I’ve started to see a few accounts I follow — so far, very few — announce that they are leaving the platform.
The most prominent is probably the account of Playbill, the theater people.
I would get that pop-up and just close the window.
I used Twitter very minimally, but deactivated my account in early November. Partly as a statistically insignificant gesture of protest, and partly to avoid the risk of forgetting that I had a Twitter account and then being embarrassed by its continued existence if Twitter really does turn into a Parler-ish swamp of mostly bigots and trolls.
If I closed that window, it would just pop back up until I clicked one of the options and then I could close that one. Tonight I got a pop-up that said “turn on notifications”. Well, since I don’t have an account, that’s kind of pointless. But at least it let me close that one. 
Twitter Blue on hold, and price raised by $0.01:
(To be fair, other folks are not happy with the 30% cut that Apple (and google) take)
Brian
I’m reasonably satisfied that Musk is a bit of a loon but, in general, I’d be skeptical of all of the doomsaying that everyone has in the Twitter threads. It’s like everyone deciding that all the negative reporting about Trump would prevent him from getting into office. That didn’t happen.
Fundamentally, none of what he’s proposing in the linked article sounds impossible or bad.
His moves to entice Trump and Republicans onto the platform both make sense. Twitter made large money off of Trump. Being the one major platform that allows Republicans to be Republicans gives you a built-in market of 50% of the USA and probably a bit more past that, in other countries.
If he loses 50% of his revenue, because of a reduction in advertising, but he’s cut out 80% of his hardware costs and 66% of his labor costs, he has increased his operating budget.
At the moment, his only risk is that the site becomes 4chan - an unmoderated mess that drives away everyone but the most obnoxious and repellant of personalities. Making it profitable doesn’t mean that it will be a large or important business in the world.
He does need moderators - and he probably needs more of them than the company has ever had before, as a ratio of customers - if he wants to keep the platform as a place for the masses. The problem with social media for most of the people on the right isn’t woke moderation, it’s inhuman, automated, black box moderation. Letting go of people in the moderation team, so far as I can tell, is the only large mistake that he has made in his actual moves as head of the company. It’s the one thing that could end up driving away customers.
Ultimately, if a majority of former Twitter users continue to use Twitter after the chaos is over then the business will succeed. That’s up to the people who like tweeting more than it is up to Musk. So long as the product does what it’s supposed to do - let people send out tweets - it’s quite likely that it will go on the same as before. And if the people are there then the advertisers will follow. They’re not going to stand on some anti-Musk principal, they’re going to send money over and try to put their products in the tweeters’ hands.
Until he kills those conservatives in the next pandemic.
It would take a bit of math to ascertain but I would be reasonably certain that smoking has a higher fatality rate than Covid-19. The businesses that sell cigarettes have had no issue staying in business for centuries - and they even continue on today, profitably.
I’m sure that there’s some fatality rate that would make people get a bit more realistic about their choices in life, but it’s not in that territory. Twitter will be okay.
Likewise, cannabis smoking is probably bad for your health. The smoke is unfiltered and so more carcinogens are getting into your lungs and, it’s probably going to increase rates of lung cancer among frequent smokers. It is also looking likely that it will end up showing negative effects on brain health, as well. Should Twitter be telling people that they can only make posts that amplify the negative effects of cannabis?
This is at odds with my observations. What evidence do you see for this?
It is actually less than before, but here one should not forget that the modern misinformers came from the tobacco industry, that kind of health misinformation is making a permanent residency at Twitter.
Elsewhere I have seen reports that Musk’s chumminess with science deniers can lead to also what I have seen happen to many on the right, Musk is at risk of adding climate change denial to his repertoire.
Also, Seeing more and more bugs. Tried replying to a tweet and it said something went wrong and to try again later, tried replying again and it said I had already replied. Refreshed the page and it said it couldn’t find the tweet and that oops, something had gone wrong. Can see the tweet on the user’s timeline but still fails to load when I click on it. Tried again 5 minutes later and things appear to have fixed themselves.
Forgot to add the news that besides health disinformation, Twitter is allowing more disinformation about climate change too.
Moderating:
This is getting political.
Please, everyone, let’s drop the “will Twitter kill people by fostering covid misinformation and therefore hurt itself” tangent. In fact, for a breaking news thread, just posting that Twitter will stop trying to censor covid misinformation should be plenty.
Thanks!
Musk firmly believes in climate change. (Even a stopped clock is right twice per day.) His two most prominent business endeavors, Tesla and SpaceX, are purportedly motivated by the threat of climate change. The electric cars are supposed to forestall climate change and the rockets are supposed to save him if the Earth becomes uninhabitable. Perhaps, if any good is to come of this Twitter debacle at all, it will be because Musk convinces his right wing fanbase that climate change is real and is going to kill us all and they join the rest of humanity in trying to do something to stop it.
Unfortunately, conspiracies have been reported a lot coming from Musk lately, the thing about conspiracies is that among the ones falling for one are more likely to fall for others. They are like lays chips, you just can’t have just one.
Yeah, but that’s been true for years, long before he bought Twitter. I’m in the camp of speculators thinking Apple told him he owed 30% of his blue check money or they’d pull Twitter from their store. He’s playing it like he doesn’t know why they’re threatening “free speech” but it’s an odd coincidence.
Lol, you can’t subscribe to Netflix via their app because they don’t want to pay the apple tax
For those of you who haven’t noticed significant changes in your feed yet; Twitter is now going to be more “helpful”:
Oh, that’s going to make a whole lot of people pissed.
Advertisers have been leaving - now prepare for the user accounts to start dropping.