Ixchell Reyes 0:00
The DIESOL podcast,

Brent Warner 0:03
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes 0:06
Episode 92. Why we left Twitter and where do we go from here?

Brent Warner 0:26
Welcome to DIESOL, this is episode 92. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes 0:32
And I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hey, Brent, how are you doing?

Brent Warner 0:37
Pretty good. How are you?

Good.

I see, no one else is gonna see this. But you have a new setup going on here.

Ixchell Reyes 0:44
I do. Well, I started backwards, I got a really cool keyboard first, when I’ve been needing a desk, and you’ve been asking me to get a better setup for at least two years.

So I got my keyboard and I thought, Oh, I guess I better get a desk to go with it. And then last week, I finally caved and bought the chair. (laughter)

Brent Warner 1:10
So yeah, that’s the backward design principles on how to get a desk and start with a LED. LED backlit keyboard. That’s good. Everything else go down?

Ixchell Reyes 1:21
Yeah, pretty good. I mean, we’re wrapping up the end of the year. And I’m here thinking How the heck did we just finish another year?

Brent Warner 1:33
Yeah, for sure. Things are flying by. We’re, you know, I’m still here in Japan, did a little road tripping to see some family and check out some places? So I’ve been exploring a bit and doing some work on my sabbatical project. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. And maybe a month or two. But yeah, things are going pretty well. And so the rest of the world seems to be falling apart all over the place. But over here, you know, it’s a little bit ignorances blissful kind of setup. I guess.

Ixchell Reyes 2:06
You’ve got great food posts, and coffee posts.

Brent Warner 2:12
Yes, I’m trying trying to share all the food and coffee posts. So So yeah, let’s – we’re, we’re – Halloween is gone, and you know, I’m sad to say goodbye. But I didn’t really didn’t really get super into the Halloween spirit. I tried to

Ixchell Reyes 2:25
You’re in Japan.

Brent Warner 2:26
Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes 2:26
A little different when you overseas.

Brent Warner 2:28
I know, I tried. But I was just busy with other things. So. So we’ll see, I definitely probably will not get into the Thanksgiving. Wait.

Ixchell Reyes 2:38
I just have a question. Did you finish your October? Was it the

Brent Warner 2:44
Godzilla?

Ixchell Reyes 2:45
Godzillaween

Brent Warner 2:45
I totally crashed out on that. So it was like, those movies are like great to have in the background, doing other things, but like sitting down and watching a bunch of Godzilla movies is really hard (laughter). It’s like, Oh my God! and so many of them are like kind of weird kids movies where you’re like, we’re just like this annoying kid that like kinda has semi befriended Godzilla. Like, some of the scenes are amazing, but some of them are just like, Okay, I’m gonna gonna sit through an hour and a half of this. So that being said, the new Godzilla just came out in Japan. And it looks pretty rad

Ixchell Reyes 3:19
I didn’t know there was a new Godzilla.

Brent Warner 3:20
Yeah. It’s called Godzilla minus one. And it’s like, supposedly, like, right after I think World War Two. And so it’s kind of this whole, like, when did Godzilla calm kind of a new origin story, I guess. And so I am going to try to get to that over the weekend. Maybe if I can. Cool. All that said, we’re a little heavier, a little, a little bit more of a bummer conversation today. So yeah, let’s move over. Okay, so shall the, the topic today is why we left Twitter and where do we go from here? So I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this? Well, what is your your experience has been with Twitter in the last year?

Ixchell Reyes 4:05
I’ve been largely been absent. I think I was, at first I used to think, oh, it’s because I’m overseas. And I you know, I’m not going on there. But the reality is, it became more of a What am I going to see when I go on to login and I’m looking for it, you know, ideas from my teacher crew or my you know, my teacher friends on there. But I just haven’t been interested anymore. And I guess for me, it’s like, well, you know, what, a lot of people were kind of are kind of sad. I mean, they’re sad. You saw the RIP twitter twitter is dead. And all of that trending, but I guess things don’t stay the same forever. Right. And I just have been feeling like it’s time for growth or change or evolution. I don’t know if it’s an evolution. I don’t know what it is.

