diff --git a/src/_drafts/i-deleted-all-my-tweets.md b/src/_drafts/i-deleted-all-my-tweets.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3eb60eb2 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/_drafts/i-deleted-all-my-tweets.md @@ -0,0 +1,71 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: I deleted all my tweets +summary: I used TweetDeleter to delete about 35,000 tweets, and cut my remaining ties to the site formerly known as Twitter. +tags: + - twitter +--- + +I had a complicated relationship with Twitter (now X). + +I wasted a lot of time there, got into some embarrassing arguments, and wrote things I now regret. +But it's also where I met friends and partners, started my career in cultural heritage, and began my queer awakening. +Maybe one day I'll write a longer article about what Twitter meant to me. + +I haven't been active on Twitter for several years, and I finally decided to remove all my old tweets. +I used [TweetDeleter.com](https://tweetdeleter.com/) to get rid of them. +I'll post one final tweet linking to this article and telling my followers where else to find me on the web, but after that I'm done with Twitter. + +## Why? + +I felt like I was getting very little benefit to leaving my old tweets up, but I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about it. + +* I don't think many people were reading them and getting something useful out of it. +* I kept getting notifications from people who'd found an old tweet, and wanted to start an argument or hurl abuse in my direction. + I can do without that. +* My tweets are an increasingly outdated representation of how I think and feel. + I haven't tweeted in over two years, so anything I've learnt in that time isn't represented there. + They felt like a liability; something that could be used to criticise me for a view I no longer hold. + +I already purged my tweets once -- at some point, I deleted all my tweets from before 2017, because they had a lot of personal stuff I no longer wanted to be publicly available. +Absolutely nobody noticed or cared when I did that, and I think this time will be much the same. + +A lot of people deleted their Twitter/X accounts in November because of a Terms of Service update that would allow X to use their posts to train AI models. +While I understand the concern, that wasn't a big motivation for me. +Anything that's publicly available on the web has already been used for AI training, including my writing and my tweets. +I can't fix that. + +I considered deleting my entire account, but I wanted to leave it up as a signpost to where I'm writing and posting now. +I don't think there's much risk in having an account that just says "no longer here, go over there". + +## How? + +I had about 35,000 tweets. + +I experimented with a few DIY automations for deleting lots of tweets, but I couldn't get anything working quickly. +Instead, I decided to pay $7.99 for one month of [TweetDeleter.com's Unlimited plan](https://tweetdeleter.com/pricing). +A couple of friends had already used the site to delete their old tweets, and I didn't want to spend much time on this. + +I had to upload a copy of my Twitter archive so they knew what to delete, and then it took about a week to delete everything. + +Interestingly, X says that I still have 407 posts, but you can't see any on my profile: + +{% + picture + filename="remaining_tweets.png" + width="372" + alt="Screenshot of my profile on X, showing “407 posts”." + class="screenshot" +%} + +I think these are probably retweets of posts that are no longer accessible to me -- the original poster has either blocked me, or made their account private. +I don't think I can do anything about these "ghost posts", and I'm not too worried about them. + +## What's next? + +I'm going to post a link to this article on Twitter, and then log out for the last time. + +I haven't found a good replacement -- although I have accounts on [Mastodon](https://social.alexwlchan.net/@alex) and [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/alexwlchan.bsky.social), neither of them feel like the best days I had on Twitter. +It took a long time to create that circle of friends, and I don't have the energy to try to replicate that on a new service. + +I joined Twitter in August 2009 and a lot of good things came out of it, but after fifteen years, it feels like that era of my life is over. diff --git a/src/_images/2024/remaining_tweets.dark.png b/src/_images/2024/remaining_tweets.dark.png new file mode 100644 index 00000000..54ac5408 Binary files /dev/null and b/src/_images/2024/remaining_tweets.dark.png differ diff --git a/src/_images/2024/remaining_tweets.png b/src/_images/2024/remaining_tweets.png new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6f2b2da3 Binary files /dev/null and b/src/_images/2024/remaining_tweets.png differ