I am so puzzled by this. I've been using the Internet for 30 years, and in early 2000 people were much more standing up to principles. The greatest example was when digg changed how it operated with v4, people left it overnight. Now they prefer to be fucked over and don't have any intention of changing it, and excuses are really lame like "alternatives are too hard".

I think Yuval Harari was right and social media figured out how to hack our brains and control us.

News sites also need to stop going on about it. Its like feeding the troll. I’ve never used the thing other than looking at it briefly in its early days, and yet I’m constantly hearing about it. And here I am commenting about this apparently (Western) globally important website which has served no purpose in my life. What a waste of energy all around. Self perpetuating negative feedback loop tech wank. Digital town square my arse. The little I know about it is from bad headlines which I wish I could unsee as its of zero consequence.

Porn twitter has been totally unaffected by all of this

Let's all start using AOL and MSN messenger

I have stopped using it to read news. I still use it to keep touch with my professional community (scientists who haven't moved to Bluesky or Mastodon), but that's it. I wish it would just die. Until then I've scripted it and blocked lots of elements to make it look exactly like old Twitter

but what's the alternative? mastodon is quite different, I've tried many times but always give up

I too have underestimated the glee of right wing trolls at twitters turn around. They are keeping it alive somehow.