Thinking of breaking up with Twitter? This is the right way to do it
After a tumultuous couple of weeks, it’s clear that Elon Musk is intent on taking Twitter in a direction that runs counter to the popular culture of diverse users who consider it home. Musk has now begun reinstating prominent users — including Donald Trump, Alex Jones and Kanye West — who were removed for repeated violations of community standards.
This happened after a mass exodus of Twitter employees, including thousands of people musk randomly activated via email. The latest wave of layoffs comes after Musk’s ultimatum: employees will face “extremely harsh” working conditions (to fix the mess Musk has created).
All of this points to a very different experience for users, who are now ditching the platform in favor of alternatives like Mastodon.
So what threats are we likely to see now? And how to safely leave Twitter? #TwitterShutDown With so many experienced employees leaving, users are faced with the very real possibility that Twitter will experience a severe and widespread outage in the coming weeks.
Enterprise software experts and Twitter insiders have warned that with the World Cup underway, the subsequent increase in traffic – and any opportunistically malicious behavior increased – can That might be enough for Twitter to shut down.
Besides the website being dark, there are risks that user data could be compromised in a cyber attack while normal defenses don’t work. Twitter suffered a major cyber attack in August of this year. A hacker was able to extract the personal details, including phone numbers and email addresses, of 5.4 million users.
One would be forgiven for thinking that such scenarios are impossible. However, a common myth in the tech community is that the Internet is interconnected by gum and duct tape.
The apps, platforms, and systems with which we interact every day, especially those with millions or billions of viewers, can give the impression of being highly sophisticated. But the truth is that we are often on the verge of chaos.
Building and maintaining large-scale social software is like building a boat, out in the open, while being attacked by sharks. Keeping such software systems afloat requires design teams that can work together to save enough water, while others fortify the hull and some look for incoming threats.
To prolong the boat metaphor, Musk just fired the software developers who knew where the nails and hammers were kept, the team tasked with deploying shark bait and sentinels on the masts.
Can his already stressed and endangered workforce fill the holes fast enough to keep the ship from sinking? We are likely to find out in the coming weeks. If Twitter manages to stay afloat, more than likely the credit goes to many former employees who have now built a robust system that a core team can maintain.
Hate speech and misinformation return Although Twitter claims that hate speech is being “reduced”, our analysis shows it is on the rise. And we’re not the only researchers to observe an increase in hate speech.
The chart below shows the number of tweets per hour containing hate speech phrases over a two-week period. Using a peer-reviewed hate speech vocabulary, we tracked the volume of 15 hate terms and observed a clear increase following Musk’s acquisition.
Misinformation is also on the rise. Following Musk’s swift changes to blue tick verification, the site fell into disarray with the rise of parody accounts and misleading tweets. In response, he issued another decree on the stream of consciousness policy to remedy the previous ones.
With reports that the entire Asia-Pacific region has only one working moderator left, false and misleading content is likely to be rampant on Twitter – especially in countries around the world. non-English speaking populations, where they are particularly at risk of the harmful effects of misinformation and unregulated disinformation.
If all this sounds like a recipe for disaster, and you want to get out, what should you do? Pack your bags First, you might want to download your Twitter activity archive. This can be done by clicking through to Settings > Settings and Support > Settings and Privacy > Your Account > Download your data archive.
It may take a few days for Twitter to compile and send you this archive. And it can go up to several gigabytes, depending on how active you are.
Lock the door
While you wait for the archive, you can start protecting your account. If your account is public, now might be a good time to switch it to protected mode.
In protected mode, your tweets will no longer be searchable off-platform. Only your existing followers will see them on the platform.
If you’re planning on replacing Twitter with another platform, you may want to signal this in your bio by including your new username and announcement. But before you do this, consider if you might have problematic followers who will try to follow you.
Payment procedures
Once you’ve downloaded your Twitter archive, you can choose to selectively delete any tweets from the platform as you wish. One of our colleagues, Philip Mai, has developed a free tool to help with this step.
It’s also important to review any direct messages (DMs) you have on the platform. These are bulkier and harder to remove, but also potentially more sensitive.
You will have to delete each DM conversation separately by clicking to the right of the thread and selecting Delete Conversation. Note that this only deletes it from your side. Any other members of the DM thread can still see your historical activity.
Park your account
For many users, it is advisable to “park” their account, rather than deactivate it altogether. Parking means you delete most of your data, maintain your username, and will have to log in every few months to keep it alive on the platform. This will prevent other (possibly malicious) users from taking your deactivated username and impersonating you.
Parking means Twitter will retain some details, including potentially sensitive data like your phone number and other biological information you’ve stored. It also means that a return to the platform is not out of the question, should circumstances improve.
If you decide to deactivate, know that this does not mean that all of your details will necessarily be deleted from Twitter’s servers. In its terms of service, Twitter notes that it may retain some user information after deactivating an account. Also, when your account is no longer available, your old username will be used.
Reinforcement of locks
If you haven’t already, now is the time to implement two-factor authentication on your Twitter account. You can do this by clicking Settings > Security and account access > Security > Two-Factor Authentication. This will help protect your account from being hacked.
Additional password protection (found in the same menu above) is also a good idea, as is changing your password to something different from any other passwords you use online. .
Once that’s done, all that’s left is to sit back and dump one for the bird site.