Just FYI: If you deactivate (quit) your twitter account, you have 30 days to get it back

[TomDaisy]

All you have to do is log in again within 30 days of quitting and your account is restored. Meanwhile, it stands as a deactivation as far as twitter is concerned.

Just FYI, if you want to kind of hedge your bets. You can participate in a mass exit now, but have 30 days to see how things shake out if you want to go back later.

[liberalmediaaddict]

1. Deactivated mine Friday

Figured I'll give it 30 days but now that Trump is reinstated I'll probably just let it be permanently deleted. I don't like supporting Elon Musk in any way.

Bottom line is I don't trust my personal data is safe on there anymore and now it's hard to know which accounts I follow are real or fake. Since Elon screwed up the verification system.

Twitter used to be a fun experience. Musk destroyed it within 3 weeks.

[brooklynite]

2. Far as I know, there is no mass exit.

[CentralMass]

3. Back on November 7th there was news that 1 million users had already left.

https://www.masslive.com/news/2022/11/mit-reports-twitter-lost-over-1-million-users-since-elon-musks-takeover.html

[brooklynite]

4. No notable accounts have disappeared as far as I can see...

[CentralMass]

7. I guess the special people must be ok with what Musk is doing then

[Emrys]

8. Not necessarily. Probably not at all, in fact.

They've generally spent a good deal of time and effort, often over a number of years, building up their profiles and communities.

Like them, I don't see why Musk should be allowed to waste all that without a fight. I also don't see why we should abandon what can be a very useful campaigning tool and leave it to the bots and right-wingers. Up till now, we've outnumbered them anyway.

I don't have any profile as such, but I don't feel like ditching all the Ukrainian accounts I've found and followed closely over the last year or so, for instance. There are many other accounts I find great value in. Musk and the (possibly hollow) threat of Trump returning won't take that away without any resistance.

Some seem to have short memories, but Twitter wasn't exactly the Garden of Eden before Musk took over. It was only a very few years ago that serious efforts started to be made to combat the worst sorts of abuse on the platform, and the decision to ban Trump was a long time coming. Right-wingers and revolting types have always been there. You don't have to see them or interact with them if you don't want to.

[CentralMass]

11. Would you continue to frequent a restaurant that was bought by an offensive asshole

Who treats his employees in an ihumane manner and allows offensive assholes to dine there ?

[Emrys]

13. Why are you making such a strange comparison?

It's not a restaurant. It's a lifeline for many people.

It wasn't wonderful under Jack Dorsey's tenure, but people used it as an eco-niche to build something quite remarkable. That's now at risk. If we abandon it to the right-wingers, they'll see it as a great triumph and we'll be the worse off.

Here's the deal: you do what you want to do. Browbeating those of us who've made their own decisions isn't going to change our minds, nor is catastrophizing the scale of the current bail-out of users.

[ColinC]

17. I definitely support yours and other peoples decision to stay on it

And have seen how it has been used as a lifeline in a million different way -activism and organization, is just one example. For me, it was invaluable for obtaining quick analysis and updates regarding the election. I made connections I did not expect to make, and began forming a community with people I never would have. The community i was a part of on libET as we referred to ourselves as (short for liberal twitter), is in the process of planning in the event that twitter unexpectedly collapses. Discord is one alternative -Mastadon and others.

However between my addictive personality and disapproval of the current owner, I found it best to leave the site altogether. I may join another site one day -an improved twitter, if one comes about and encourage others to make the best personal and moral decision they see for themselves.

[Emrys]

18. I can completely understand your choice.

Other than from time to time re-posting content from Twitter on DU, Musk doesn't really make any money from me at the moment. Given the state of Twitter's advertising, any clicks that generates aren't very well monetized anyway. If he tries to change that, I'll certainly reconsider and weigh the pros and cons.

I'm a somewhat strange user in that I've never tweeted! I started an account solely because I wanted more control over what I saw on Twitter and my experience of it.

I think there's a mindset among some of us older (ex-)activists - those who're old enough to have been around during the days of cyclostyled leaflets tapped out on ancient typewriters by candlelight, desperate small or large demos to try to make an impact, NVDA and the resulting court cases, letters to papers, phone trees, mailed newsletters, all that sort of stuff, but not cowed by new technology - that boggles at the tools available nowadays and wonders what the world might have been like now if they'd been available back in the day when there were more prospects of disarmament, more time to combat climate change etc., etc.

Being resourceful in those days often meant hijacking media and assets of the state that we might have disapproved of. Conceiving of what's going on as a Twitter insurgency might be a bit grandiose, but quite a few people on DU have certainly enjoyed some of the verbal beatings Musk has taken on Twitter in the last few weeks!

And as I've pointed out a few times, when I joined Twitter, Trump was very active there. Nevertheless, I saw much more of Trump and his tweets on DU than I ever did on Twitter because I generally blocked or ignored his output there.

[Emrys]

6. For context, Twitter has something like 73 million active users in the US.

There are around 19 million in the UK alone.

Here are the worldwide figures:

The figures below are based on Twitter’s advertising audience data for July 2022.

Note: our regions follow the United Nations Geoscheme. Click here to learn which countries belong to each region.

Number of active Twitter users in Northern America: 92.1 million

Number of active Twitter users in Central America: 19.1 million

Number of active Twitter users in the Caribbean: 3.3 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southern America: 43.1 million

Number of active Twitter users in Western Europe: 30.6 million

Number of active Twitter users in Northern Europe: 27.2 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southern Europe: 20.4 million

Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Europe: 8.2 million

Number of active Twitter users in Northern Africa: 8.0 million

Number of active Twitter users in Western Africa: 6.3 million

Number of active Twitter users in Middle Africa: 551 thousand

Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Africa: 4.0 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southern Africa: 3.4 million

Number of active Twitter users in Western Asia: 44.7 million

Number of active Twitter users in Central Asia: 377 thousand

Number of active Twitter users in Southern Asia: 30.9 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southeastern Asia: 57.6 million

Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Asia: 81.6 million

Number of active Twitter users in Oceania: 4.9 million

https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats

[Polybius]

10. And over a million more have joined

It might not be better, but it's bigger than ever before.

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. Sinking ships continue to float for a while and then suddenly upend

And disappear. It's the generally nature of things.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

9. Kara Swisher told Stephanie Rule . . .

... that if you log out, you then can't log in. That was yesterday.

[Emrys]

16. That may apply if you have two-factor authentication enabled on your account.

The module that sends out the confirmation calls or emails or whatever was one of those Musk thought redeundant and switched off. They may remedy that.

[MineralMan]

12. I deactivated my account the day that Musk took over ownership.

I won't be back.

[ColinC]

14. Been deactivating and reactivating. I thought I was back then the Trump announcement

[Samrob]

15. I can hardly wait for my 30 days to be up. nt