Twitters Legacy: Community, Dead Parrots and Starting Over #61 #cong24 #legacy

Total Words

A number of weeks ago I said goodbye on Twitter. My last thread covered a multitude. Twitter has been the most important technology in my life over the last 20 years. It opened up community, connection, collaboration and Crowdflash. A tweet from Joe Garde led to my first visit to #dalkeyopen in 2010. It may be the world’s longest running tweetup. Its still going. And has outlasted Twitter. First Thursday every month in the Club in Dalkey if you’re around and want to pop in. I’ve recreated the group on LinkedIn (not something I thought I’d be saying even a few years ago) to share the reminders so join there too.

Twitter brought me in contact with Mark Little and led to me joining Crowdflash, the legal name for the company that became Storyful. We built a business on Twitter and brought me into the orbit of so many other people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. The post Storyful career of many of those colleagues has been fascinating. Gavin Sheridan founded and building Vizleagal, Markham Nolan more recently founding Noan, Malachy Browne pioneering visual investigations at the NYT. For good measure Mark went on to found Kinzen with other Storyful Alum Aine Kerr and Paul Watson selling it to Spotify. Alumni work everywhere from Tech roles to media to the International Criminal Court. A talent magnet built via Twitter.

And Twitter was people all the way down. Its probably FOMO after the first CongRegation in 2013 that led me to CongRegation in 2014. My first huddle had Maryrose Lyons, Bernie Goldbach, Sean McGrath and Tom Murphy in the Quite Cailin.

Twitter continued to be important across work and play through consultancy and NDRC. I used it heavily at the start of the first lockdown in 2020 to pull an online version of #DalkeyOpen together. I also used it to keep in touch with my dealer. That’d be Louisa owner of Ravenbooks. Regular ordering of books generally via Twitter DM is the best form of ecommerce.

In many ways Twitter while a superb source of news, craic, and conversation missed its full potential. Back in 2011 in conversations with the Twitter development teams we struggled to explain the value and power of Twitter lists to the people building the product. Twitter also struggled with the rise of the alt-right and the need for moderation. The free-speech absolutists (in reality people who wanted a consequence free way to impose their views on others) regularly took aim at Twitter, and the far right took aim at any form of moderation or limitation of hate speech.

Then in 2022 Elon Musk bought Twitter. For $44billion dollars. Possibly the cheapest purchase of all time. You can view it two ways, purchasing a platform and burning off 75% of its value at a loss of $33billion. Or purchasing a platform and with a 4 year rental of the US Presidency thrown in, eliminating the chance of prosecution and increasing the value of his shares in Tesla by $75billion (not counting SpaceX or any of his other holdings).

Musk is a malign individual and has been a malign influence on Twitter. He is a transphobic parent who rejected his own daughter while he gave free rein to some of the most awful individuals online. Firing trust and safety, he shifted Twitter into another version of Truth Social. Toxicity exploded.

Over the summer 2024 I stayed off Twitter. Over the past 18 months you could see the decline. Active twitter lists I’d used for years faded. And yes I didn’t leave the platform. I’d opened Bsky and Mastodon accounts a while back. A social media liferaft of sorts.

After posting my goodbyes I kept the account open. And then on the 8th of November I deleted my account.

And honestly it felt like a relief. I’ve seen lots of people sharing that they want to stay on Twitter and not give it up to the far right. Honestly that ship sailed when Musk bought the platform. Twitter died. We may have tried to convince ourselves otherwise but to quote the dead parrot sketch

Mr. Praline: ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!”

Twitter is an ex-platform, (an x-platform) bereft of decency and devoid of community. We forget that its not land. Its a virtual space. And multiple communities. And the connections between them. Twitter was always us and never the technology.

There is no there there on Twitter, there never was there was ever only us. If everyone moved from there to elsewhere there would be no there there. There would only be here.

On LinkedIn I shared a post on leaving Twitter and encouraging others to do the same. I posted it on a Sunday. It had nearly 7000 views, 110 likes and 50 comments. I think my views have crystalised more since. Now is the time to leave. And to rebuild elsewhere. Right now that seems to be Bluesky. Right now its algorithm free, has the vibes of early Twitter, and a better set of engagement and blocking tools that give it a better chance of survival.

It won’t be the same. We are not the same.

And I guess that’s the legacy of Twitter. The lessons of community and change learned again. After the early rush of connectivity, and the influx and the building of community the need to make money and the misunderstanding and the mishandling Twitter was killed by its owner as he pressed into the service of the worst forms of hate. And into the service of the worst of people.

And we don’t have to hang around and continue to support it.

And lets be honest. Staying is supporting. Time to start over.