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Social Control Networks Were Always About Social Control By Centralisation (Concentration of Power Over Public Opinion)
Last time we posted to Twitter was 2 years ago. See: Tux Machines Officially Abandons Third Party Sites/Networks (Twitter, Mastodon, Diaspora), Please Use RSS and IRC Instead
Two years ago we quit Twitter and other such sites (like Mastodon, Diaspora etc.); it was a good decision and we probably ought to have done so even sooner.
Linus Torvalds sounds like us when he speaks about Social Control Media, such as Mastodon - a passing fad that first peaked when launched and then again when MElon took over Twitter. Europe has since then discovered the dark side of such platforms - not that Brexit lacked an illuminating lesson. Some people I've long known abandoned the whole lot and found it to be beneficial, just like quitting smoking. I myself feel like I was better off in every way since leaving it all behind (the Techrights site didn't bother with social control media, but I as a person did because of peer pressure over 15 years ago). Tux Machines was in Twitter because Susan created an account for it there.
MElon has since then rebranded Twitter as "X" or "x" (maybe to pretend he invented "x", just like he paid people to pretend he had started Tesla). It's a bloody cesspool where a narcissistic MElon keeps promoting his own account and thus his agenda, which includes Ponzi/pyramid schemes. Don't be so shocked if "x" goes offline some time in the next 2 years.
Someone who read my article about it said, "yes, you're right, twitter has been dying for some time now. I went from hundreds of posts a day to a few and then none."
In a way, people are better off without those fast-moving platforms. I can nowadays write long-form pieces without being interrupted by notifications or anything that compels checking updates "FOMO"-style (addiction).
But "as for social media in general," I was told, "it can be useful for some purposes. mastodon is good for openness and digital rights news; bluesky is quite good for breaking news and analysis. but the rest of the younger world seems to have moved to instagram and tiktok, neither of which I use, nor intend to... old people are still on facebook."
I am not even sure that premise regarding "moved to instagram and tiktok" is just perceived or actually true. TikTok is losing a lot of money, but it seems like the goal of herding people online (groupthink implicitly mandated because of the nature of the interaction) is political rather than commercial. Scary times.
See this good analysis from Andy. Andy quit his job as a lecturer over what had happened to his university. As far as we know he never bothered with Social Control Media. That alone says quite a lot. █