closing my twitter account (Patreon)

Twitter, or "X", is an increasingly untenable platform for me and my work, and as of the end of the year, I will be permanently closing my account. The @foulveins account will be permanently logged out and locked, and will remain solely to prevent people from squatting the name, and as a temporary archive of my work.

7th September edit: Finding an alternative platform has been exceedingly difficult, as what I need are the following:

• Somewhere with an actual userbase
• Somewhere to post multiple images/variations
• Somewhere where my work can be easily locked out from those who aren't legally allowed and/or do not wish to see it

There are several options that kind of fit, but nothing has been concrete enough, unfortunately. For me to close Twitter now would severely cut me off from you all, the fans of my work; this is something I do need more time to prepare for than a mere few weeks.

Anyway, as this post is public, I will not be giving links to where to find my publicly posted content on this page, but my Twitter will have updates on where to find me from next year. 

The rest of the post follows below:-

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The final straw hasn't been anything in particular, more a multitude of things that's made me feel like a proverbial boiled frog, in hindsight.

The slow excision of features we never had to pay for before. The increasing amount of people using 'verification' not as a way of saying who they say they are, but to be heard louder than anybody else. The dwindling eyeballs on my work, as a result of that second issue, but also as a result of more and more people leaving the site in response to every change the site has made ever since.

It's complacency, and sunk cost, that's kept me at Twitter, more than anything. But if Twitter can start charging for TweetDeck, they will start charging for scheduled posts, they will start charging for polls, they will start charging for links outside of Twitter. They already throttle links to what Musk sees as competing services; it's not outside the realm of possibility that they'd eventually attempt to monetise that.

For the record, I would've had little problem with monetisation, perhaps, before Elon Musk's takeover. But the concept of that being tied to the old idea of 'verification' is what I can't really get behind. In a strange way, I don't want my work to be boosted. My work, by its very nature, is niche; and I don't necessarily mean the characters & IPs I do fan work of. I don't want people who are opposed to it, or who aren't legally allowed to view it, to be able to do so. Twitter actually does allow for blocking by age group, it's just something that has never been available to NSFW accounts, hence the whole rigamarole of "no age in bio = block" or whatever.

Anyway, the question of where to go, or what to do, is still up in the air, but it's not the end of the world. My Pixiv account will still be updated, as will my Booru archive. My work is still routinely uploaded to sites like Paheal. There's a currently closed foulveins subreddit where my work could go, I am currently looking into Bluesky & Cohost, I have even considered going full Web 1.0 and opening my own domain. I don't know, there's a lot of options, and it honestly feels more exciting than daunting.

(To clarify here as well, Patreon-only work will never be a consideration. For what its worth; all of my work will be made public, some way or another, even if I have to mail it to you physically like it's 1998...)

What I do know though, is Twitter as a platform, is just no longer worth the time and effort. I thank everyone for following me for the past six years; and I would hope that most of you will follow my endeavours on wherever my next base shall be.

Foul