Wednesday, April 27, 2022
What Now, Twitter?
Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter, a lot of people are freaking out.
He paid $44 billion for it-- with a "b"-- which is enough money to do any number of more worthwhile things. That's more than the annual GDP for the nation of Uganda, after all. But, that's what he wanted to do.
Now that he has taken it private, he has signaled that he wants it to be a place for "free speech." He doesn't seem to be totally clear on what that is (usually, it refers to limits on government, not private actors), but it will probably mean that people like Donald Trump will be welcome back to Twitter.
Which, of course, will totally screw over Donald Trump. He started his own Twitter clone, labeled "Truth" (instead of Tweets, you send Truths), and that will probably dissolve if he and his friends drift back to Twitter. In the end, few think he will be able to resist.
But if he does, we can all choose whether to pay attention or not. No one will make you read his tweets, after all.
The danger of disinformation is real, though-- there is no doubt that Russia, among others, used Twitter to spread state-sponsored disinformation about important American issues. And that, in the end, could cause real problems.
I'm not quitting Twitter. I'll be interested to see how many people do so for good.
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If your friends know that you do not use Twitter, they will put you on their email list. I stopped using Twitter a couple of years ago and will make that plain, deleting my name. Only Twits should be on Twitter except for protecting themselves from false accusations.
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