Brent Warner 5:00
Yeah, so I’ve felt like, there’s been a couple parts of this. And we’ll try and get into some of it. But basically, I think the biggest thing that was was a problem for me or the thing that’s been dispiriting dispiriting for me is that you know, even in teacher Twitter, which I mostly like, I tried to clear out a bunch of the, you know, politics and news and all the other stuff. And I tried to stick mostly with to teacher Twitter, but I was getting one fewer and fewer quality things from teachers, and really, the sense of sharing that used to exist, and it’s like, Hey, I’m trying this thing out, why don’t you try it out is really been replaced with like, this whole, like, Yeah, I’m an influencer kind of thing or like, you know, like, just kind of information that you can’t read that doesn’t really sharing or helping that much. It’s more just, like, promoting something moving something. Yeah. And it’s like, and I don’t mind promoting something. But when I’m, I’m not seeing the community that used to be there…

Ixchell Reyes 5:59
And the authenticity and when a colleague would share a really great tool or approach and and then, you know, I guess all the really great teachers who harness the – whatever that tool was got hired by the company. So it’s like, yeah, because inevitably, it’s like, oh, now you’re working for them? Oh, now, you’re working for them. But the quality or the type of posts or sharings, do change because now you’re they’re also being tagged with like the company or whatever catchphrase they have or hashtag to have going. So it gets a little. It’s less, it’s more fabricated. prefabricate. I don’t know what the word is, but I just don’t find it as authentic. Yeah, for me, at least.

Brent Warner 6:42
No, I’m with you. Because it’s like I used to always say and people, people would, you know, get a little they’d get up in their hackles when I would say, I would get that I got a better education through Twitter than I did through my masters. Remember, when I used to say that, and like people would be like, you know, like, upset and angry or whatever it’s like, well, but that was the reality. And that is not the case anymore. Like, this is not something where I could feel like I could go in and just pull the, you know, pick from the minds of really interesting and innovative teachers like that, that has faded away a lot. All of this has come, of course, with, you know, we’re gonna have to say it’s Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and the changes that have come through with that. All of this is well documented. So there’s not a not a, you know, a big thing. But But I think we’re one particular thing that is important to me, on top of all of this is that, you know, basically, it’s become a lot more. I mean, his goal is to make it this unrestricted free speech platform. Or, you know, kind of his goal, who knows what his real goal is? But you know, the whole thing here is that, that then leads to a lot of domination by anti social posters. And so, as educators, we know that there needs to be controls on things for, you know, things to move smoothly. And so if you’re trying to be a part of a society or part of a group, you can’t just let everything go free. Like you can’t let the students who are making problems continue to make problems, you have to deal with them, you have to kind of sort through them. And you have to kind of, you know, we have, we have the systems in place for all of that. And so one thing that I found from an article called from, from the tweets to hate speech, which came from a Montclair University Center for Strategic Communication, it said it was this really, this got into this idea that, you know, it’s like that Musk’s goal is kind of similar to what 4chan does. And so what they said was that, specifically, 4chan serves as a space, where online anonymity coupled with limited restrictions on speech has allowed virulent hate content to be shared without fear of platform response, 4chan has hosted a range of anti social content, including the call for the abuse of women, hostility toward the trans community, aggressive anti semitism and white nationalism. And so when you start looking at those things, you’re like, oh, yeah, these are all the things that are starting to pop up. And I actually have like, statistically grown inside of Twitter. And so then we’re sitting here as a teacher going, well, are these things that I want to support implicitly by being a part of this community, even if my side of the community isn’t supportive of that, or whatever that is, like, there’s a conversation, we’ll get into it, but but I just thought it was really interesting, because 4chan is known for being awful, right? Like, it’s, I mean, it’s the breeding ground for school shooters, right? It is the breeding ground for…

Ixchell Reyes 9:36
It’s like the dark web. That’s not the dark web, but it’s like, yeah, basically on the web.

Brent Warner 9:41
Yeah. And so it’s like, well, you know, is that something I want to participate in? And we’ll get into it, but I mean, that’s, that’s my – For me that’s a no.

Ixchell Reyes 9:50
Yeah. And you and I have gone back and forth on this for quite a while, several months. I think it’s been a year maybe even more because we’ve seen some of the changes and Another study from this year in February conducted by the Center for countering digital hate, analyzed the publicly available available figures on tweet impressions, which is what what Elon now calls them right impressions,

Brent Warner 10:18
but he blocked access to that stuff now too, right?

