The way to give up Elon Musk’s Twitter / X

As soon as upon a time, Twitter — now X — was the place to get your memes, world information, and popular culture. Nevertheless, even on the time, being an lively Twitter person additionally required sifting by way of a each day deluge of poisonous characters, bots, and deepfakes. Then the Elon Musk circus got here to city and commenced steadily altering the previously standard social community, to the purpose that a lot of its adherents started bailing by transferring to a number of of the brand new social networks, reminiscent of Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon.

Now that the 2024 US presidential election is over, Musk seems to be like he’s going to be at the very least one of many powers behind the throne. Add to that latest adjustments which have made X much less protected to make use of, and it’s no shock that there’s now a brand new wave of X customers trying to go away the platform. For those who’re certainly one of them, right here’s some recommendation on how you can deactivate your account.

For those who’re nonetheless lively on X or have a variety of pals and followers you need to keep in contact with, it’s possible you’ll need to ensure they know the place you’re going and why. A technique to try this is to first make your account personal in order that solely your present followers can see your account.

• Look within the facet menu on the browser or faucet your private icon within the cellular app.
• Within the browser, choose Extra > Settings and Privateness > Privateness and security > Viewers, media and tagging > Defend your posts.
• Within the cellular app, choose Settings & Help > Settings and Privateness > Privateness and security > Viewers and tagging > Defend your posts.
• Within the browser pop-up, choose Defend.

Now, solely the individuals who observe it is possible for you to to see your posts and different account data. You’ll see a closed lock icon subsequent to your identify within the bottom-left nook of the display.

What you set in your “I’m leaving now” message relies on who your followers are. For those who’ve been fastidiously vetting your account and know just about everybody who’s following you, you may allow them to know the place you’re going and what your new deal with is in case they need to observe you.

If, however, you’re a well-liked individual and should have followers who aren’t utterly reliable, you may both inform them the place you’re going with none particulars — or, to be cautious, merely say goodbye.

How lengthy do you have to go away your account personal earlier than you’re gone for good? Every week or so seems like size of time, however ultimately, it’s as much as you.

For those who’ve been on Twitter / X for some time, you’ll most likely have a backload of tweets that you just may need to hold in case there’s data you’ll need sooner or later or simply as a reminder of previous glories. For those who haven’t been recurrently backing up your account, right here’s how:

• Look within the facet menu on the browser or faucet your private icon within the cellular app.
• Within the browser, choose Extra > Settings and Privateness > Your account > Obtain an archive of your information.
• Within the cellular app, choose Settings & Help > Settings and Privateness > Your account > Obtain an archive of your information.
• You’ll be requested to reenter your password and enter a verification code out of your registered e-mail account, together with probably different verification codes.
• Choose Request archive.

It might take as much as 24 hours to get a replica of your archive; you’ll get notified each by way of the app and by way of e-mail. You’ll get your data in two codecs: HTML and JSON. In accordance with X, the information will embody:

…your profile data, your posts, your Direct Messages, your Moments, your media (photographs, movies, and GIFs you’ve hooked up to posts, Direct Messages, or Moments), a listing of your followers, a listing of accounts that you’re following, your deal with e-book, Lists that you just’ve created, are a member of or observe, curiosity and demographic data that we have now inferred about you, details about adverts that you just’ve seen or engaged with on X, and extra. 

Okay, you’ve informed your followers you’re leaving, and also you’ve obtained your posts safely archived. Now it’s time to deactivate your account. Right here’s how you can do it:

• In your browser, click on Extra within the backside left of the display. Within the cellular app, faucet your profile icon.
• In your browser, choose Settings and Help > Settings and privateness > Your account > Deactivate your account.
• Within the cellular app, choose Settings & Help > Settings and Privateness > Your account > Deactivate account.

There are a number of paragraphs of knowledge to learn earlier than you get to the deactivation hyperlink, together with hyperlinks informing you about what information should be out there after you deactivate your account, how you can change your username, or how you can change your present username to a distinct account.

You’ll additionally learn that your account gained’t be completely gone after this course of — at the very least, not but. X retains your data for 30 days earlier than deleting it completely. To revive your account inside that point interval, log again in and make sure that you just need to reactivate your account.

And bear in mind, if you happen to’re in search of social networking, information, and dialog, you’ve obtained a number of options — or you may simply come right here to The Verge. Don’t fear. We’re all the time right here for you.