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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

Bad idea.

Love it or hate it, Twitter (yeah, I choose to be stubborn here) is still probably overwhelmingly the most impactful platform in this way.

While I respect the idea of the "boycott" in the abstract, perhaps the most wrong thing people think about it is "Because it's controlled by so-and-so, everyone who uses it is brainwashed and it's impossible to do good there."

Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.

As such, people who insist that you must leave and no good can happen through staying ring the same to me as "IF SO AND SO GETS ELECTED IM LEAVING THE COUNTRY."

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I don’t think leaving a platform you don’t enjoy has much, if anything, in common with physically relocating. I left X, but I have an account i use to log in about once a week to see if there’s anything worth while. I haven’t really found an alternative to X, things are fragmented now. Where I used to be able to follow most people I were interested in on Twitter, i now have some on bluesky, some on mastodon, some still on X, a bunch at instagram and YouTube… it’s a mess

The parallel I'm drawing here is that a lot of people threaten that when they don't really mean it, and more specifically, don't seem to think about why others don't.

I still have people there, so I will stick around.

Wasn't it supposed as a feature of mastodon when people are on different servers and you can integrate them email style?

I don't understand people who have the opinion that twitter is indispensable for them. I never had a twitter account and I only see tweets if they are posted on some news site or whatever. I don't feel uninformed. I don't feel like I am missing any critical information. I don't see any value in it.

> don't understand people who have the opinion that twitter is indispensable

Not on X. But if you’re a public figure, it sort of is. You don’t need to post anything. But you’re going to be affected by what happens there.

Thank you. Hey, I 100% respect anyones individual decision about the place FOR THEMSELVES.

But a lot of people become absolutely insufferable when they try to dictate why this should be the case for someone else, I absolutely hate the framing of "indispensable" which I never said.

You don't find value, fine! I do. Let's actually talk about why I do if you like.

Pretending you’re going to emigrate from your home country is not similar to actually logging off from a website you hate.

Never used twitter. Never found that to be a problem or limitation in any way. Now it's owned by Musk, it's even less attractive a prospect.

Speaking as someone who recently left the country (if by "the country" you mean the USA) ...

And that's fine if that's what YOU WANT TO DO. I respect that.

The insufferables are those who are trying to dictate what I should do.

Every click on Twitter puts a penny in musks pocket. If that is not enough reason to leave, nothing ever will be.

Reductio ad absurdum

Nah, fuck that. If Stormfront had half a billion daily users that doesn't somehow compel you to participate; anyone willing to stay on Twitter isn't worth talking to even if they are personally nice to you.

Stormfront users wouldn't have really been relevant for the FSF. But on a platform like Twitter, which isn't mono-subject like the Stormfront forums, would have been relevant for an organization like FSF.

And personally the few people I follow there (mostly game devs) are totally worth talking to.

Be serious.

Stormfront is not like Twitter.

> Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.

be the change you want to see

I am!

That's the other part of this that makes these naysayers insufferable; you can use more than one.

My twitter handle literally has my mastodon handle IN IT.

You wish all leave, leave

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