Bye, Twitter

Since I began writing as a 21-year-old at UC Irvine, Twitter has provided me with a platform to share my work and engage with my readers. Twitter largely launched and sustained my career.

But all good things come to an end. The acquisition of Twitter by an individual making enormously consequential policy decisions based on 3 AM whims is not safe or sustainable. It's my turn to exercise my free speech: I'm out!

This week, we learned that Musk is planning to force users to share personal information for ads and, perhaps, their physical location to continue using Twitter. This will endanger countless dissidents, whistleblowers, human rights activists, and others in authoritarian countries around the world. And here at home. And the person making this decision is deeply reliant on the brutal regime of Xi Jinping. This is the final straw.

This disastrous policy is not the only reason I and others are leaving Twitter. Today we learned that Musk banned live aviation tracking, a key tool for open-source intelligence researchers. He also banned the college student who tracked his jet, after promising not to do so just four weeks ago. This is not free speech. There is no oversight, now, for a man whose actions tell us that his ego drives his decision-making. This is not safe or sustainable.

Musk is also purposefully spreading hate and endangering folks, including his own former Twitter exec, who was forced to flee his home because Musk, with tens of millions of people watching, suggested that the exec was a pedophile. Musk's tweets mocking transgender individuals who use non-conventional pronouns prove that he is dangerous to the LGBTQ+ community. I fear that this will lead to violence.

A hearty thanks to everyone who followed my work and interacted with me on Twitter over the last 5 years.

You can find my continuing journalism exposing corruption and other matters here on this website. Please subscribe (for free as always) to get Forensic News's groundbreaking investigations delivered right to your email inbox.

I am also on Mastodon here.

With gratitude,

Scott Stedman.