My thoughts on the end of Twitter

If you asked me yesterday, “Is this the end of Twitter?” My answer would have been yes.

Today, after the reinstatement of certain banned individuals and the continued banning of other individuals, I finally may be ready for it to go.

I am not happy about this, and I don’t think any of us should be. Twitter, like so much of social media, has become a cesspool of extremist ideologies, dodgy financial schemes, and dangerous people. But it also is a source for social discourse, commerce, and social communication.

On a personal level, through Twitter I have interacted with companies, celebrities, artists, musicians, family members, coworkers, webcams, weatherbots, newspapers, and more. I’ve also used it to promote charities, businesses, and events. Twitter was never the perfect platform for me, but it served my needs, 140 characters at a time.

From a global social and political perspective, Twitter has been a champion of free speech and a rallying point for dissidents of all shapes and sizes. It helped to bring about the “Arab Spring”, and sadly, it helped to bring about the January 6th insurrection. Unfortunately that is the burden of being a platform that is the town square; all speech is given the opportunity to be shared.

That makes Twitter dangerous.

There are many regimes, many companies, and many people that are happy to see Twitter fail. The top name on this list: Elon Musk. His efforts to purchase Twitter were financed in part by regimes that wanted a free speech platform like Twitter to go away. He will never have to pay a dime back of those loans.

When Twitter falls, the other social media platforms will be next. Congress is primed to ban TikTok. Facebook is imploding (and if it goes down it takes Instagram with it).

There were already heavy job losses in the tech sector with Facebook, Amazon, and Google too. Add in the mass exodus from Twitter and we now have a real crisis.

Twitter’s demise is not to be celebrated. Elon Musk is not losing anything from this. We are.

If you have read this far, thank you.

Please leave me a comment or send me an email with your social media contacts.

Stay safe, Be kind.

“Forward”