Thinking of breaking up with Twitter? Here’s the right way to do it

tech.hindustantimes.com:

After a few chaotic weeks it's clear Elon Musk is intent on taking Twitter in a direction that's at odds with the prevailing cultures of the diverse users who call it home.

Musk has now begun reinstating high-profile users – including Donald Trump, Alex Jones and Kanye West – who had been removed for repeated violations of community standards.

This comes off the back of a mass exodus of Twitter staff, including thousands that Musk unceremoniously fired via email. The latest wave of resignations came after an ultimatum from Musk: employees would have to face “extremely hardcore” working conditions (to fix the mess Musk created).

All of this points to a very different experience for users, who are now decamping the platform and heading to alternatives like Mastodon.

So what threats are we likely to see now? And how does one go about leaving Twitter safely?

With so many experienced staff leaving, users face the very real possibility that Twitter will experience significant and widespread outages in the coming weeks.

Enterprise software experts and Twitter insiders have already been raising alarms that with the World Cup under way, the subsequent increase in traffic – and any rise in opportunistic malicious behaviour – may be enough for Twitter to grind to a halt.

Aside from the site going dark, there are also risks user data could be breached in a cyberattack while the usual defences are down. Twitter was exposed in a massive cyberattack in August this year. A hacker was able to extract the personal details, including phone numbers and email addresses, of 5.4 million users.

One would be forgiven for thinking that such scenarios are impossible. However, common lore in the technology community is that the internet is held together by