It's my 11th Twitter Birthday, and Elon just gave me a GREAT gift
I was moved. Literally.
Update 2023/03/06 7:55pm GMT+1: Tweetdeck works again. But at this point it doesn’t make much difference for my conclusions below.
A few minutes ago, Twitter just invited me to celebrate 11 yrs on that platform, with a tweet:
So I opened Tweetdeck, and all I got was an error message that basically says: “PAY or GTFOOH (*):
So here’s the celebration for my 11th Twitter Birthday:
- To Elon : addio (because I’m a gentleman)
- To everybody else: from now on, if you are interested to read my work and discuss it, PLEASE only use, in this order:
Speaking of which, Dear Everybody still on Twitter…
(or any other social media, actually)
First, thanks on Elon’s behalf for spamming Twitter with this post. He deserves it.
Second, from now on, please please please regularly advertise on Twitter, and everywhere else, ONLY the RSS feed of your website. Do NOT make me add you to the “snob RSS” Hall of (constructive!) Shame. Please. Because RSS, and blogging, never “died when Google killed Reader”
(*) IMPORTANT:
No, I am not 100% sure that the only alternative left to use Tweetdeck is paying. Maybe I should just register to get some key, or something. Point is, I am not going to pay that way either, that is with my time and effort. I’ve already spent more on Twitter than I got from it, so I’m done.
I won’t deactivate the account, and I may occasionally tweet from the website, or via services like Buffer.com. But I’m done. If you mention me on Twitter and it takes a long time to get any answer, you know why.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.
The more direct support I get, the more I can continue to inform for free parents, teachers, decision makers, and everybody else who should know more stuff like this. You can support me with paid subscriptions to my newsletter, donations via PayPal (mfioretti@nexaima.net) or LiberaPay, or in any of the other ways listed here.THANKS for your support!