The shame of Musk’s takeover is that Twitter was starting to get (a little) better

Elon Musk. Photo (cc) 2019 by Daniel Oberhaus.

The shame of it is that Twitter was starting to get a little better. Some months back I decided to spend $3 a month for Twitter Blue. You had up to a minute to pull back a tweet if you saw a typo or if a picture didn’t display properly. More recently, they added an actual edit button, good for 30 minutes. Best of all is something called “Top Articles,” which shows stories that are most widely shared by your network and their networks. I almost always find a couple of stories worth reading — including the one from The Verge that I’ve shared below.

Anyway, here we are. Billionaire Elon Musk is now the sole owner of a social media platform that I check in with multiple times during the day and post to way too much. Twitter is much smaller than Facebook and YouTube, and smaller than TikTok and Instagram, too. In fact, it’s smaller than just about everything else. But it punches above its weight because it’s the preferred outlet for media and political people. It’s also a cesspool of sociopathy. We’re all worried that Musk will make it worse, but let’s be honest — it’s already pretty bad.

The smartest take I’ve seen so far is by Nilay Patel in The Verge. Headlined “Welcome to hell, Elon,” the piece argues that Musk isn’t going to be able to change Twitter as much as he might like to because to do so will drive advertisers away — something that’s already playing out in General Motors’ decision to suspend its ads until its executives can get a better handle on what the Chief Twit has in mind. Patel also points out that Musk is going to receive a lot of, er, advice about whom to ban on Twitter from countries where his electric car company, Tesla, does business, including Germany, China and India. Those are three very different cultures, but all of them have more restrictive laws regarding free speech than the United States. Patel writes:

The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff…. The longer you fight it or pretend that you can sell something else, the more Twitter will drag you into the deepest possible muck of defending indefensible speech.

Indeed, Twitter has already reinstated the noted antisemite formerly known as Kanye West, although Musk, weirdly enough, says he had nothing to do with it.

My approach to tweeting in Elon Musk’s private garden will be to do what I’ve always done and see what happens. I use it too much to walk away, but I don’t like it enough to wring my hands.