On Friday, October 28, I went to sleep after posting on Twitter. When I woke up the next morning, the site had become 4Chan. Immediately after Elon Musk bought the platform, it was flooded by racist and antisemitic trolls. Perhaps the moderation hadn’t changed—it would be a week before Musk laid off half the company—but these trolls were emboldened, excited by the prospect that Twitter would become the new Gab. It reminded me of the moment right after Donald Trump was elected. Their guy had won, and now they’d get the run of the place.
Musk has owned Twitter for just over 10 days, and the shift is radical and profound and dystopian as hell. On Thursday night, some employees discovered he had begun laying off half the company after they were logged out of corporate Slack and email accounts.
The carnage was inflicted in a typically Muskian fashion: An email told Twitter employees, “If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email. If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.”
But the chaos wasn’t controlled. The New York Times reported that at least one of the roughly 3,700 laid-off employees was locked out of the company’s systems during a call about the Twitter Blue product. Musk’s severe layoffs, which included gutting election information teams, could fuel a misinformation nightmare just ahead of the midterms (though upending the platform’s long-running blue-check verification system, originally annouced on Saturday, seems to now be on hold until just after Election Day). Meanwhile, Twitter is reportedly asking some just-fired employees to return, and Musk, who has heralded the return of “comedy” and “free speech” on the platform, began warning users on Sunday against impersonating people after some prominent accounts began tweeting as “Elon Musk.” Watching Musk melt down feels like watching Kanye West melt down feels like watching Trump melt down. We are trapped in a Möbius strip of narcissistic autocrat.
I never thought Musk would buy Twitter. I thought he’d get out of it at the last minute, and evidently, so did he. But he didn’t. For Musk, Twitter is a very expensive toy. But for a lot of us, Twitter isn’t a toy at all. Many journalists and politicians devote hours a day to the platform. I am one of the worst offenders. I love Twitter. Much of my digital life (a.k.a. my life) happens on Twitter. I find my news on Twitter. And I find it very useful to see what other people think of the news I’m reading.
But I’m not just on Twitter to get and share information. I also use Twitter for its most grandly spiritual and profound purpose: to mock terrible politicians like Ted Cruz. And my hours on Twitter have not been in vain: The platform has been incredibly good to me. After having kids, I got back to writing by knocking out 140 characters at a time. My hours and hours on the platform were rewarded with over a million followers, and even more importantly, a sense of community. It’s corny, but I like my little internet world, despite the occasional death threat. I like interacting with everyone from strangers to celebrities. I liked the openness of the place. I still have open direct messages, meaning that anyone can send me one.
Some celebrities, journalists, and others have made grand pronouncements about leaving Twitter, or publicly considered leaving, and I respect the hell out of it. But here’s the problem: There’s no comparable place to go. As writers, or as “content producers,” we need a place to share our content. Writers without readers cease to exist. Twitter is an extremely valuable tool for writers attempting to find readers. Without Twitter, we have to rely on the Google home page, Apple News, and the Drudge Report to circulate our stories. Those venues are fine, but they themselves are gatekeepers. You can’t will yourself onto the Google home page. Trust me, I’ve tried. The need to connect with my readers will keep me on the platform until something better comes along. I have no choice.
Right now, social media sites continue to have very little gatekeeping, which is good, but each platform is owned by a more nefarious entity, which is bad. Because of the Facebook leaks and whistleblower Frances Haugen, we now know the people who run Facebook parent company Meta knew its algorithms were radicalizing users. Then there’s TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese parent company with reported links to the country’s government (although the company denies Chinese influence). Musk has spent the 11 days he’s owned the platform responding to far-right personalities like Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton and Ian Miles Cheong. Does this mean he’s far right? Who knows? He did express delight when I was trolled by Glenn Greenwald. While we don’t know what lurks in the heart and mind of Musk, he certainly seems to have a pretty pronounced case of brain worms. There’s a lot of talk about social media becoming a neutral public utility, but how many of these owners might want to put their fingers on the scale? All of them?
I am not enjoying watching Musk break his new plaything, but I will stay on Twitter until there’s a real alternative. I’m testing out Mastodon, which is confusing, sort of like an online Ikea kit with the special wrenches missing. But internet people need a place to exist, so maybe Mastodon will be my new home, or at least my new Örfjäll chair.
