Leaving Twitter

2019-07-11

Some have already noticed but I’ve been booted out of Twitter.

“Why, Mike?”

Because set my birth year to 2000 in my profile. I didn’t think it was anyone’s business, including Twitter, what my age was. Since I created the account in 2008, Twitter said I was too young to use their service and immediately locked the account.

Quite possibly the least cool way to get your account locked?

Eleven years. Tens of thousands of tweets. 9,000+ followers. Daily engagement. None of that mattered.

Yep, I can write to them asking them to unlock my account but I see this as the last straw. Free, centralized social media services will always care more about their advertisers and PR optics than they care for their users. I don’t want to use a service that continues to allow Nazis under the guise of free speech.

“What’s next?”

I’ve moved over to Mastodon where I can pick an instance whose policies I respect. I’m here for now.