Quiet Quitting Twitter

Like a lot of people who rely on Twitter for everything from social interaction to breaking news, I was concerned about Elon Musk’s buyout of the company. When it looked like he was going to blow up the deal, I was relieved, when it was back on, I sank. It turns out I (and others) were right to worry. The first few weeks of Musk’s stewardship validated our fears – hate speech proliferated and the predictable reinstatement of Donald Trump’s account came to pass. Musk has become a sort of troll-in-chief, sparking outrage by signal boosting lies about an assailant’s attack on Paul Pelosi, attacking companies that scaled back their advertising, and, most recently, sending out a tweet calling for the prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In short order, Musk has made Twitter a more noxious place than it was before he bought the company. The natural question is “what to do.” And, if my follower count is any indication, some people made the understandable decision to leave. Others have, as they say, “tweeted through it,” noting the worsening conditions while fighting the good fight against the disinformation and conspiracy theories that have proliferated over the past month or so.

I was on the “tweet through it” side (without the lengthy threads) until the Fauci tweet. Not because of the tweet itself, which an egg with 9 followers probably sent back in 2020, but because it so neatly exposed the cynicism behind Musk’s thinking about the platform. You see, we are the product on Twitter. Its currency is engagement, the best way to ensure we stay engaged is to outrage us, and we take the bait over and over.  

Whether Musk legitimately believes Dr. Fauci should be prosecuted or Ron DeSantis should be President, or any of the other troll-ish statements he has sent out to the 110 million people who follow him (not to mention the press coverage he receives) is literally beside the point; Musk wants to make sure we stay logged on and pissed off. Whatever qualms companies may have about the site’s direction and whether to send their advertising dollars to it will be assuaged if Musk shows that people are as active as they were (if not more so) than before he bought the company.

And even if advertising dollars do dry up, I doubt Musk will change course. Why? Much has been made of the money he borrowed to buy the company, but even if the site went under and the banks called in their loans, Musk is the richest man on earth. While it might not be great to take a “three comma” loss, he can afford it and the investors he brought in – the sovereign wealth funds and the billionaires who dot the Forbes list of richest people in the world – can too. In other words, Musk has not only told you who he is and how he will run the site, but there is no leverage that can be applied to make him change.

So I have landed on a middle ground decision. I am quietly quitting Twitter. I do not want to leave the site entirely because for all its faults it remains a singular location where I can find and follow accounts about the wide range of things that interest me. I am simply going to spend less time on the site and even less time engaging in the outrage of the day. I am going to take that engagement currency Musk relies on and spend it elsewhere. I think it is in the spirit of Twitter to do something that is right for you while not expecting you will change any minds by doing it.