The IT Nerd

I joined Twitter in 2013 to amplify the reach of my blog. And to be frank, I have been able to do with a decent degree of success. I’ve met and interacted with people that I might not have if I wasn’t on Twitter. Plus I got the attention of some brands who I got to chance to work with over the years which helped to increase the visibility of this blog.

But along the way, Twitter started to become toxic. And eventually Twitter became very toxic. I found myself having to block people and report people for using racial slurs towards me. Because at some point over the years, people have found it perfectly fine to degrade, bully, and intimidate people online. Something that I am pretty sure that 98% of them would not do in real life. Still, I continued on with Twitter.

Now we have Elon Musk taking over Twitter. And his desire to make Twitter a town square where people can say and do what ever they want with few if any restrictions is downright frightening. I can see a scenario where every racist, sexist and homophobe among other low life scumbags appearing and making Twitter even more toxic than it already is. Sure Musk is saying that he’ll have a moderation council to make the call in terms of someone crossing the line. And that council will have “diverse viewpoints”. But I really don’t see that being effective, or even happening at all. Because Elon Musk isn’t going to turn Twitter into a town square because he has two big issues right now that need immediate attention. His first goal is making sure that advertisers, which is Twitter’s primary source of income, don’t flee the platform en masse. Which is apparently happening as I type this. The second is to figure out how to pay back the massive amount of money that he borrowed to buy Twitter. Yes he’s slashing jobs. But that’s only going to get him so far. And yes he wants to revamp Twitter Blue to be $8 a month and include verification as part of the deal. But that’s a half baked idea that is facing a large amount of backlash. Largely because part of this scheme allows anyone to be verified. As in literally anyone. The problem with that is that if everyone is verified, then nobody is verified. Plus it’s not as if some rouge nation who wants to use social media to influence elections and politics in another country won’t spend some cash to get a bunch of bots onto Twitter Blue and amplify their message that way.

And Musk is clearly too desperate to make as much money as quickly as possible to see that.

The fact is, that anything and everything he does is being driven by the fact that he wanted to buy Twitter, then tried to get out of buying Twitter, and then was basically forced to do so when it was clear that Twitter who sued him for trying to back out of the deal was going to win that lawsuit. Thus leaving him wondering what is he going to do having massively overpaid for Twitter with money he doesn’t have.

Cue the panic.

And that panic will affect every Twitter user in a negative way. Everyone from the woman who follows Oprah, someone like me who is simply trying to amplify my voice, to politicians or celebrities, and the like. And while he is in full panic mode and making random decisions because of that, Twitter is only going to take a steep decent into being the hellscape that he claims doesn’t want it to be.

And stuff like this from Musk doesn’t help the situation:

oh dear pic.twitter.com/yVjJaytZ5a

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 4, 2022

And why does Musk do stuff like this when people ask him legitimate questions?:

Elon Musk cannot handle being properly schooled. A tragedy in three acts: pic.twitter.com/MXSWQPWo2b

— Randi Mayem Singer (@rmayemsinger) November 4, 2022

Then there’s situations like this one which are becoming increasingly common since Musk took over:

What's left of Twitter's trust and safety team took less than a minute to determine that "shut it Jew" does not violate whatever the rules are now. pic.twitter.com/vt9vXsqOLw

— Mike Rothschild (no relation) (@rothschildmd) November 4, 2022

Ditto for revelations like this post Musk’s massive layoffs:

Yesterday was my last day at Twitter: the entire Human Rights team has been cut from the company.

I am enormously proud of the work we did to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, to protect those at-risk in global conflicts & crises including Ethiopia,

— Shannon Raj Singh (@ShannonRSingh) November 4, 2022

There’s also news that Twitter’s Trust And Safety team has been downsized by 15% ahead of the US mid-term elections. I mean, what could possible go wrong in terms of fighting misinformation during a major election in the US when Musk does that?

In other words, Elon Musk’s panic driven decision making will kill Twitter. Assuming that his erratic and bizarre behaviour doesn’t kill it first. Because what you see above is only a taste of things to come with Musk at the helm of Twitter on what seems to be a suicide mission. Which means that I need to be someplace else. Now it is entirely possible that Musk will pull some sort of rabbit out of the hat and turn Twitter into an ATM machine, and also make it less toxic than it is at present. But to be completely frank, I don’t see either of those things happening under Musk’s leadership.

Now where I will be going after I make what seems to be at this point the inevitable decision to leave Twitter, I have no clue at the moment. But I am considering my options. And you’ll be among the first to find out when I make my decision as to where on social media I go to. The bottom line is that Twitter was in trouble and a toxic environment before Elon Musk. But he’s hasn’t got the capability to fix it, which means that Elon Musk will be the one who writes Twitter’s epitaph. Which is bad news for everyone on Twitter.

This entry was posted on November 6, 2022 at 8:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.