I got carried away and published two blog posts on Monday. As usual, I shared them on the various social media sites I'm on. As expected, pickup was pretty lacklustre on Facebook (1 like for both posts) and all the successor states: Threads (1 like), Mastodon (no engagement at all), and BlueSky (4 likes and 1 "I should go to Nerd Nite sometime" reply).
On Twitter/X, I caught a glimmer of how things used to be: I had tagged @nerdnitehalifax on one of the posts and @canadaland on the other - neither are on the other platforms as far as I can tell. The Nerd Nite post got 2 retweets, 3 likes, and 1 reply from the organizer. The other post got retweeted by Canadaland head @jessebrown to his 76 thousand followers. In the past, this would have triggered a flurry of likes and shares and comments, and maybe even a few followers. In October 2023, it meant 9 likes. There were also replies, but they were sadly pretty predictable for Elon Musk's divorced-dad midlife crisis boat:
That one was from this account with a whopping 600 followers, who seems a bit confused but at least knows that he hates leftists, and he pays the richest man in the world $8 a month for a blue check to feel better about himself:
Then there was this "just asking racist questions" one:
This one is from a winner who has been on Twitter for over a decade and only seems to have picked up 117 followers. I'm guessing the account may have been hijacked at some point.
Anyhow, in answer to his question, not all settlers and farmers are white. I guess they hadn't heard of John Ware.
So yes Twitter/X is still getting "engagement" but it's not exactly the kind that I feel like bothering with. I only go there now to share links to my blog posts, and much as it was a big part of my life from 2009 to earlier this year, I barely miss it now. I'm spending less time on Threads and Bluesy too, and keeping up with the small number of accounts I follow on Mastodon is part of my daily media catch-up, but I don't engage very much there either.
I've been hearing a lot recently how social media engagement on all platforms has been drying up. I'm certainly doing less, and frankly I'm enjoying having more of my life back.