Ixchell Reyes 10:20
So yes! because after this happened, right, and he’s he’s suing them because… anyway. But But what you’re what you were talking about 4chan, and just 10 of these accounts that had been blocked several times and actions had been taken because of the nature of their postings, he allowed them all back in. And just those 10 accounts, just those 10 accounts, amassed 2.5 billion impressions and the study, estimate estimated that the ads being placed on those account postings were generating up to $19 million a year just by those 10 accounts just from those 10 accounts. So if you think about and this were like Kanye West, what’s that one guy, another guy who’s in trouble for trafficking, girls,

Brent Warner 11:18
oh, Andrew Tate.

Ixchell Reyes 11:20
Andrew Tate! I was gonna say some Tate guy. I mean, I didn’t even know about Tate till he was trending. And I thought, What the heck. And now of course, we all know about him. So that stuff really bothers me. Because I was starting to see when I would click on things, I was starting to see advert advertisements that now actually don’t look like advertisement. So you have a hard time blocking them, where I if I’m going to advertise, where we post tools or strategies to my own teachers that I am training, I and my teachers may be may not be new to Twitter, or sorry, you may be new to Twitter, I want them to also come to a platform that’s going to be safe and friendly for them. And right now, I don’t feel like that’s what I want them to be seeing. And so no, I just kind of it sort of, yeah, Twitter for me has been dead. And I think maybe it’s now a time where I’m done.

Brent Warner 12:14
Yeah. And I was worried about early on and saying well, is actually increasing and hate speech and all these problems? Or is this just kind of my imagination and people just talking and I’m in some sort of echo chamber?

Ixchell Reyes 12:28
Yeah – gaslighting yourself?

Brent Warner 12:29
Yeah. But there are, there are lots and lots and lots of studies showing that the active hate speech has increased. So there’s this one it’s written about in the LA Times, and you can get access to the actual data there. But it’s basically from researchers from USC, UCLA, UC Merced, Oregon State, they, they prove that the daily use of hate speech by those who had posted hateful tweets nearly doubled after Musk finalized the sale. And the overall volume of hate speech also doubled sitewide. So, so you’re seeing this just like feeling that like, Hey, it’s okay to be hateful to you know, promote hate speech, all these other things. And so again, same thing, hey, I’ve got a platform on, you know, I’ve got some some popularity on this thing. And then your students go in and see it. And it’s like, well, this is the thing that makes money off of hate speech. Is that something that you want to promote? Again, hard, really hard, but but, you know, again,

Ixchell Reyes 13:28
ultimately, again, we yeah, we stand against that. Which brings us to So, one of the quick one of the topics we constantly talked about is where do we go? Where do we establish ourselves? Where do we, what’s the next place? And, uh, you and I try every everything, right? Where the early embraces of, of, of different platforms. And I found this really interesting panel by Ryan Alexander from the future trends forum. And this was a panel of higher education, names. And so they’re talking about where are educators going after Twitter? And I guess the issue and I think it’s been the issue for us to is that the challenges of places that feel similar to Twitter, like blue sky is still invitation only and so we’re not seeing the rapid growth there. So there’s not as much interaction and then places like Mastodon which have better safeguards in place I suppose for what Twitter doesn’t isn’t as user friendly as as Twitter was and that’s what you and I have constantly you know, when we are on Mastodon, but we don’t it’s not really often come that yeah, very often. And other educators mentioned that they were taking time off platforms in general so that they could spend more time connecting with people without actually replacing the site. And then what Ryan Alexander said that basically what what’s happening is there’s some kind of reduction or a transformation. And I guess that that’s why we’re here.

Brent Warner 15:08
Yeah, well, that’s that’s what we’re talking about. Well, we’ll get into the platform’s individually, in the second half year, but I guess I kind of want to just get into this question and a little bit of a discussion, because they said, you know, it’s kind of how much of the act, how much do the actions of the platform need to align with your ideals. And so there was an article from Inside Higher Ed called more academics tape flight, take flight from Twitter’s restrictions and alternatives grow. And it said, basically, it’s one of the interviewees had said that like when he was looking at Musk reportedly firing employees without notice, not reportedly, I mean, it’s happened, right. But they were saying, he said, you know, given the vast majority of my writing at that time was about treating employees better. There was a values based conflict for me, and I didn’t feel comfortable supporting that. And so this is a part that has really been interesting to me, trying to kind of balance this out. Because I, I’ve been like, I don’t want to put any pressure on other teachers or anyone to say like, Hey, you should be here or you shouldn’t be here.

