A Tech Tip: Ever wanted to leave Elon Musk’s X platform? Here’s how you can do it

London — After Elon Musk acquired Twitter, changed its name, fired many of its employees and made other major changes, a steady stream of celebrities, public figures, organizations and ordinary people left the social media platform. .

Some accuse Musk of turning what was once a fun place into a chaotic and toxic place, pointing to moves like allowing polarizing figures like Donald Trump back in. Others are turned off by Musk’s juvenile humor or how he overloads their feeds. With his posts, often from the right side to expand the traps.

They turn to competing sites like BlueSky, Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, and Reddit. Some even – gasp – quit social media altogether.

So if you’ve decided it’s time to quit X, here’s what you need to do:

Start by deactivating your account, which starts a 30-day countdown until your account is permanently deleted. Go to Settings and Privacy, then go to the Account tab and click Deactivate your account, enter your password and confirm that you want to proceed.

Once you go ahead, your profile and username will be hidden from public view. If you change your mind, you can stop the process by logging in at any time during the 30-day period.

If you’ve signed up for a subscription, such as a premium account, cancel it if you don’t want to make another payment. Subscriptions are automatically canceled only when the account is deleted.

If your account somehow gets reactivated even if you don’t want it to, X says in its help pages that it might be because you’ve given access to third-party apps. These are created by other software developers and can do things like read and post or access messages directly on your behalf.

To see which third-party apps you’ve been granted access to, go to the Settings menu, then Security & Account Access. Click Apps & Session, and then Connected Apps. You can revoke access to individual apps by tapping or clicking on each one.

If you suspect that a rogue app still has access to your account, try changing your password for X.

Before you leave for good, you can download an archive of all your data from your time on Twitter and X. This can be useful if you want to view a memorable post you’ve written, refer back to direct messages you’ve exchanged with other users, or find accounts you’ve followed or followed you back.

In the settings menu, you need to enter your password to request information, which will come in a zip file. When I requested my archive, which was 211 megabytes of data, it was available for download about 24 hours later.

What happens to that data once you’re gone for good? X says on its privacy page that it retains user profile information and content “for the duration of your account.” It keeps other “personally identifiable data” for up to 18 months, unless it is more specific about what that data is.

It has become a ritual for X users to announce that they are leaving the platform. Politicians and celebrities have used his latest post to take a shot at Musk, warning that the site is becoming too toxic, or letting their followers know about other social media sites they use. Then, their statements usually disappear because their account is deleted.

Users who are not famous in X have prepared heartfelt farewell letters on their blogs or platforms such as LinkedIn, explaining their reasons for leaving. This is not necessary, although it may help you get closure.

Do you really want to quit forever? If you’re not ready to commit to complete deletion, you can close your account instead.

Go to the privacy section in your settings, then click on your posts and then tick the boxes to protect your posts and videos.

Protecting your posts means that only people who follow you will be able to see them. Any other user will see a lock. If they try to track you, you’ll get a notification asking for access.

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Is there a technical challenge you need help figuring out? Email us with your questions at onetechtip@ap.org.

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