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Ian Mark Sirota's avatar

I walked away from Twitter (didn't delete my account, but haven't posted, visited the site or responded to any posts) the day after the self-proclaimed "Chief Twit" reinstated the account of professional Jew-hater Andrew Anglin. That was it as far as I was concerned. I won't go back until/unless Musk sells Twitter. I miss some of the people I followed, but I refuse to give this classless cretin the website traffic he needs.

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Dennis D. McDonald's avatar

What a thoughtful commentary. The final paragraph and its suggestion that data ownership will potentially drive innovation is something I used to believe but no longer do simply because so many people don't really care about privacy and data ownership.

Until it bites them in the ass, that is. If you make your living by creating content as I do you are much more sensitive to what people do with your content. That extends to worrying about what a platform can do with your content and, as we are seeing, we can't trust Twitter now given Musk's whims.

Fortunately I'm not in the news business -- I'm just a consumer and consult as many sources as I can given that formerly reliable sources such as The Washington Post are no longer as trustworthy as they once were. Giving up Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram has not really affected my access to news -- there are many sources out there (https://www.ddmcd.com/managing-technology/mynews) -- but it has reduced my exposure to unpleasant and unproductive political arguments.

What worries me most about sources like Twitter and The Washington Post and their deteriorating performance as reliable news sources is that it is possibe to pay for and subscribe to intelligent and thoughtful sources (like POPULAR INFORMATION) but I'm seeing so many new subscription service rising that I can't possible pay for everything.

And that's what Twitter's decay points out: There AIn't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, even if it's advertiser supported.

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