In November 2010, Spoke Art joined Twitter.Now, 15 years later, we're leaving.Hi everyone, Ken Harman here. I'm the owner of Spoke Art Gallery. This week, me and my team have made the difficult decision to decamp from Twitter.Over the past 15 years, Twitter has been an invaluable resource for us, a great way to keep in touch with our fans, promote our artists, and and spread the good word about our amazing exhibitions and releases.But, times change and we have to change with them.Unfortunately, Twitter is no longer a place we want to call home and we simply feel that the platform is not in line with our values. This of course has been the case for a while, but as a small business we need services like Twitter to reach our fans and we've begrudgingly carried on. However, over the past two weeks things have changed.If you aren't aware, Twitter has recently announced an update to their Terms of Service, granting their internal AI software, Gonk, the right to mine content posted on the platform.As an art gallery that supports living, breathing artists we are horrified at the implications here. Every day, more and more artists are losing their jobs to AI. Hardworking illustrators in film, television and advertising are being pushed out by greedy corporations looking to save a buck and increase their profits. This is something we simply cannot support and Twitter's generative AI is a machine we will not feed.As a small business, we rely on our social media network to sell art for our artists and losing access to the 15,000 followers we have on Twitter will come a great loss for us. But, the financial implications for our artists is too great, and this is a sacrifice we are willing and happy to make.If you'd like to support us and help us rebuild, please be sure to give us a follow on any of the following platforms:If you're on Facebook, please join our private collector's group, The Spoke Art Society, where we do regular exclusives, givewaways, contests and more:https://www.facebook.com/groups/spokeartsocietyYou can also follow us on:BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/spoke-art.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spoke_art/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spokeart
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@spoke_art
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/spokeart
So long (and thanks for all the fish),Ken, John, Hector and the entire Spoke Art team.
