I’ve written a bit about social media before—the diminution of Twitter has made me step back and think about how much time I spend on it, and whether that time is really worth it. Social media, like money, is a good servant but a poor master. The question is, is it psychologically possible for us to treat it only as our servant?

Now some people think Twitter is fine, or that it’s actually gotten better. I suppose it depends how you use it, but based on the work I do, I can tell you the traffic numbers have collapsed. And a business feud between Twitter and Substack from April means that Substack links no longer display previews on Twitter—just a bare URL. Twitter’s algorithm also punishes Substack links. So Twitter is simply less useful to me as a Substack writer in terms of promotion, even though many of my ideas do still somehow come from Twitter.

I’m not sure I mind this. I’ve tried out Threads—same handle as Twitter—but I’m happy to spend less time overall plugged in like this. It has made me think about what social media really is, however...