Find Me Online
This weekend, I joined the many who have exited X (formerly known as Twitter). It was a tough decision; I’d been on the platform since February 2009 and curated a really great community made mostly of writers but also artists and others. I stuck out wave after wave of bad decisions, keeping to the fringes and my core group rather than wading into the larger morass. But the forthcoming changes to privacy and the terms of service finally pushed me out the virtual door.
For one, starting November 15, Twitter (it will always be Twitter to me) no longer truly “blocks” people. You can block someone but that simply means they can’t interact with your posts. They can still see them, screenshot them, use them for fodder. No thanks.
Also, when the new terms kick in, your posts will be available to train artificial intelligence and can pretty much be used in whatever way Twitter wants. Again, no thanks. I already removed most of my fan fiction from online sites to keep it from being crawled by A.I.; I don’t have any desire for bots to learn from my tweets. (And yes, I know they can just as easily learn from my posts here, but at least I still own my words.)
What this means is that I must pivot to build and rebuild in other online spaces. So if you’d like to join me, here’s where you can find me:
On Bluesky I’m mplbooks.bsky.social
On YouTube I’m https://www.youtube.com/channel/@mplbooks
On Insta I’m mpl_books (private but you can request to follow)
On Threads I’m also mpl_books
And just to make it confusing, on TikTok I’m amanda_innes
I follow back people who don’t seem to be creeps. Particularly other writers and creators, animal lovers, etc. If you send me DMs before establishing a friendly public discourse with me, though, you will swiftly be unfollowed and possibly blocked. I’m not interested in you selling me a tarot reading or some book review deal. (I had to private my Insta due to the creepy dudes and scam artists doing this so often.)
In any case, I do hope to see you around the Interwebs, whichever ports you frequent.