(Image credit: Future) Twitter, Monday taught me, is my default app. It's one of a few apps and sites that I open first when I want to check the news or see what's going on. I curated a feed of news sources, I have my inbox of DMs. And I really use Twitter (probably excessively) when I watch TV shows and live events, to chat with friends about how what's happening. Except now Twitter showed my account as having zero followers and followed accounts. It was all being eroded — something many friends of mine have experienced, I'm not trying to claim originality here — after years of use and upkeep. As much as I play with all the new best Twitter alternatives, I've seen that Threads and Bluesky are not there yet. Mastodon is practically dead already, unless you're a certain kind of tech writer or tech industry worker. Threads direly needs a web app, and Bluesky's invite-only walled garden still feels like a self-inflicted failure. Eventually, I just started thinking about how this failure was the more obvious problem: Twitter has been falling apart for a while. And I kept wondering "what happened?" Looking at the twelve tweets of my own that I could see, I wondered if being lightly critical of Musk and the decision to pivot to X was how I broke some rule. Eventually, I just started thinking about how this failure was the more obvious problem: Twitter has been falling apart for a while. Some tinkering in the transition to X — x.com finally redirects to Twitter — could have broken things. And then I was back (Image credit: Future) Then, around 4 hours after my Twitter account was "suspended" ... it returned to normal. Without explanation from Twitter, everything worked well again. Nobody responded to that email I sent; I never got a notification. This company wants us to send money with its tech? To trust them with our banking info? And sensitive messages in the DMs? I've never been more doubtful of its capability to do this all responsibly. In fact, this is probably the event that's pushing me to rethink how I use my phone and everything else. All so I can one day "X" this app out of my life, and never look back More from Tom's Guide