August 17th is Twitter #DeactiDay

Enough users are fed-up with Twitter and the cess-pool it’s becoming, that they have declared Friday 17th August to be #DeactiDay. The hope is a short, sharp, shock of mass account deactivations will make those in charge sit up and listen. I’ve no hope left that it will, but it’s worth a shot.

I’ll admit that I’m torn. Some aspects of Twitter are still worth checking out. The wargaming/hobby community and the connections I’ve made have been wonderful. It’s clinging to these positive interactions which have made Twitter my most used social media site.

But outside of these bright spots, the service has been slowly sinking into a toxic morass. It’s just not fun any more, and the leadership seems to be morally vacuous.

I’ve noticed myself becoming more and more wary of using Twitter. It’s one reason I just spent the weekend retooling this site so I can reclaim a space to post my thoughts free from a looming sense that I’m helping prop up something which is doing more harm than good.

Last week I deleted my entire tweet history (apart from ~275 which can’t seem to be accessed). In part, this was because I couldn’t tell you everything that was in the nearly 10 year-old bundle of half-thoughts. With the increased weaponisation of long-forgotten tweets, as shown in the James Gunn and Sarah Jeong incidents, keeping nearly 29,000 tweets around felt like an unnecessary risk. Others have already done the same, or left the site altogether.

This coming Friday I will deactivate my account and take at least a 30 day break from Twitter. If the message is heard and acted on, I might reactivate. If not? I guess we’ll see if the few positives manage to keep me around. I suspect they won’t.

[Hat-tip to BoingBoing: I’m joining the campaign to deactivate my Twitter account on August 17. ]