BLUF joined Twitter fifteen years ago, on 26th November 2009. Since then, we've made over 40,000 posts, numerous replies and direct messages, and we also operated an automated feed with information about BLUF events.

All of that is over; much of it is deleted. All those tweets will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

Why?

For much of the last fifteen years, Twitter was the social network with the broadest reach, where we could have conversations, and share information and, though it wasn't perfect, there were reasonable tools allowing people to filter their conversations and protect themselves. And it also offered a free API that we could use to provide things like our automated events feed.

Free API access, at least of the sort we used, went away a couple of years ago, not that long after the Musk acquisition, and it didn't seem worth it to pay for the ability to redo all our coding, when it was clear that other sites, in particular Instagram, were rapidly becoming more popular with our members.

And, in the last several years, the tone has changed; the boldness of those who wish to attack the LGBT community has grown, and it can, frankly, be a disheartening experience to use Twitter - especially if you express any degree of support for trans people.

This has only been exacerbated by Musk's take-over. His lifting of bans on some people with extreme right-wing beliefs, and willingness to promote anti-trans views, does not fill me with confidence for the future of the platform.

Things fall apart slowly, and then all at once

There's not just one final straw; I've been wondering for a while if continuing to use Twitter was in alignment with BLUF's principles. Key to the decision to effectively abandon Twitter are a few factors.

First, a change in the terms of use that allows the company to use material posted to train their AI models. Much of modern AI is a sideshow, which will amount to little in the longer term, in my view. Nevertheless, in achieving what little it will, it will feed upon the work of creative people. We don't think it's right to continue to post, for instance, event promos with images taken by great photographers, who will then find their work used to train an AI system without their consent.

Proposed changes to the blocking system are also concerning, and will allow those who have been blocked to see - even if they cannot directly interact - the posts from those who blocked them. And yes, there were ways to do that before, but this reduces the friction in, say, taking a screenshot of someone's post, and encouraging your followers to attack them. In tandem with the poor moderation, which often leaves racism and homophobia untouched, while unfairly singling out LGBTQ people for censorship, this no longer feels such a safe place as it did fifteen years ago.

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend to people that a good way to keep in touch with BLUF is to join a social network where they can be harassed and bullied and stalked, because many of the tools to prevent that have been removed or rendered nearly useless.

The recent US election has created a situation where this social network is now operated by someone who not only has shown they have a clear political agenda, with its own biases, but who will now potentially have a position in the next administration. That is a reason for concern itself, much as it would be if, say, a cabinet minister in the UK government owned the Daily Mail.

I believe that it is, in part, this last point that has contributed to the sudden surge in growth of BlueSky, an alternative to Twitter which will most likely be where we concentrate a large amount of our efforts on social media - though we remain on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Mastodon too. The momentum behind BlueSky has finally persuaded many that the time has come to leave this place; you will find us there as @bluf.social.

In short; everywhere changes. I no longer believe that posting on Twitter is worth the time and effort, or that the platform is supportive of the ideals of BLUF or of the wider LGBTQ community.

Nigel

Notes for fellow exiles

Others leaving the platform may find some of these notes useful.

• We have downloaded an archive of our content, before deleting it. We may try to find a way to host or share some of this, as there may be things within it that would be useful for organisational history. You may want to consider this too.
• We have deleted the bulk of the content from our account. This is chiefly to ensure that there is not really anything publicly available that can a) be used for AI training or b) taken out of context by someone malicious
• We are not deleting our accounts. A deleted account name can, after 30 days, be used by someone else, and we don't want to risk malicious imitation. So the accounts will still be there, pointing people to other networks, but otherwise chiefly silent.
• If you intend to do something similar, we strongly recommend you set up two factor authentication, to make it harder for anyone to take over an account you're no longer using.