, and deleting content. I have to say I am becoming a fan of this.

The argument to stay

is that you just keep doing your thing and let it bother the powers that be.

The argument to leave

is that you don’t let one person control your content and what you see. And by leaving you hurt the bottom line of a the company’s financials, since they won’t have as many active users to market to.

For those leaving, where to do you go?

This really depends because people want the Twitter experience without the drama. What is the twitter experience that people want? Anonymity, conversation, breaking information, and community. I think that’s what we came here for.

You can go back to old school places, like Tumblr, Livejournal, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and I’m sure a lot more places are out there that you used to use.

But there is a sort of vacuum that was created as people went into the diaspora that people leaving twitter have fallen into. So enter the biggest plan which is join the Federation, Mastodon, this link is one of many servers you can sign up for that will give you access to community and beyond. It’s a twitter-lite system. It’s missing some features, but I’m sure this will become enhanced in time. Just like any Social Media system, there are rules and moderation.

You could go to MeWe.com, CounterSocial, WT.com, or find community in a Discord Server or Slack Channel.

Old School Blogging

But if you’re like me, old school is old school. Buy a web domain, and set up a WordPress or other blog and blog for real. You CAN do it! WordPress has a very large community and you can own your own content and still connect with others doing comments and liking their posts. It might not be great for following 1000 accounts and having endless scrolling, but I assure you, the quality will be better.

Nothing Lasts for Ever

Just remember, nothing lasts forever. There were tech giants that have come and gone. Where is Netscape, Yahoo, Excite, Ask.com, Lycos, MySpace, and AOL these days? Sure they might be around in some capacity, but they are not real players. They are the Kmart and Sears of tech. They had their day. We will continue to see the human online experience change and grow. It’s a sign of the times.