Twitter and the future
As some may have noticed, I was reconnecting the blog to Twitter on the weekend after a short outage. The process is normally handled by ifttt.com, and it’s now back up just as news comes about Elon Musk buying Twitter for $44 billion.
I’ve enjoyed having Twitter as a side channel to the blog, but I’m seeing people I respect deciding to leave Twitter immediately. I’m not planning to do that right away, and am hoping I don’t lose respect by not doing so. It will depend how Twitter changes under the new ownership.
Any thoughts?
walkerp 17:37 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
As a principle, it’s really terrible that such a public forum can be owned by an individual. It’s just one more blow in the war of private money versus the people.
In practice, this looks pretty bad but I am willing to give it some time and see what policies are actually put in place. If he really can remove bots and make the algorithm open source, that could improve Twitter. But any move towards “free” speech which is less moderated and thus more open to the kind of manipulation and propaganda that went on up until they kicked Trump off, then Twitter could very easily become a powerful vehicle for fascism in the world.
carswell 17:47 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
If Trump rejoins — and maybe if he doesn’t — it will be Twitter Social. But nothing wrong with waiting a while to see what happens. That said, when this possibility was first announced, I tried to shut down my two Twitter accounts (couldn’t because when I changed ISPs a while back, the email account tied to the accounts suddenly — with no grace period — ceased to exist and I hadn’t given Twitter my phone number, so there’s no way for me to log in).
Bert 17:48 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
Yeah, but by definition, Twitter (and all the others) are not public in the terms of the various “free speech” clauses under which people are ruled.
qatzelok 18:28 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
Free speech doesn’t lead to fascism. It takes a lot of manipulation and misery from the oligarchy to make people miserable enough to empower “violent retribution” type of governance.Like fascism, or foreign aggression.
But Twitter isn’t free. It’s private and that won’t change with new owners.
dhomas 18:34 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
When Facebook bought WhatsApp, I stuck around to see what they were going to do with it. As soon as they announced that they were integrating it with Facebook and sending data back to Facebook, I closed my account (I’d closed my Facebook account years prior and had no intention of giving them any more of my data).
I think I’ll take the same wait and see approach with Twitter (though I hardly use it now as-is). I’m not a big fan of Elon Musk’s, but he has done some pretty amazing things: online payments with PayPal (X.com); helping to popularize EVs with Tesla; his work in space exploration with SpaceX; etc.
It’s just all the terrible stuff he says and does that is irksome. I’ll give him a shot to see if Twitter lands on the good or bad pile of Musk endeavours.
Kevin 21:04 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
I think Elon will get bored in a year or two and go away to do something else.
As others have tweeted, he’s a big clown buying a big circus, He’s a new father desperately avoiding his 2 children, and he’s a multi-billionaire still making 420 jokes with everything he owns.
Chris 21:45 on 2022-04-25 Permalink
Twitter is pretty lopsided in who is chooses to ban and not. ex: Trump is banned, but the Taliban is not. Hopefully it’ll end up more balanced, because it’s moderation is definitely heavily on the “woke” side of things.
Ian 08:14 on 2022-04-26 Permalink
Wait, you think the Taliban are “woke” ?
Chris 09:27 on 2022-04-26 Permalink
Ian: no, definitely not. I think the twitter moderators are. Sorry if that was unclear.
DisgruntledGoat 13:21 on 2022-04-26 Permalink
I’ve found the discourse over whether Twitter will become a hate speech filled cesspool humorous. Haven’t we been there since the early to mid 2010s?
It serves a big purpose as a global public utility, but that aspect is pretty hard to monetize.