Cognition Dissemination: Twitter, and Beyond

It’s been a week since the worst news came to pass for Twitter: Elon Musk now officially owns the platform. Musk pledged to purchase the social media network earlier this year, but tried to get out of it, which led to Twitter’s shareholders suing him and forcing him to buy it for $44 billion. He had little choice but to purchase the platform after it became certain he would lose the case in a humiliating fashion. It’s only been a week, but Musk’s tenure has been exactly what anyone could have predicted before it started: Absolute chaos.

I could make this whole post about everything that’s happened since, the frenetic hallmark of a person at the top gleefully flailing about on a rudderless ship. Musk started by getting rid of Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter following Jack Dorsey’s official departure in November 2021, and Vijaya Gadde, previously general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at the company. Both Agrawal and Gadde had become big targets for supposed “censorship” on Twitter (i.e. consequences for brazenly breaking the Terms of Service) in the last year, and this was Musk’s way of giving an immediate wink to the right-wing groups he’s so entrenched himself with. Considering Gadde was also responsible for moderation, and reportedly instrumental in getting former (and hopefully never again) president Donald Trump’s account suspended last year, it was a green light for the worst people to let the slurs fly immediately.

Moderation has not been a priority for Musk. He, instead, has been fixated on figuring out ways to profit on the gigantic purchase he made. Musk has floated plans to charge for verification, initially $20 before he changed it to $8 on the fly after author Stephen King criticized it, a clear sign from a person very good at planning. There are other bonkers ideas being floated per the New York Times, including charging to send direct messages and watch videos through the service’s terrible video player. These are eye-rolling ideas at best, and disastrous at worst if implemented. But it will be hilarious if he goes through with them.

It will be especially funny for some users and observers if he maintains communication through his current methods. The Washington Post reported that employees were never given formal notice of Musk’s takeover, and has yet to meet them in person after one week. The employees are currently finding out about most directives Musk wants implemented through his Twitter account, making several of them feel as they’re part of the Trump White House, where orders were infamously blasted out via Tweet.

It’s the advertisers who pay many bills for Twitter, and they’ve been unimpressed at how this has unfolded. The sheer number of users who’ve yet to be punished for using slurs following Elon’s takeover sure as hell isn’t helping their confidence in its future, alongside, well, everything else described above. There’s a perpetually expanding list of advertisers who’ve paused ads, including General Motors (in competition with Musk’s Tesla, notably), L’Oréal, General Mills, Audi, and Pfizer. It may not be long before all the ads are from MyPillow and Black Rifle Coffee.

It’s only going to get worse, and hilarious, over time to see Twitter’s steady tumble downward. That won’t be the case for the many employees suddenly forced into nightmarish deadlines to complete Elon’s quick demands, to the point that many of them had to sleep in the office, for features like a bad Verification blue check system that’s bound to be exploited. All while the leader himself posts inane memes and links to conspiracy theories. About half the employees remaining at the company were laid off today, in a move that’s bound to lead to further service degradation. I’d like to hope Elon wasn’t enough of a dick to get rid of several employees with work visas, who will have to scramble to find new employment quickly or face deportation, but he’s the type to do so. He also might have run afoul of several laws in the process.

The question now isn’t whether Twitter’s doomed — it is. In addition to firing a bunch of employees and introducing plans to charge more for a more deregulated service with potential infrastructure cuts, there remains the potential of him unbanning the worst people, Trump chief among them. But where will the sane users remaining go from here? Other services like Mastodon (recommended by our own Angela Mosely) and Cohost.org (which is more like Tumblr) have been suggested, but there’s no clear decided-upon home for social media refugees. There may not be another service like Twitter, notably, only previously profitable for one year, but a definitive place will hopefully manifest itself soon.

I mean, real soon, given how quickly this is all collapsing. I’m sorry to say that it’s bizarrely exhilarating to be part of the schadenfreude, remaining an active Twitter user after the removed guardrails have allowed the service to slowly tumble down a rocky hill. Meanwhile, the guy at the top is trying his damnedest to Tweet Through It. But I do grieve for the communities on the service that could soon be without a home, the ex-employees, and the current employees that will be treated terribly

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