I am leaving Twitter. Please do not contact/tag me on this network.

10 years ago, I signed up to twitter.com by curiosity. I immediatly loved the format, the RT and the hashtags. The requirement to be concise and the full public discussions were appealing to me.

My first usage was to keep a technological watch, to discover new projects like new programming frameworks, and to be confronted to new scientific ideas. I was already aware of disinformation and the basics of information warfare. I knew from the start that in order to not become crazy, my news feed needed to be maintained to stay in the scope I wanted. I discovered a lot of very smart people and witnessed wonderful discussions. It changed or confirmed my opinion about a lot technological and social advancements, from nuclear energy and GMO to abortion and minority rights. I learned what moral panic is and how to see biases and irrational fear driven by ignorance in my discourse and others. It may be surprising for a network that encourages talk first, think later, but witnessing multiple debunking a day made me want to not appear like an idiot when sharing my thoughts to the world. However the first duty of a social network user is not to be ashamed of his own opinion and to share it; mistakes are human. It is to not relay whatever stupidity confirming his bias that is clearly unsourced.

Twitter became a tool for individual for self-promotion in a more casual way than a business focused network. I joined twitter at the same time I started my developer career and I used the plateform to advertise my projects. As a joined in 2020 a company releasing a lot of open source code, I started to have some sort of peer recognition: people encouraging my work, asking questions and tagging me when new related content were published. I enjoyed this a lot even if I did not want my work to be the main content of my account.

Now, the place is crowded of bots and astrosurfing. I do not have anymore a correct control of what is displayed to me in my feeds. Coupled with anxiety disorders I have, the whole angry experience is not good for my mental health. I am sad of what became a plateform, I enjoyed so much the past years.

I will try to write more content on my website and maybe join later mastodon, nostr or bluesky.