Twitter is Not an API or a Communication Site, It's a Really Bad Site That Forces You to be Enslaved by Its Algorithm (Amplifying Its Owner's Worldviews)
The X Effect: How Elon Musk is boosting the British right (2025)
I've just explained why, in my humble opinion, the crackdown on Nitter means we should all avoid accessing or linking to x.com (Twitter). Let the site fail. Do not participate. There are many other reasons to boycott x.com (Twitter). Here are Stallman's:
To access postings on ex-Twitter requires the user to run nonfree JavaScript code. Running that code damages your freedom and your security.
Fortunately, nitter.net is working again, so I can now look at postings on ex-Twitter.
Ex-Twitter belongs to the would-be emperor Musk, who uses it to boost right-wing extremism. When posting on ex-Twitter encourages other people to use it, that boosts his success. Don't give him that support!
Ex-Twitter now shows ads that don't identify themselves as ads, and don't say who is doing the advertising.
Musk seems determined to adopt for ex-Twitter every nasty thing that users have criticized web sites for.
Ex-Twitter has started requiring (in certain countries) every new user to verify per phone numbers and a payment method.
The user is required to pay a trivial sum, but the surveillance implied by the payment is dangerous.
How quitting Facebook and ex-Twitter enabled one user to change for the better his approach to life.
On ex-Twitter, scammers now buy the "blue checkmark" that used to indicate verification of identity.
The US National Weather Service has been using ex-Twitter to receive reports from storm spotters. Due to recent Musk madness, that has started to fail.
Ex-Twitter is unsuitable for anything that really needs to work.
Musk banned ex-Twitter users from posting information about where to find them on other sites. (There is a report that ex-Twitter has partly reversed this, but no announcement.)
Of course, you shouldn't allow Facebook or Instagram to use you, not at all.
Ex-Twitter's policy may be illegal in the US. I wonder, though, whether FTC enforcement power can prevail against a billionaire who is willing to lose millions of dollars as a result of his choice of policies. If he chooses to defy the FTC, can they do more than fine ex-Twitter a few million?
The above items were added after Musk bought Twitter and renamed it. Therefore they refer to it as ex-Twitter.
As of January 2020, Twitter reportedly requires users to give a mobile phone number or it blocks their accounts. Here is a reference in Spanish. I would appreciate having an attestable reference to cite for this.
Moreover, the report said that it is impossible to create an account without running nonfree Javascript software.
Please email me if you have newer information about this issue.
Twitter has implemented new non-privacy settings; the default is substantial surveillance, if users don't turn it off.
Twitter makes it impossible to create an account without providing a mobile phone number. You might have to buy a "burner phone" to do it.
That article provides advice for those who want to run a Twitter account and protect their identities from a state that represses whistleblowers. But even if you will proudly put your real name on the account, you have every reason not to let Twitter know your mobile phone number.
Twitter shut down Jim Weber's account after he posted a copy of a video from the Olympic Games.
A social network should work for its users, which means it should not act as an instrument for someone else to control or restrict them. That means it should not enter the business of publishing on behalf of moneyed interests.
It is too bad that Weber legitimized the power that was used against him by referring to these videos as "illegal".
Roy Schestowitz reports being censored ("shadowbanned") by Twitter for posting about Twitter censorship.
This kind of censorship is not obvious to the one being censored.
If you're still active there, what's the excuse? Or what will it take for you to quit the "Incel Bar"? █
