It’s been about two months since I left Twitter and switched to Mastodon. How’s it going? Twitter is even worse than when I left, so that confirms my decision to leave. Mastodon’s tech is fine. The community is too small and marginal and it feels kinda lonely. But every time I miss Twitter and think of going back there’s some new outrage at the company and I still want nothing to do with it.

Buzzfeed had a great article back in December explaining how Twitter got in the policy mess they’re in. Basically: incompetent leadership. They don’t even know internally what their own policies mean, as evidenced by two months ago when they endorsed a Nazi. I maintain the problem starts at the very top, the Board. Why does a struggling $15B company only have a half time CEO?

Then there’s this article from over Christmas about how Twitter has blocked a bot that’s trying to counteract Nazi propaganda on Twitter. No explanation why. The impersonator accounts the Nazis are using still infect Twitter. But the bot’s gone. I can see how the bot could be problematic. But Twitter should be hiring the people who build this kind of thing, not thwarting them.

Today Twitter posted a mealy mouthed piece explaining why they haven’t shut down Trump. I have mixed feelings about shutting down Trump’s account myself but I’ll say this, doing so would undoubtedly make the world a safer place. Trump’s account is a unique risk to global security. Mostly I’m just angry at how poor their rationale is. (Also it’s a small thing but the post is an embarassment of ignorance of English grammar.)

I miss Twitter. I wish it hadn’t decided to give itself over to hate groups and armageddon.