Elon banned me from Twitter for doing journalism. Good riddance.

Posted May 4, 2023 in twitter-threads

It's been nearly six months since Elon Musk threw one of his first tantrums as the King of Twitter and banned me (along with a bunch of other journalists) for tweeting about him censoring Mastodon. A few days later he "reinstated" my account but I was still locked out until I agreed to delete my forbidden tweet that the billionaire didn't like. And I've been locked out ever since.

Honestly, I highly recommend getting banned from Twitter. My quality of life has definitely improved without it.

Since Elon took over, Twitter has been in a steep decline that it will obviously never recover from. From what I hear, there's more fascists, more hate speech, way more anti-trans BS, more scams, way more annoying advertisement, and the place is swarming with Elon fanboys with blue checkmarks that are impossible to avoid. It just sounds gross.

We don't need it anymore. There are actual alternatives now: You can find me on Mastodon as @[email protected] and on Bluesky as @micahflee.com.

I decided that it's about time that I actually pull the plug on Twitter for good. Today I logged in and deleted the forbidden tweet so I could use my account again. And then I used it to close my DMs, mark my account as protected, delete all of my other tweets, and update my bio one last time. Good riddance.

The thing that prevented me from doing this many months ago is that over the years I've posted so many Twitter threads, including many that people referenced all over the internet, and I didn't want my content to die.

But fuck it, I also don't want my content on the steaming garbage salad that is post-Elon Twitter. So, before deleting everything, I archived some of the Twitter threads that I thought were worth keeping here to my blog. Here they are:

Now that I've deleted everything from Twitter, here's what my account looks like:

Adios, Twitter. Life is better without you.