Kind of silly to insist on a newsletter versus a blog and direct folks to a $30 a month service. You can get a free blog on Tumblr or Wordpress.org. You can get one for $5 at somewhere like Micro.blog. There's plenty of ways to setup a personal blog that works well for both long posts and short posts. All of those have mechanisms to crosspost to social media or turn into a newsletter, if you want. But the focus on that solution is silly-- the open web is here, it's great, and blogs are a solid technology. RSS works well and makes it easy to syndicate all over.<p>I am personally quite happy using Micro.blog for my blog [micro.json.blog](<a href="https://micro.json.blog" rel="nofollow">https://micro.json.blog</a>). It's hosted Hugo (which is what I used for my blog before) setup with a micropub service already and hooked into most of the tech and standards coming through the Indieweb movement.<p>Blogs are the answer to twitter. Newsletters are just a potential answer to monetization for a limited set of folks.
The addictive value of twitter is that you can ping some quasi-famous person in your field and they will often engage in conversation. It's pretty magical. That's not gonna happen on my paid mailing list.
To my mind, trying this hard to circumvent a platform's huge and seemingly irremovable flaws instead of ditching it for good is a very unreasonable option. I'd say quit Twitter <i>abruptly</i>, not gradually--here's how:<p>- Do you want to follow the news? Try selecting reliable news outlets or aggregators (like HN) guided by your own criteria, so you can check their websites on a regular basis and stay up to date, if you're interested in that--I'd personally recommend sticking to local news.<p>- Do you want to follow specific people that publish content you find interesting on the Internet? Follow their personal websites or repositories.<p>- Do you want to publish content on the Internet yourself? Host a personal website. If you don't want to pay, consider using a decentralized option (Beaker Browser, .onion site, I2P, ZeroNet, etcetera).<p>That's it. Goodbye social media. RSS, bookmarks, and our good old memory are our best allies.
Twitter really is just poison.<p>I visit it once a week and exclusively follow programming related accounts. Even then I feel misanthropy and disgust seep in to my head.<p>Something inherent to Twitter makes it such a horrible place. Is it the character limit? Me always seeing what everyone reposts/likes? The way the feed is built? No idea. But I hate it.<p>And the worst part? It gives me very little in return. The occasional sneak peak at a products’ road map or strategy. Maybe release notes all in one place.
Getting someone to leave a social media platform like Twitter voluntarily is probably just as good as getting them kicked off. Either way they lose access to the potential for rapid audience expansion that is enabled by the dynamics of the platform.<p>Sure, they can service their core audience on any publishing platform: an email newsletter, a blog, etc. But it's much much harder to get a rapid audience expansion in one of those channels. That's why they were on Twitter in the first place, instead of (or in addition to) emails and blogs. It's not like email newsletters and blogs are some new untested idea; they both predate Twitter by almost a decade. Twitter (and other social platforms) has succeeded because it offers upside that those don't.<p>People love that big audience pop on social media when it helps them quickly build their brand or find new customers. They don't love it when it exposes them to a larger set of critics. Going to less dynamic channels is one way to lower the volume of criticism, but you lose the potential for positive dynamics as well.
When I left Twitter a couple years ago, I "slammed the door on my way out" by deleting all my posts. Of course, we all know social media companies keep deleted posts and metadata but crawlers probably can't see this data (unless they pay?) and it sends a message as well.
I've not quit Twitter, but I've reduced my usage of it (and gained control of my data) by syndicating my posts/statuses from to Twitter and backfeeding any replies/likes as comments on my blog.<p>It's all simple enough to get setup using the IndieWeb Wordpress plugin.
I had a blog (still do, though I publish extremely infrequently), but the value of Twitter to me is the discussions, where I can ask about things and learn new things from people who reply to them. What's the equivalent for that in this system?<p>Now, if you said "get a personal domain and set up ActivityPub," then sure.<p>The other approach I've liked here is the "planet" model - I read <a href="https://planet.debian.org/" rel="nofollow">https://planet.debian.org/</a> fairly frequently, and occasionally one blogger publishes something and a couple of people follow up a day or two later "This is a response to so-and-so's post, here are my thoughts," which is always fun. But it wouldn't be fun in a newsletter model - Twitter makes it so that you don't see replies from someone you follow to someone you don't, because those replies will generally lack context. I wouldn't want to spam everyone in my newsletter with "These are some questions I have for some other person whose newsletter you don't read."
I understand the negative opinions about Twitter that have been mentioned, but this isn't advice for _most_ people. This is advice for people who already have an audience built, and are looking to own their audience.<p>The benefit (and downfall) of Twitter is that (blue checkmark aside), everyone is equal. Your account can both send and receive, and it puts everyone on the same 280-character level playing field. Balaji doesn't like this.<p>Balaji might want to pick up his ball and leave, and that's fine (odd he blames the hacks and not his recent Twitter spat, but whatever). But Twitter has managed to give a voice to so many people and ideas that otherwise never would have been heard. This doesn't solve that problem; it just makes it so Balaji can write what he wants without having to hear people disagree with him.<p>If you're reading this and are against Twitter, that's fair! But it's likely that you and Balaji are looking to exit Twitter for very different reasons.
Switching to the Fediverse is also an option, especially since the variety of instances there means that one can curate their experience in a much greater way than one would on Twitter.
How does this post address network effects in the age of aggregation? Who has sufficient incentive to tie all those disparate blogs and newsletters together? Balaji likes to talk about exit plans. See this speech at YC startup school:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A</a><p>In general, they strike me as deeply unrealistic.
A worthwhile question to ask is why is this being written now?<p>Twitter has had hacks before, so I don't buy the 'hacks are the last straw' line.
The technology should exist by now for a decentralized twitter right? Resorting to email newsletters seems very clunky. Couldn't there be something that uses a bittorrent-like protocol, where the followers support the network for whomever they're following?