My Twitter Goes Out With a Bang on the 4th of July — I Finally Let Go
I know I had mentioned earlier in the year I was leaving Twitter, but I didn’t end up doing it. HEAR ME OUT!
Initially, I wasn’t comfortable deactivating my accounts back then for two reasons:
— Reusable handles
— Non login view access (at the time)
At the time, I wasn’t sure what it meant to have my handles reusable, and impersonations were going rampant without much curbing until later on. So, back then, I was protecting my brand and personal information. Since there was a requirement to keep the accounts active for a certain period, I would log in and tweet something.
Situations have changed.
Firstly, why is this a big deal to you? I’m sure some people will say. Well, when you’ve been actively engaging in a community for 15 years, you tend to get sentimental. But all good times come to an end.
Today I announced on my Fanbox that I finally did as I said I would, and finalized the deactivations and subsequent closures of my accounts there (@ seripyn and @ veronicapurcell).
As mentioned in my plurk, the reading limits made the experience a pointless one for networking. I could barely read through a tweet without having it refresh back to the start of my home feed.
I didn’t know, until during the time of when the limits were being announced, that you couldn’t view tweets without logging in. It would explain the drop in impressions and such, as most of my viewership was from Google search engine hits.
There was another disturbing fact, which I felt odd at the time and only later read in an article that it was part of the platform’s actions. It seemed a few of my late friends’ accounts had been wiped from the platform without warning. The accounts had been inactive for some time, but constantly kept up for family and friends to relive moments when their loved one was alive. Some of them even replied into tweets with their fond reminiscing. But since the account holder, themselves, was no longer part of this world. The account was closed. It didn’t matter if the account was being monitored by a POA. So, I guess there was no exception to the inactivity rule. Naturally, close an account without warning, the handle becomes available. How many bots would take advantage of this?
The final push for me to get some guts and do the deed, was constantly facing spammed bot attacks by crypto or some shady finance deal. When I checked with a few other users, it was apparently because my accounts were older than 10 years, and I fell into a target group. I hazard a stab-in-the-dark guess that it was the bots taking advantage of the inactive account closures for handles to sell.
There are so many other tidbits of concerns, which I felt wasn’t “cybersecurity” friendly for me. And leaving my accounts open and dormant in the long run would be detrimental. Considering what I’ve mentioned in the above.
So, I seized the opportunity to finally go through with my intention. Removed any important personal detail that wasn’t necessary for the closure. Downloaded a backup of my data. Took a screenshot of what personal info was left for reference measures. Then hit the deactivation button and finalized the motions. Fortunately, I was unverified, so I already had my mobile information removed. This might have saved me from call spams. My only regret was that I forget to change the display names to something like “Veronica is no longer here”, so it would show up on Google searches. But, no matter. Hopefully, the hits will die out from the crawl bots.
This article and the other two linked serve as notice:
Whoever owns the seriphyn and veronicapurcell handles on Twitter, post 4th of July 2023, is NOT ME.
Shaking my head at this CEO dog dude. If he wanted to muck things up with his social media toy that cost him $44B, he’s doing a great job at it. While he’s at it, making Dorsey’s Bluesky and that Meta guy’s twitter version the new sort after app. I’m sure they’re laughing with gleeful hands at the golden egg opportunity CEO Dog is creating for them. Maybe that was the plan all along. I don’t know. I did read on one article that Dorsey sold Twitter to Musk because he believed the man could make it something fresh. Well, Musk is certainly making the blue bird reeking of musky freshness. So much so, it’s too much to handle and pissing people off.
The positive is. To bring in great and new change, you need to cut the deadwood. Twitter had its time for me.
I don’t regret my experience there, overall, as I’ve said in my other posts (I think). It’s just a shame to see a once great and mighty global network turn into this state. At a time when global communities need to come together the most. Fortunately, there are other options we can leverage.
And this is where I’ll say that I’ll be more active here. If you don’t mind my chatter.
Thank you for sticking to the end of this article, and I guess my final whinge and goodbye to my Twitter saga.