Ixchell Reyes 16:10
We’re not judging, right?

Brent Warner 16:12
Right. Right.

Ixchell Reyes 16:13
It’s more of – this is a very personal decision.

Brent Warner 16:16
Yeah. And there’s a lot to it, right? Because we’ll get into a little bit, but like, I guess I kind of want to get into this conversation, though. Because to me, I’m thinking, Well, what is our responsibility? And this is you and me, Ixchell, anyone who’s listening, you know, like, like, don’t feel like we’re attacking. Like, that’s not the

Ixchell Reyes 16:31
Or that we’re saying. There’s “the you” and then there’s “us”

Brent Warner 16:34
Right, right, right. Yeah. But But I am thinking about this. And I’m really conflicted, because it is a question of what is our responsibility as English language teachers, we work with international students, we work with, you know, underrepresented students, minoritized students, right. And then when we’re sitting there on a hate speech dominated platform, right. Some people are out there saying, Well, I want to stay there because I want to, you know, counter the misinformation, right. And like, people need to be there to make sure that other so it doesn’t become its own hate speech echo chamber, right? And then or, on the other hand, should we move to a place that is more productive and safe, and, you know, a place that is, you know, welcoming and open and appropriately, monitoring the difference between free speech and hate speech, right, and saying, I mean hate speech is part of free speech, but like, but to be able to say, like, hey, it’s not really appropriate to say these things here. Right. And so this is kind of I don’t know, where do you stand on this Ixchell? Because it’s like, what what, what should we be thinking about as? What are what are we representing when we’re when we’re out there in the social media world?

Ixchell Reyes 17:46
I think that’s it. I think that when I started to second guess what I was going to, if I was going to post a Twitter post that I had made to someone else, like a student or a student teacher, or a pre service teacher or teacher trainee, I started preempt or pre giving a, like a heads up apology.

Brent Warner 17:46
Yeah!

Ixchell Reyes 17:50
Well, there may be some some posts on there. That’s not what do you know, take a look, you’ve got to be, but it’s like, why is that? Why do I have to? I never had to do that before. One of the things that

Brent Warner 18:18
I’m sorry that I put on Twitter, but you can.

Ixchell Reyes 18:22
And I’m sorry that there’s a comment that somebody made? And of course, yes, I could delete and etc. But again, it’s almost like that, that joy that I used to get from that free information that was given from other teachers who also wanted me to grow and wanted to see what I made, what I did with their whatever they were sharing their tool and create this collaborative community. It wasn’t it’s just there’s barricades to it now. And, and I know I mean, I used to say the same thing as you. People ask, where do you get all your ideas is if Twitter educator Twitter, the Twitter teachers are like the the people who are so welcoming, and so open and willing to share and it just kind of has changed from that. And that’s okay. I think I think I started thinking, not everything is permanent. So I think that that we’re seeing that it’s a shift, and I’m ready to make the transition. And maybe I was ready for a while, but I just didn’t. I think the podcast sort of that was our first that was our first social media platform. I think where we first started at that time, right? Oh, yeah, that’s Yeah, we really, were very active.

Brent Warner 19:38
Yeah. And that’s how you and I connected and all these other things, but yeah. So it’s like, it’s wild. And so So I think we’re gonna shift over to talk a little bit, you know, I was kind of pre show was talking to you a little bit about this idea. I’ve, you know, been in many of these other alternatives and we’ll, we’ll talk them through a little bit. But But All I’ll say, even before we start is that like, when I’m starting to explore these other platforms, it really does feel like this post apocalyptic wasteland, right? Like, like, I’m walking around in the desert. And then I see some shadowy figure out there. And I’m like, Oh, I know. And then a wave at them, and they’re like, Oh, it’s good to see you. And then, and then the dust storm comes up again. And then they just drift in the other direction. And they’re the community is gone. And we’re all just wandering around looking for a sip of water somewhere. So it’s a bummer, though, because it’s like, it’s so much is lost because of

Ixchell Reyes 20:42
so much cake. Good came out of it. Right. And so I think, well, maybe we’ll, we’ll talk about it when we head over the transition.

Brent Warner 20:50
Yeah. Well, I think we could do that now. So I think I think, to start looking at what these changes are, right, what are the places that we might go to so? So Ixchell I know you’ve you’ve logged into some of them? I don’t know if you’ve been

Ixchell Reyes 21:01
I have accounts on almost everything except for… Yeah, well, I’ll let you start.

