Bonum Certa Men Certa

Thanks for All the Fish and Goodbye, Twitter

After nearly a million tweets it's time to say "goodbye"

Twitter dying



Summary: Today I quit Twitter (the account will be rendered just a bot) and here's why; in short, Twitter as a Web site (with Web pages) is shutting down officially

TEN DAYS ago we wrote about Twitter's latest suicidal move (after cutting off third-party access by APIs, deprecated entirely in 2018 -- akin to IBM cutting off CentOS users!). Why they do this one can guess... and it seems to boil down to business/profit rather than popularity or widespread use. No money? Goodbye!



"Twitter continues to show complete and utter disregard for the very people who made its business exist."Long story short, today is the last day Twitter can be accessed as a Web site rather than a program (proprietary JavaScript or official "app"). That leaves so many people out in the cold and makes pervasive surveillance obligatory.

But something even more irksome happened some hours ago. Twitter has a serious bug which prevents me from reading replies to tweets, which are automatically exported there. I typically check replies once a day, but this time I cannot see anything older than an hour. In effect, people are telling me something, but I cannot see that. Twitter is preventing it. These people might think that I snub them. So much for social, eh? Social control media...

Sinister plot... calling it social.

So the new so-called 'policy' is, "no reply" does not imply ignoring; it just means I am not present.

Goodbye trainEither way, in light of these events, I will no longer access Twitter, not even to check notifications (seeing that Twitter prevents much of this anyway). Months ago the account became write-only, in effect just a bot (copies of posts in Diaspora). Over a week ago I started implemented my own 'suckless', self-hosted and JavaScript-free platform as well. It updates in real time (e.g. this page for today).

It's hardly a secret that any time one accesses such a site (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) it gives its corporation more value and another opportunity to harvest data about people's minds. I've figured that, for now, treating the account there as a mere bot is the best compromise. Totally disappearing or deleting the account would mean loss of data or deletionism. Those things present a problem in their own right.

Techrights was never in Twitter. From now on neither will I; there will be a bot there, sure, but it'll get disregarded as irrelevant and won't be accessed by me. Twitter continues to show complete and utter disregard for the very people who made its business exist. This abuse/exploitation ends today. For me at least. It'll be interesting to see what the FSF will do, knowing they deemed Twitter "OK" just because JavaScript wasn't mandatory (that'll end today). Free software supporters won't be able to access Twitter without proprietary software by the end of the day (Richard Stallman and I spoke about that in person back when this wasn't the case). I've downloaded my full Twitter archive (it's over 5GB, compressed). I have some fond and some bad memories. Now that account is just a bot. Not my problem... and also Twitter's own fault.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete