Why I'm saying goodbye to Twitter

Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, The Huffington Post:

To be fair, during the Attawapiskat crisis, the positive messages greatly outpaced the hate mail. But one tweet really stood out. At the height of the crisis multinational giant General Electric tweeted their concerns about the horrific conditions in Attawapiskat. At the time, we hadn't been able to get a single aid agency or government official willing to help the people in crisis. And here was... GE, the oil and gas giant that owns Universal, Comcast, NBC, taking a stand on Twitter.

Foolish me, I thought this would be a game changer. When my staff finally tracked down the thumbs behind the tweet, they were polite but very confused. Yes, they did tweet about Attawapiskat, but they were really at a loss as to why I expected them to get involved. I never heard from them again.

GE, a multinational powerhouse, had tweeted their concern; wasn't that enough? No it's not. Corporate responsibility can't be done in 140 characters. I had tracked down the sixth largest corporation in America and found that they were engaged in the same level of slacktivism as somebody sitting on a couch with a smart phone and a couple of bottles of beer. Talk about dumbing down. At the very least, it was a helpful reminder that real change still comes down to people being willing to step up to the plate and get involved.

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