Brent Warner 21:08
Okay, so let’s start with blue sky. So what’s what’s your impression of blue sky?

Ixchell Reyes 21:12
So I thought I had an account on blue sky. This is the Twitter 2.0. Jack Dorsey Twitter with, but it’s it’s invitation only. So it’s still pretty restricted. And I’ve been waiting and I thought I had gotten an invitation and I never did. So I was so excited thinking No, ever forgetting one. Nope. But you have. You did, right.

Brent Warner 21:34
Yeah. Yeah. Katie McNamara gave me one when she came on the show. So

Ixchell Reyes 21:38
then I asked, and I think it, you have to, I don’t, how do you get an invite to get me on there,

Brent Warner 21:44
I’ll go take a look and see if I can get you an invite. But I’ll just say like, it’s been pretty quiet over there. Like, there hasn’t been much activity from my, from my experience. And again, I’m trying to find people to follow and everything but it’s like, I just, it just hasn’t picked up very much for me, and I haven’t spent much time in it. So. So we’ll see. Like, maybe there’s some possibility there. But I feel like in the race that’s currently going on. It’s not it’s not a very strong contender. But Mastodon Have you played with mastodon?

Ixchell Reyes 22:14
Yes, I Well, yes. And no, yes. And no, I did like mastodon. But again, if I wanted to recruit my friends over or, you know, new recruits, it would be it would take it would be quite hard to get them to start hosting. As opposed to when I used to say, Oh, you don’t have a Twitter account? Oh, my gosh, you just have to search for this. You know, hashtag now you can’t even do that. Because he can’t search you have to have an account. Yeah. So there are more educators there. I think that I don’t know that they’re as active. Yeah, when anytime I log in, I do see new posts, but it’s nothing that keeps me there long enough to call myself yet a tutor has

Brent Warner 23:06
I love the concept of behind Mastodon like is 100% in my wheelhouse in terms of like, the kind of the punk DIY ethic like it’s making things work. It’s about you know, just, you know, it’s distributed platform, no one really controls it, all of those things are awesome. And they just did not make it accessible. Like it’s just hard to use, and it you know, anyone who’s listening that uses it there can be like, no, no, you just have to do this. And it’s like, you just have to do these 25 steps. Just start working with it. It’s like, no, it needs to be one step right. Like it needs to be login and start right like and so. So as much as I love the concept behind it, if they could clear out a ton of the issues with really simplify it, I think it has has the potential to really take off but but I’m also a little bit concerned now that just the the construction of it doesn’t allow for you know, the backwards simplification of it, because it’s decentralized and so so I don’t know, I don’t know what’s really going to happen with it. But but on the other hand, we do have some really a really, really simple one. Made by meta, which is threads.

Ixchell Reyes 24:22
Yeah. And you know, I’ve been tempted I was trying not to because I have kind of cut down on Facebook and I you know, Facebook is okay, it’s gotten a little bit less controversial for me, I don’t my my feeds a mess. I don’t know what I get why I get it, and then I’m getting stuff that I don’t even subscribe to. So I just kind of give up on it. But it keeps our diesel Facebook accounts a lot. But on Instagram, I noticed that they’re now featuring comments from threads. Yeah, and it’s actually doing up pretty good job of guessing what kind of stuff I might be interested in. Because I’ve clicked on several. And normally I would have been like threads and then that interested but I thought no, you know what? That I recognize that name. And so you have a threads account, what’s your experience? Yeah,

Brent Warner 25:18
I like it quite a bit actually, I, you know, like, I’m actually shocked, because I’m not a very big metal fan, you know, like, I don’t, you know, like Facebook, I logged off a long time ago, I’ve been on Instagram the whole time. And, you know, like, it’s it, you know, and it was hard because I thought about leaving it for a long time to just because I didn’t really like what Facebook and what Meadow was doing, how it runs, but, but after all of this, I don’t know, I feel like I’m changing gears and going well, like maybe, you know, if it’s if it’s the lesser of two evils, or if it’s, you know, a, like their climate cleaning up some of the things that were issues. And threads is still pretty bare bones, it’s missing a lot of key features. And in particular, for me, the one that’s really what’s helped stopping me from really using it is that you can’t search in Oh, you can’t search outside of English speaking countries and Spanish speaking countries. So like, so they have the search function, you can search for people’s names, but I can’t go in and actually search for topics that I’m interested in. And so I just have to wait for things to pop up that I’m interested in, because I’m in Japan, and so they don’t allow me even though I’m an English speaker, I can’t go in there and search. And so that’s really holding me back. And they’re, they’re prioritizing development of other things. And I guess they must have a strategy for it. And I don’t understand it, because they’re like, oh, it’s really important that we put these voice messages in here, but we don’t have lists or DMS, you know, like, all of these things that they clearly have the ability to do, because all of these features are inside of Instagram and other ways, right? But But anyways, they it is a pretty good community. So far, it seems like it seems like it’s growing and building and even the stuff that they’re suggesting to me on their algorithms tend to be decent. Not tons of educator stuff yet, but I’m out there searching for it. I’m trying to find things. And so I think threads may be has some real potential, but it might still be a little bit down the line.

