Bad Day For Tweets
By The deal is done.
I have greatly enjoyed Twitter. It has been my main source of news and a continuing thread of humor, and I have met a great number of intelligent and helpful people through it. It’s a communication medium in which I’ve tested my ideas and learned from others.
That is now likely to end.
There’s a lot to criticize about Twitter, but I’ve observed that the heaviest criticism comes from those who don’t use it. I’ve created a space in which I can follow experts in foreign policy, the COVID pandemic, open-source intelligence, and a wide variety of science topics, along with humor and art. In turn, I share expertise in nuclear and chemistry issues and my thoughts on international relations. I block readily and limit replies to my tweets to disallow the Dunning-Krugerites and trolls. I’ve done that relatively recently and am not pleased that it limits meeting new people, but there were too many garbage replies.
Elon Musk has made it clear that he wants Twitter to reflect his juvenile techy understanding of “free speech.” Which means that bullies and loudmouths like Musk are free to take over the platform, issuing death threats to those who disagree with them. He’s also disturbed that Twitter took away his juvenile understanding of Donald Trump’s “free speech rights.”
If we want to get more paranoid, Musk will have an archive of evidence for when the political purges begin.
When Trump comes back to Twitter, we can see the journalistic enterprise of amplifying his tweets take off again. Trump all over the news!
Dis- and misinformation are hardly absent from Twitter, but removing the restraints that have been applied will flood the zone. Just as Steve Bannon wants.
There will be pogroms against anyone who isn’t a rightwing white cishet male.
I’ll stick with what I’ve been doing on Twitter until it gets too bad. Maybe we will see a renewal of blogging. I’ll be here.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner