Less Than Half of One Percent

I left X/Twitter yesterday, permanently.

This will be my final post on X.

Recent algorithmic updates have completely killed reach, and the man who owns this platform created a tool that produces child pornography at a staggering scale—which he defends as “free speech.” The latter alone is reason enough to leave, but…

— Ryan Williamson (@rywilwrite) February 1, 2026

For the last several months engagement on posts that mattered—social and political commentary—has been overwhelmingly and increasingly hostile. There are notable exceptions, a few people who would hit like regularly, send me the occasional DM expressing agreement or solidarity, maybe reply or repost. They know who they are, and I see them, love them, and appreciate the support they’ve shown.

But it was an exceptionally small contingent of followers. Less than half of one percent. Small enough I know them each individually by name and consider them friends.

Then there were the people who avoided engaging on serious topics, but I still regularly had good-natured interactions with. Call that another whole percent.

But the other 3,850+ followers? I have no idea who they are. Hate follows? Lurkers? Tourists? Unhappy accidents? I’ll never know. We never interacted. They aren’t bots—I run scans and purge fake accounts regularly. They’re just… there. A meaningless number. A vanity metric.

One of them did show up at the very end to say this though:

I wrote a post about silence being somehow more insidious than hostility, and a guy who was silent for the entirety of my presence showed up to be hostile at the end.

Oh, the irony!

Anyway, as I said in my final post, it’s not an issue of engagement or the lack thereof (although the silence is telling), but quality of engagement. When you’ve been posting about topics that matter deeply and the only interactions aside from a like or two from a handful of known supporters are hostile, that tells you everything you need to know about your audience.

It tells you they’ve become toxic.

So what else can you do with a platform that actively suppresses your reach and an audience who followed you because of who they wanted you to be, and became antagonistic when it turned out you put truth and principles over narrative and tribal loyalty? When they tried to put you in a box but you didn’t fit?

You walk away.

There’s nothing else to do.

I’m still the same guy I was five years ago when I created the account. Pro-liberty, pro-2nd Amendment, anti-cancel culture all the way. I haven’t really changed. Sure, I’ve gotten louder about the issues that matter to me, but I’ve always been progressive on civil rights, anti-authoritarian, classically liberal, and a rabid constitutionalist.

The problem is the views I’ve always held—that the constitution binds everyone, including majorities I might agree with on policy; that dehumanizing rhetoric attacking who you are is far more dangerous than insulting what you believe; that basic human decency is non-negotiable; that the Second Amendment doesn’t contain a partisan exception—these are no longer values the Right holds. They’ve become a personality cult worshipping a golden-haired billionaire they believe is a messiah.

They’ve traded principles for… red hats.

And when tyranny does show up on American streets—not “Trump is a Tyrant,” but actual tyranny, they find it “boring and lacking substance.” They conflate federal agents shooting men and women in cold blood and warrantless raids on American citizens with skateparks filled with sand during COVID; they don’t see a problem with people of color needing to carry proof they belong here—they should be proud to show their papers! (Easy to say when your passport is your skin color.) They loudly parrot replacement theory, blood libel, and blood and soil rhetoric and call themselves patriots. They cheer when the administration shits on the constitution and agencies brazenly proclaim Nazi slogans.

Ein volk, ein reich, ein führer!

This is the Republican party in 2026.

So yeah, there’s definitely an audience misalignment going on here. It can’t be fixed, and neither can the platform.

So I walked away.

I’m not deleting the account. I’ve said what I said for better or worse and the record stands or falls, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever be logging into X again. I won’t be checking notifications or DMs. To those of you who remained true friends and showed support, thank you, and I sincerely hope to see you around.

I’m still here and on my author site. I’m on BlueSky and Instagram and Amazon. I’m not exactly hard to find.