The Twitter Hellhole Gets Hotter
Elon Musk is officially buying Twitter, to perhaps no surprise after several reports corroborated anonymous reliable sources about the former closing in on a deal with the latter’s board of directors throughout Sunday. There are several reasons why the end result of this could be horrible for users who aren’t Weird Nerds that would willingly create a human road for Elon’s Tesla to trample upon them.
During his never-ending series of tweets, Elon never stopped prattling on about how the service needed to fully embrace free speech. Absolute freedom on a social media service sounds fine in a bubble, but we don’t live in anything close to one. “Free speech” for people like Elon and Twitter’s worst people who were begging for this deal to go through means freedom from consequences for actions that would have gotten them suspended. Rampant bigotry and the spreading of disinformation for important topics like the 2020 United States presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic are what they want to be protected from. Considering Elon himself has engaged in both with little consequence on the service thanks to his importance (though he also knew which lines to skirt), it would be a surprise if Twitter’s rules didn’t become laxer from here.
Not to mention these are all the same people who desperately want former president Donald Trump’s Twitter account to be restored. Elon himself was hardly resistant to Trump and most of his policies, once being part of two advisory councils early in the Trump administration’s time before (allegedly) resigning over their denial of climate change. Someone who champions this specific kind of “free speech” is bound to listen to people who want Trump back on a service once considered his biggest platform, to again give him freedom to spread hatred and nonsense.
I won’t pretend that Twitter was ever a perfect platform before this — far from it, in fact. The communication issues and trending topics frequently encouraged discussions that could often go off the rails and devolve into bitter and personal fights, playing to the worst social media discussion tendencies. (It still wasn’t on par with Facebook there, however.) Worse was how the service made anemic attempts to curb abuse against the most vulnerable people, paraded by users who made no attempt to hide bigoted ideals. Any service that did the bare minimum to curb such abuses was doomed in the long run. Yet, it still feels like a shock that the so-called “fun times” are ending in this particular way.
There was a brief point in time where it felt like this deal wouldn’t happen, and that Twitter would preserve as it was. The service recently fought off a prior attempt by a conservative billionaire to take over the platform. There was initially no telling whether Elon himself was trolling or not, from someone who frequently does so, and Twitter was ready to fight with most of their resources if he was serious. It all ended in the most pathetic whimper. The cure to a “poison pill,” it turns out, is a bulbous pile of cash.
This has now become a time when users who aren’t massive Elon Musk fans are either saying their goodbyes before deleting their accounts or sticking with the platform to see what happens. Many among the latter, however, are prudently making backup plans in preparation for the service going south. It’s tough for those who’ve established relationships over the years on Twitter so important that they can’t just leave it, but there might be little choice in the matter if the Free Speech Warriors ultimately get their way. This was a service purchased by a thin-skinned rich dude who got mad at people criticizing and tracking him, and treated his employees at Tesla like hot shit — or worse if they were minorities. I’m trying my damnedest to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I’d be lying if I did.
It’s tiring to see how easy it is for either oligarchs or people with riches comparable to them to gobble up entire services at a moment’s whim. Elon’s quick purchase of Twitter, something unimaginable only two weeks ago, is simply the newest symptom of a larger issue. But it’s one we’ll be dealing with for the rest of our lives given the lack of any drive to even attempt to fix this broken system among politicians who could theoretically do so. We all had a good run with Twitter, though it sure wasn’t a great one.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