Ixchell Reyes 27:20
Well, that might just get me to download it.

Brent Warner 27:25
At this point functional.

Ixchell Reyes 27:26
Yeah, I liked the comment. Like the comment. I missed the commenting and the thread. Yeah, the threads. Yeah, that

Brent Warner 27:32
Yeah, the community seems to be pretty good there.

Ixchell Reyes 27:34
So I actually thought I was going to quit Instagram, because I wasn’t interested in on Instagram, once it became this, like Snapchat wants to be short stories and whatever else they had on there. But I find my I find that now that I’ve left Twitter, and I’ve sort of stayed away from other platforms. Instagram has been the place where I go, and I’m not posting as much but I am consuming more. Yeah. Or before I loved to post but I I didn’t like seeing all the ads. I still get a lot of ads. But now I sort of faced that I better tell it what kind of things I do like so I don’t get I was getting like Rogaine stuff. And I was like, Oh, I guess the people around in my neighborhood must be that’s what must be what they’re searching for. Because it you know, locates to see what people in your area are searching. Okay, better to tell you that I like gaming stuff. And so yeah, that’s how I got my keyboard, incidentally,

Brent Warner 28:31
Their ads do tend to be pretty decent. I mean, they’re better at focusing those ads than anything else, I think but but you’re right. It’s kind of like, well, and I have those mixed feelings too. It can be fun, but it can also be a time suck. And I really wish they slow down on the suggested posts. And really Yes, you know, like everybody and I know they say this is not what you know what actually drive things. But everybody I know that talks about any of these things, just like just let me see everything from the people that I follow in the order that they posted it reverse chronological order, like that’s all anybody wants from any social media platform. Never given it it would be nice that they did that.

Ixchell Reyes 29:13
And it doesn’t matter how many times you say I’ve seen this post too many times and they’ll say I don’t want show you this post again, but it sure will show you someone who collaborated with that company. Like Tim, who I’m not gonna support Tim Wu on principle, and I keep saying all these Timo collaborations,

Brent Warner 29:30
Tim is all over the place. Yeah. Okay, so that’s Instagram. Yeah, Instagram, Facebook, I still not back on Facebook properly.

Ixchell Reyes 29:40
The you’ll be I think you’ll be back.

Brent Warner 29:43
Well, I don’t know. I’m wondering a little bit about it just for cross posting from you know, because because a lot of the work that I’m doing around AI might be useful to people on Facebook. That’s kind of why I’m thinking about is like, I get the feeling that there might be people out there that are really needed. with AI and ESL stuff, and then if there’s still a big teacher community on Facebook, then maybe I should build that platform to be able to post to it. I’m not totally sure. But I’m something I’m thinking about anyways, because I don’t I don’t know how big that conversation is going over there. But

Ixchell Reyes 30:19
I think it’s worth Yeah, I think it’s worth going in there. Because the higher ed community is quite active. And and where before, I think a few years ago, you and I were constantly talking about how Oh, they’re all of the teachers are over on Twitter. And this is why we wanted people to join Twitter, but now it’s sort of shifted, and maybe you have a new generation of teachers out there who now were exposed to Facebook differently, because maybe they joined Instagram first and then they became Facebook account holders. So you know, the population or the audience shifts to because I’ve I’ve seen that people are interacting with certain posts that I make on their from our diesel podcast, and then also clicking on other educational forums where I found out that the chats are actually or, you know, conversations are actually kind of likely they’re going back and forth. So it’s worth it. So anyway, the one that I still resist because it reminded me of a Facebook for old people. But now I’m one of those old people is LinkedIn. And I still don’t get it.

