I joined Twitter back when it was still called Twitter. Back when it had a soul.
I used to call it the bird app. Everything felt natural. People had real conversations, silly ones, serious ones, everything in between. It just worked.
Not anymore.
Now it’s a shell of what it used to be. The numbers might be higher than ever, but the spark is gone. Maybe it’s been gone for a while now, and I’m just now admitting it.
How It Started
I joined Twitter to share what I was learning through the #100DaysOfCode challenge. I posted every day. I finished the challenge. But honestly? It felt like shouting into the void. Sure, some people noticed. But not the kind of people you’d actually want to talk to. It all felt forced.
The early days were rough. I’d post my progress, share code snippets, ask questions. Maybe get a few likes from bots or people running the same challenge who weren’t really paying attention. It was performative. I was doing it because that’s what everyone said you were supposed to do if you wanted to “make it” in tech.
Then I changed how I used the app. I stopped trying to “network” or “build my brand” or whatever. I just started talking to random people whose tweets I liked. People I vibed with.
And something clicked.
I actually looked forward to opening the app. I made real friends through this website. I even met some of them in person. For a while there, Twitter was genuinely fun. The timeline felt alive. It felt human.
That’s what Twitter was supposed to be. A place where you could stumble into interesting conversations with interesting people. Where you could learn something new every day just by being curious and engaging.
When Everything Changed
Then Elon Musk bought the app.
He fired the executives. He rebranded it to “X”, still the dumbest rebrand in history, in my opinion. What does “X” even mean? x.com just sounds ridiculous. It genuinely sounds like a shady website.
When Elon bought it, he tweeted: “the bird is freed.”
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
That’s when the bird actually started dying. Slowly rotting from the inside.
At first, it was still okay. The core app worked the same way. But knowing the kind of person Elon is, Twitter’s death wasn’t a question of if, but when.
The layoffs were brutal. Thousands of employees gone overnight. The people who built and maintained the platform, who understood its quirks and culture, were shown the door. What did Musk think would happen? That the site would just run itself?
What It Has Become
Look at your feed now. It’s a complete mess.
The site is infested with the worst kinds of people, and they’re everywhere. The hate is completely unregulated. I report hateful posts all the time. Nothing happens. The people spreading hate face no consequences.
Everyone is chasing “engagement” and “bangers” now. People don’t tweet anymore, they post. Do you hear how dull that sounds? The people running X don’t even realize they killed the golden goose.
The algorithm is designed to promote outrage. The most inflammatory takes get the most visibility. Nuance is dead. Context doesn’t matter. Everything is reduced to dunks and quote tweets designed to make someone look stupid. It’s exhausting.
And the bots. Oh god, the bots. They’re everywhere now. Crypto scams in every reply section. Fake accounts impersonating celebrities. The blue checkmark was supposed to help with this, but now that anyone can buy it, it’s worse than useless. It’s actually helping scammers look legitimate.
They had something beautiful, and they destroyed it.
Most of the good accounts I used to follow? They’ve been leaving quietly, one by one. And I’m just talking about tech Twitter. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be in other parts of the site.
The creatives left. The journalists left. The scientists left. The people who made Twitter worth reading are gone. What’s left is a echo chamber of people screaming into the void, hoping to go viral.
What We Lost
People used to use Twitter for two simple things:
- Getting real-time information about what’s happening in the world
- Talking with people who share their interests
Now neither works. Fake news spreads everywhere, and the algorithm actually rewards it through the payout system. Real information gets buried under garbage.
Remember when Twitter was the place to go during breaking news? Where journalists, witnesses, and experts would share real-time updates? Where you could actually trust that verified accounts were who they claimed to be? That’s gone now. During major events, it’s impossible to separate fact from fiction.
Musk banned third-party apps. He put the API behind a ridiculously expensive paywall. He made the blue checkmark meaningless by letting anyone buy it for $8.
The third-party app ban was especially painful. Apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific had better interfaces, better timelines, no ads. They made Twitter bearable. Musk killed them overnight with no warning. Years of development, gone. And for what? So he could force everyone to use his broken official app?
Remember when people changed their profile pictures to look like Elon and posted ridiculous tweets? That was one of the funniest days on Twitter, hands down. But it also showed how broken verification had become.
Major brands started pulling their ads. And instead of asking why, Musk dismissed them on stage. Advertisers left. Big accounts left. The people who made the platform worth visiting, they’re all leaving.
The Alternatives That Aren’t Quite There
People have tried to find replacements. Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads.
Mastodon feels too fragmented. And the crows is just not there.
Bluesky has potential. It feels more like old Twitter than anything else. But it’s still still finding its footing. The community there is good, but it’s not big enough yet to replace what Twitter used to be.
Threads? It’s Instagram with words. Meta trying to capitalize on Twitter’s collapse. But it has the same problems as Facebook, over-moderation, algorithmic timeline that shows you what Meta wants you to see, not what you want to see. And the Zuckerberg connection makes it hard to trust.
None of them have that critical mass yet. That’s the problem with social networks. They only work when everyone is there. And everyone is still on X, even if they hate it.
Why We’re Still Here
Most of us who remain? We’re stuck because of the sunk cost fallacy. We don’t want to lose years of work building our presence on this platform.
I have thousands of tweets. Hundreds of conversations. Connections with people I genuinely care about. Walking away from all of that feels like deleting a part of my life. Even if that part isn’t what it used to be.
There’s also the network effect. My friends are still there. The developers I follow are still there. The communities I’m part of are still there. Moving to a new platform only works if everyone moves together, and that’s nearly impossible to coordinate.
I still love what Twitter used to be. But not what it is now.
Some days I think about deleting my account. Just walking away and never looking back. But then what? Where do I go? Back to LinkedIn where everyone is fake-professional and constantly humble-bragging? To Reddit where anonymity breeds toxicity? To Discord where conversations disappear into private servers?
What It Would Take to Fix This
Here’s the thing, it could still be fixed. But that would require going back to what made it work in the first place. Whatever the current team is doing clearly isn’t working.
Bring back proper moderation. Not AI moderation that can’t understand context, but actual human moderators who can make judgment calls. Ban the bots. Make verification mean something again. Stop optimizing for engagement at all costs, optimize for quality instead.
Reverse the API changes. Let third-party developers build amazing things on top of the platform. They’re not competitors, they’re force multipliers. They make Twitter better for everyone.
Fix the algorithm. Show people what they actually want to see, not what will make them angriest. Chronological timelines should be the default, not buried in settings.
Admit that the rebrand was a mistake. Bring back the bird. Bring back the name. X was always a vanity project, and everyone knows it.
But none of this will happen. Because it would require admitting mistakes, and the current leadership doesn’t do that.
The End
The bird isn’t just dying anymore. It might already be dead. We’re just having trouble letting go.
I’ll miss what it was. I won’t miss what it has become.
