Thread by @FabioGhironi

I don’t know if many colleagues in the #EconTwitter community have abandoned #Twitter in favor of #Mastodon. In case anyone is interested, I don’t plan to do it, nor do I plan to start using both. 1/11

I very much dislike what Elon Musk has been doing, but there are at least two reasons that will keep me just here. The simplest one to explain is that I don’t have the time and energy to learn how to use a new platform. 2/11

I had literally zero social media presence before signing up for Twitter. After doing that, I also signed up for Facebook and (if I remember correctly) Instagram. I don’t remember the last time I logged into those accounts. 3/11

Those who know me well were hugely surprised by my decision to start tweeting. It had to do with the other reason for me to remain on Twitter unless it becomes absolutely necessary to move. 4/11

I was sick and tired of reading garbage articles and blogs on (macro)economics and what (macro)economists do that were written by people who have no idea what they are talking about. So, I decided that also my voice should be out there in the jungle of social media. 5/11

I didn’t expect to have more than a handful of followers, but I thought my presence online could be useful at least to someone to hear a different perspective about macroeconomics and macroeconomists besides old tropes and stereotypes by uninformed bloggers and journalists. 6/11

And maybe I could also be helpful at least to some by explaining why macroeconomic or trade policy ideas pushed by populist politicians and pseudo-economists were (and still are) at best hare-brained if not outright dishonest snake oil. 7/11

This explains why I don’t plan to leave Twitter. The number of economists in the #EconTwitter community has become a lot larger than it was in the summer of 2015, and I greatly enjoy reading interesting conversations on research in macroeconomics and trade 8/11

or sophisticated discussions on the most important policy questions. Exogenous reasons imply that I do a lot more reading than posting in these conversations, but I value them very much anyway. 9/11

However, I think my social media presence can be a lot more useful to those outside our profession than to those inside. This is a very important reason for me to remain on Twitter even if many colleagues migrate to a different platform. 10/11

Even if Elon Musk has a negative effect, it seems there are still a lot of people on Twitter who are not racist, trolls, etc. I can choose who to follow, who to engage with, and who to silence or block. For the foreseeable future, this is enough for me. 11/11