And so it has come to this. I finally quit Twitter… almost exactly a decade ago.
I could spin yarn and claim it was some major feat of clairvoyance, of course. That I foresaw all that happened lately with Twitter and decided to bail early. But it wasn’t that, really. I just felt strongly that centralized services are dangerous and unethical, and I decided to stop using them. Back then, Twitter was the last one on the chopping block for me.
The “Why”
Why did I feel so strongly about centralized services? Had you asked me ten years ago, it would have been difficult for me to explain. But even then I would have said it boils down to control and power dynamics. At the time I was a Free Software advocate, working for a Polish version of the FSFE. Software freedom was (and remains) important to me and it seemed obvious that one cannot have software freedom in a walled garden.
Hardly a strong, concrete argument, I know!