Why am I still on Twitter?

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I have noticed that many people that I followed who announced departures have quietly come back and started tweeting again.

> I’ve written about the platform’s array of issues before, but, in summary, the removal of the verified public figures and the introduction of the new Blue Ticks basically allowed people to pay for engagement.

I think the alternative was worse. Basically unseen employees at Twitter get to make judgement calls on who is noteworthy, with not much objective reasoning. I've seen people with 1k followers have a blue checkmark and then others with hundreds of thousands of followers not have one. And you even had instances where blue check marks were removed as punishment.

The only reasoning that made sense was politics, if you were a left wing author with a self published book of poems and 1k followers you had a good shot at a checkmark, and if you were right wing, you would have that check mark dangled over you. No clear process. And considering how influential these social media platforms are and how checkmarks effect discoverability, it made a huge difference. Instagram had the same thing and there were even stories of "influencers" sleeping with Meta employees to get verified.

Now anyone willing to pay a few dollars per month can have the same reach. There's a reason Instagram basically has this pay to play model and I think it's far better.

Also the fact that Twitter is the only (?) social media that pays its creators directly. No convoluted process, just if you're verified you get a check every once in a while and from what I've seen it's pretty substantial. The idea that social media companies should pay their creators has been around a while. It seemed deeply unfair that these billion dollar companies were created on the back of free labor. Reddit had worthless "gold" as a reward, but come on. This was a huge long overdue development in social media landscape that I don't think gets enough attention.

still being on twitter is a reliable indicator.

> More than that though, there’s simply no good competitor. Maybe, one day, Bluesky can take over, but it’s too small and too self-congratulatory currently. Like most of these starter platforms, the majority of posts seem to be about the network itself, rather than the world outside of it.

I don't recognize the authors comment that it is only about Bluesky. It likely all depends on who you follow.

I have now been a few months on Bluesky and havent looked back. I noticed many thinkers I followed did continue on Bluesky and I noticed there is a much less toxic community which is a big win for my mental health.