Brent Warner 31:36
I don’t I love. It’s like, it’s I know, I and I see these posts on, you know, online people like, oh, it’s LinkedIn is the worst. And I’m like, I get it. But like, once I got on it, and I started just being in with my colleagues at school, and then other professors like, community college scene, there is great. The

Ixchell Reyes 31:58
Yeah, maybe it depends on what it

Brent Warner 31:59
Yeah, could, it could totally depend, a little bit of ESL stuff going on inside of there. But like, LinkedIn is just, it’s so awesome for me and like, it’s really, we get to actually enjoy being the most for social media, because it’s just like, Okay, we’re professionals, we’re talking about our careers, we’re talking about things that make a difference in our work. And it’s none of the other stuff. And so I don’t have to deal with like, you know, just like people don’t post there. At least I don’t see them like, yeah,

Ixchell Reyes 32:29
they’re like, Alright, you’re avoiding them a little more.

Brent Warner 32:32
Yeah, hot takes on this TV show. I’m like, okay, cool, like in the right setting, but like, but when I’m just like, hey, I just want to do work related professional stuff, find out things that were related to AI or to teaching or whatever else it is. I’m super into LinkedIn. Yeah, just as much so so maybe

Ixchell Reyes 32:52
you and I go through the face where you get into this tool first. And then I reject it reject that rejected, and I finally given because this happened with JIF and GIF. I don’t know which one I settled on.

Brent Warner 33:05
GIF (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes 33:07
And then it happened with Instagram. Yeah, so maybe LinkedIn in the future for me, I don’t know. I’m not rejecting it. 100% yet, but. But then, I also kind of had a, so if there are listeners out there who sort of been weighing on making the transition, and are afraid of leaving their teacher cohort, or their followers, or whatever it is that they cultivated there. What made it maybe we should talk a little bit about what made it easier for us to make that transition. I know that for you and I, we always talk about what it is that we want to stand for. So the moral compass, or our gut feeling always drives that first. And then you and I always, you know, I don’t know what to think about this. But here’s, here’s what I think. And then we sort of talk it through. Usually, I you confirm a lot of like, my gut feelings. Yeah. But I think what made it go ahead. Oh, no,

Brent Warner 34:07
go please start.

Ixchell Reyes 34:08
I was gonna say what made it easier for me is that I could talk to you about it and say, without any, any judgment. And I think that I’m glad you said that at the beginning of this, of this show, that it’s it’s a we’re not trying to look down on anyone who decides to stay or anything like that, but it’s a personal decision. And it’s if you if you decide that you’re gonna go cold turkey, but you’re not ready, you’re gonna go back. And if you’re trying to make a change, Scott, I just think you have to be prepared. And I think one of the ways that we prepared as we were deciding on whether to keep posts up because we’ve created this series of beautiful educational posts, but then at the same time, how many millions of posts are added every day that you know, unless you want it to search archives for something specific SSR one post gets seen that De, and perhaps another day, and then maybe never again.

Brent Warner 35:06
I mean, it’s nice to think that like we’ve added or contributed or to, you know, people’s conversations. But I think that was mostly at a certain point in time, you know, and it doesn’t really, it doesn’t really hold for a long history, even though it’s all there. So one thing one you can do is go download your archive in Twitter. And there are actually some ways, I haven’t done it myself yet. It’s not super easy, but you can actually then take that archive and put it up on your website. So I’ve seen some people go, here’s my entire Twitter archive as like, you know, a website page or whatever, and so that you can get access to it that way, if you want to kind of keep those ideas in there. But the truth is, like, you know, we’re not huge, and we have a few 1000 followers, or whatever else it is, but like, so that’s small potatoes, right? Like, I mean, really, in the big in the real scheme of things. And so a lot of people are like, well, I’ve got, you know, 10,000 followers or whatever it’s like, okay, but like, it doesn’t really mean that the

Ixchell Reyes 36:02
connection, the connections, aren’t there. I mean, a lot of the times the people that I that I did meet from Twitter, I now interact with them on Instagram, because they’re most likely also posting on Instagram. And we do have back and forth conversations that aren’t public as a, you know, as a Twitter post, but I do reach out to them. And I do tell them, hey, there’s a job have a job fair here, send it to your people. And so yeah, I still connect with the people that matter.

