Saying Goodbye to Twitter and Hello to Substack
On Twitter's changes to its block feature and spending less time on social media
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Whenever Elon Musk changes Twitter (I’m not calling it the other name, and I don’t know anyone who does), I find myself searching for some alternative. The honest answer is there are too many — Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Hive Social, Tumblr, and even LinkedIn. None of them are great for the same things that Twitter used to be great for, and they don’t even function well enough (yet) to handle the influx of people from Twitter.
Finding a new social media app to be social on and share my work has become a lot more complicated than it needs to be, but it’s also made me realize how much I want — or need — to disconnect from it all a bit more.
Of course, Twitter made that decision much easier for me when it notified me that it would be “changing” its block feature. In reality, it’s erasing the feature’s beneficial quality and putting something more damaging in its place. Once the change goes into effect, “accounts you have blocked will be able to view them [posts that are set to public], but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).” Before, the block feature would prevent those blocked accounts from viewing any part of a person’s profile, including but not limited to their tweets.
The site’s following post expresses a vast misrepresentation of what the current feature is used for: “Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked. Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.” As the AV Club reports, the block feature is predominantly used to protect people from harmful information:
In cases where block was being used to prevent harassment, stalking, and other dangerous and illegal behaviors, this isn’t great news. Yes, you can still obscure your tweets by going totally private, but some people—celebrities, journalists, influencers etc.—still need the platform for their livelihood. Hiding isn’t always so easy, especially when we already had a perfectly good solution.
As an entertainment journalist, I feel torn about how tied I am to Twitter for that reason. The engagement from that website is still surprisingly significant, and every click counts in an era when outlets are hit with layoffs or folding entirely. Plus, everyone hasn’t decided on the best Twitter alternative, so the social media landscape feels aimless and uncertain. Oddly, I think I need that unsteadiness to realize that I want to create new boundaries with it all.
I know social media contains multitudes in that it can do a lot of good and bad. It can be a resource, a creative outlet, and a point of communication. I’ve met some of the best people in my life and found some of my favorite job experiences through Twitter. It can also be a source of misinformation, spreading hatred and vitriol. Unfortunately, the latter has become increasingly frequent on Twitter since Musk bought the social media outlet. A TIME report from July 2023 reflects that with statistics that support why advertisers are pulling back from Twitter.
Since Musk took over at the end of 2022, I’ve blocked and muted more accounts than in the nine years I’ve had my account. But I still find it hard to quit the site. Yes, I use it for work, but I’m also doomscrolling on there more often than I care to admit. My screen time is scarily high, and my attention span is at an all-time low. I’m reading less, listening to fewer podcasts, and struggling to watch a movie (not in a theater) or TV show without mindlessly scrolling on social media.
Psychologist Daniell Haig spoke with Glamour UK about “popcorn brain,” with the outlet stating that “being online, we are conditioned to expect quick rewards — if we don't get them, we are fed something else. This means that the internet actively encourages the brain to pop around.” Reading that made me visualize how often I jump from app to app, searching for something I’ll likely never find. After all, most social media apps and websites have that infinite scroll feature.
My hope lies in knowing that I’m not the only one trying to adjust their relationship with social media, and I know I can change this habit. It will be hard, and I’ll have the itch to scroll Twitter or check Letterboxd or Goodreads before and after watching a movie or reading a book. But, as Beth McColl wrote about doomscrolling in 2023, “You can work out which ways you can currently be useful and in which ways you’d like to be useful in the future, and you can do all of this without choosing to devote 80% of your waking life to staring at the same miserable rectangle.”
So, here I am, realizing the irony of writing about this on another social media website. But I’m also glad to acknowledge my unhealthy relationship with social media and make those changes. I put screen-time locks on TikTok and Instagram, deleted the Twitter app from my phone (again), and made a list of posts I’m eager to write about for this newsletter. I’m sure I will slip up and doom scroll — breaking habits is hard, but this finally feels like a positive step forward. I only wish that it didn’t take the deterioration of Twitter for me to get to this point.
Until next time,
💌 Shelby
Featured photo courtesy of HBO.