Thread by @McCainJack

Alright everyone, I am out. Twitter, or X, as I'll refer to it for the first time because that is what it is now, isn't a place I want to be, or one that I think is healthy for the United States. I'll explain. But if you aren't interested, awesome, I urge you to stop reading now.

First off, I have been around a while. More than a decade. I have seen the arc of twitter, had the old verified badge, and have seen it go from nominal public square where I saw things I disagreed with, to actively corrosive to discourse and civil society.

Anyone that has followed me knows that I refuse to engage with partisan politics publicly. This isn't coming from a place of partisanship, but one of watching the actual damage the narratives that drive this site now do, as well as the incentives therein. The genesis of this

personal exodus was the week of "they're eating cats" narrative, that was in large part driven by X. An unfounded sensationalist claim was given oxygen because of the incentives of X, and it allowed the ugliness of the lengths the unscrupulous will go to be seen clearly.

That forced me to actually examine what is going on here, and here is what I found: 1. An AMAZING number of adversary nations running information ops against America, and them gaining traction because they now have the algorithmic boost of the blue check. China and Russia

seem to be the worst offenders, but allowing them to be boosted because of their blue check means they are given more weight, that's bad.
2. The incentives for more and more extreme content. I think this is a balance of actual full throated racists, and those thinking they can

make money off of being a crazy anon. This perverse inversion of the original system has created just as perverse incentives, to be more extreme, more shocking in the hopes of breaking into the algorithm enough to get some of that x money. That drags common discourse down.

3. The narratives that are boosted (at least as I can observe) are the ones aimed at causing maximum disruption and engendering mistrust: Mistrust with one-another, with the government, with institutions. These rack up millions of views, and fostered a shift in the norms around

discourse. The default on X seems to be mistrust, anger, and incivility. That has been seeping into the non-online discourse for some time, but under a system that incentivizes and boosts those qualities, it is accelerating. And that is my biggest issue, because from what I

observe, that is corroding the soul of our nation. I think no bigger example, the reason I am out, is that of the Hurricane Helene response. Monetized accounts driving stories about civil war, about government officials. If you cant see that it is both intentional and

incentivized, especially during a national election, then I don't know what to tell you. It is a tangible example where lives were endangered, and huge efforts were made to acidify the relationship between government responders and institutions, and those gullible enough to

believe what those blue check accounts were driving. The damage was real, it is ongoing, and it was intentional. I'll leave it to computer science people to figure out if it was driven on purpose by X.
4. I have watched too many people I respect fall to internet fame disease.

sundering themselves, even if incrementally, for likes, clicks, and engagement. It is a symptom of the problem, but by contributing to it I am just as much at fault.
So, I am sure some of you are going to make the First Amendment argument. Let me stop you there. I am a free

speech true believer. I have no issue with WHAT is being said, I have issue with the fact it is incentivized, monetized, and boosted, not to mention that community notes are no longer applied equally, and often not at all to those pushing specific narratives. Damage is being done

So, all this is to say, I refuse to be a part of it any longer. I will not reward something that I think is hollowing out my nation with my time, attention, or most importantly, my data. To misquote a favorite movie "the only way to win is not to play". So as my parting shots

I'd ask you a simple question "What has this place done to make you, or the United States, better?" I find it impossible to answer in any positive way.

I will keep my DMs up, but am going to delete the app off my phone tomorrow morning, so I won't be readily available.

I will be on other social medias, but I am not going to plug them here so people don't think this is some kind of way to boost my other accounts.
It's been real, it's been fun, but I can't say it's been real fun.
I will miss @iowahawkblog he rocks.
Union forever. See ya.