Brent Warner 36:31
Yeah. And, and then for me, it was a slow fade out of Twitter to like, because you and I were talking about I mean, if you go back and listen to the archive of the last year, like, what do we do?

Ixchell Reyes 36:42
Like and it was just like there Mastodon, we sort of talked about it every time.

Brent Warner 36:46
Yeah, we did. And so it’s, it hasn’t been an easy thing, right? Because because it hasn’t been easy. we’re creatures of habit, and we know what we’ve liked. And so when that changes, we’re resistant to say that it’s actually changed even though it has and so. So anyways, what I ended up doing was I found an app called redactor. redact on the Mac. And basically, you can click on it, it can go in and just delete all the old posts you have, or it can delete, you know, everything that you’ve done, or you can choose a timeline. So So I went in and just deleted everything, except for my most recent posts, and just my most recent posts have said, Hey, here’s where you can find me else. In other words, sorry, in other places. And that was the end of it.

Ixchell Reyes 37:32
And you did it on a Mac. And I was able to download the app directly to my phone, and I just did everything from my phone. And I guess the thing that I liked about it that that pushed me to do the whole thing is that you could select whether you wanted to save certain tweets and not delete them, or whether you wanted to save certain any tweet by a particular person. And so it made it a little gave me choices. So it wasn’t all like 100% deletion. So I kind of did it in slow, like a few days at a time. And then I was like, No, I don’t need to keep this already deleted everything else. Am I really gonna log in to go back and look at my bookmarks? Probably no, because if I have it in a bookmark, I probably say that somewhere else, too. So redact is free on my Apple phone. I don’t know if for Mac, you had to pay for it. But the free version worked for me. Yeah. And that made it also easy because you don’t have to pay a lot of other programs ask you to pay for however many tweets you’re going to delete.

Brent Warner 38:36
Yeah, it took a little while to find it. So it is there though. Okay, so we don’t really have a clear answer as to where we will be for definite in the future.

Ixchell Reyes 38:51
And that’s ok. You will find us.

Brent Warner 38:53
You can use DIESOL.org. We’re in places I guess. And so please feel free to reach out keep the community alive, but it’s gonna have to be a different view of what it was from the past.

Ixchell Reyes 39:08
All right, it is time for our fun finds. And this time I have novelists olive oil soap, and this is a company that a college friend actually founded. And recently I was searching for her because she’s an author reader. She writes poetry. And I found that she had gotten this project off and it’s successful and it’s out there and so you can buy you know, the holidays are coming up. And you can purchase 100% olive oil soap that’s traditionally made since the 10th century in Palestine, so novelists olive oil soap.

Brent Warner 39:48
Mine is Goma Dofu,

Ixchell Reyes 39:51
so it was sesame?

Brent Warner 39:54
Yeah, sesame tofu right and so what we found is as a dessert so this is not really traditionally a dessert but we found figured out a way to make this into a dessert so basically it’s this Sesame Tofu and then instead of covering it with like the the sesame dressing or whatever we were covering it in this Japanese Black Honey that you can buy and then the the powder that you find on the dango. Like the little… the that brown powder.

Ixchell Reyes 40:29
Oh, what is it called? It’s, I think of it. I’m

Brent Warner 40:33
drawing a blank right now. But anyways, yeah. So you put that on. And so that’s been our little dessert instead of like super sweet, sugary things. And it’s actually turned out to be really nice. And so I don’t know if you can get this in the States or other places. But if you can find it Goma Dofu. It’s really outstanding.

Ixchell Reyes 40:55
All right, we are on YouTube. That’s our latest dumping episode.

Brent Warner 41:03
Great, great promotion (laughter) That’s our for our dump! You can go to YouTube for our dump!

Ixchell Reyes 41:10
Share the show, buy us a coffee, support us through Patreon. leave a review or give us a shout out. We have still one of a kind DIESOL pin so you can win one. Make sure to tag us on whatever platform it is that you leave a shout out.

Brent Warner 41:26
For show notes and other episodes, check out DIESOL.org/ 92 That’s the number nine two and you can listen to us at VoicED Canada. You can not find us on Twitter. Yes, we’ll have to change that language. You can not find us on Twitter. You can find us on other social media platforms. I am typically I think everywhere I’m at @BrentGWarner.

Ixchell Reyes 41:48
And I’m at Ixy underscore Pixy that’s @Ixy_Pixy on most of the platforms

In swahili thank you is Asante Asante for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.