Why I Use Micro.blog

I wrote last February on why Micro.blog is not another App.net.

Though that article had a bunch of good reasons to use Micro.blog, I didn’t really say why I use it.

Winter

This vile season, run by crime families, shot through with bad faith and giddy injustice, with the highest frauds and the lowest characters, has me looking everywhere for the exit.

But there is no exit. There are only choices: each of us can choose to do things, usually small, that will help make things better.

We could continue to flock to Twitter and Facebook — we could keep paying those who have and will rip off democracy for a stock price — or we could turn our backs and help the open web instead.

We could say goodbye to the creepy targeted ads and the algorithms, to the Nazis and bots and propagandists, to the harassers and the people selling hate. We could stop being spied-on for profit.

But only if we make the choice, and then work at it.

Spring

We could dine out forever on our knowing that it was all doomed — that we were too smart to try, too wise to risk even the smallest lift. We knew it all along.

Or we can make the moral choice of renewal, of planting new bulbs and helping this old tree, a little bigger now, flower again.

Our hearts may end up broken. Again.

So?