What’s Elon Musk done to Twitter this time? The latest of this billionaire’s bone-headed decisions over the weekend is the gravest threat yet to the social network’s continued relevance.
The first was a move to block people from viewing tweets unless they were logged in. Then Musk implemented a limit on how many posts a user could read. He gave just 600 for the vast majority of users who don’t pay for the service; that was increased to 1000 shortly afterwards. Both decisions were, in Musk’s telling, efforts to fight back against outside organisations that are supposedly scraping (a term for the unauthorised extraction) Twitter data at scale.
But both moves demonstrate either a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Twitter the home of news and discussion on the internet, or a willingness to disregard it.
For more than a decade, the embeddable nature of tweets has made them a building block of information on the internet. Millions of news articles featured tweets from their subjects. Not only did these embedded posts fortify the trustworthiness of the article (there’s no misquoting an embedded tweet) but they also served as an advertisement for the service. Every embedded tweet was a reminder that Twitter was where important people were and where the news happened.
Like every other major social network, the endless amount of content is also crucial to its appeal. Not interested in a post? Keep scrolling and you’ll find something that takes your fancy. It’s also been part of its business model too. The more you read, the more space it can sell to advertisers. Perhaps a limit is better for us (“We are all Twitter addicts and need to go outside,” tweeted a Musk parody account that the real Musk retweeted), but it’s definitely not better for the popularity of the platform in the long run.
Twitter isn’t dead yet, but the proclamations that Twitter is dying — mocked by Musk fans — have turned out to be unfortunately prescient. Twitter use is dropping (although neo-Nazis have flocked back). Its ad sales have plunged. A tiny proportion of users have signed up for its premium service and most of them stopped their subscription. Its competitors are so popular they’ve had to halt new sign-ups. It’s worth just a third of its purchase price from nine months ago, according to a major investor.
Given how badly things have gone, it’s easy to forget that these problems are of Musk’s making. His hubris inspired him to buy the platform and saddle it with debt because he thought he could run it better than the woke, soy-boy laptop class. Time and again Musk has been proved wrong.
Twitter 2.0 would just be the story of another corporate failure if not for the current state of the internet. After the first generation of the world wide web was built on open protocols such as email and web browsing, we were lured into web 2.0’s closed gardens because they were easy to use, powerful and promised a commitment to host and tend to the public square. So we made them our homes and built our lives around them. Now they’re locking the garden gates, we’ve got nowhere to go.
Have you lost patience with Twitter and left for something better? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Every embedded tweet maintained the delusion that Twitter was where important people were and where the news happened……………..
Facts are important.
Twitter was the place I went to get news. Articles from world wide media were regularly posted and usually available to read without a paywall.
Then there were the journalists. Many older Australian journalists who left the main stream media and semi retired were posting their own very
well written articles either on their own news feed or web pages.
It was a great source of well credentialed media
On top of that journalists and political operatives from various former US administrations would post their own articles and blogs.
And if you cared to follow feeds from non English speaking journalists you got a real global view.
Since Musk has taken over its all gone down hill.
Like many others I am looking elsewhere for a decent global news feed.
Mastodon and Tribel look likely
He wants to curate Twitter so that it represents more views from the right and including the far right and at the same time he wants to generate more wealth from further monetising the platform. He has displeased a large cohort of users many of whom have migrated elsewhere and so far failed to successfully monetise the product which he has trashed (bearing in mind that fractious lefties are/were? the biggest part of the “product”.)
Exactly, but he will have problems in EU with the GDPR, which may compel Twitter to be firewalled from the US ‘freedom of (hate) speech’, for it to operate in the EU.
‘Twitter use is dropping (although neo-Nazis have flocked back).’
Not just platforming right wing media, politicians, influencers, astroturfers and trolls versus centre right through left, but the mechanics have been totally disrupted, but less so if at all, for right wing agitprop.
Issues include search function now either not working or limited, if it does actual media articles cannot be found, if so loads once, then again when it dumps the same content via many small Twitter accounts etc.; creates a confusing mash.
One could infer that Twitter is atomising anything centrist e.g. larger centrist accounts losing followers, but maybe gaining new odd/new ones, home page ‘For You’ is now mostly filth and normies following/followed are becoming invisible or disappeared.
It seems to be becoming one big nativist right wing authoritarian arena for influence, but not to inform anymore?
Exactly, but he will have problems in EU with the GDPR, which may compel Twitter to be firewalled from the US ‘freedom of (hate) speech’, for it to operate in the EU.
‘Twitter use is dropping (although neo-N***s have flocked back).’
Not just platforming right wing media, politicians, influencers, astroturfers and trolls versus centre right through left, but the mechanics have been totally disrupted, but less so if at all, for right wing agitprop.
Issues include search function now either not working or limited, if it does actual media articles cannot be found, if so loads once, then again when it dumps the same content via many small Twitter accounts etc.; creates a confusing mash.
One could infer that Twitter is atomising anything centrist e.g. larger centrist accounts losing followers, but maybe gaining new odd/new ones, home page ‘For You’ is now mostly filth and normies following/followed are becoming invisible or disappeared.
It seems to be becoming one big nativist right wing authoritarian arena for influence, but not to inform anymore?
Exactly, but he will have problems in EU with the GDPR, which may compel Twitter to be firewalled from the US ‘freedom of (hate) speech’, for it to operate in the EU.
Not just platforming right wing media, politicians, influencers, astroturfers and trolls versus centre right through left, but the mechanics have been totally disrupted, but less so if at all, for right wing agitprop.
Issues include search function now either not working or limited, if it does actual media articles cannot be found, if so loads once, then again when it dumps the same content via many small Twitter accounts etc.; creates a confusing mash.
One could infer that Twitter is atomising anything centrist e.g. larger centrist accounts losing followers, but maybe gaining new odd/new ones, home page ‘For You’ is now mostly filth and normies following/followed are becoming invisible or disappeared.
It seems to be becoming one big nativist right wing authoritarian arena for influence, but not to inform anymore?
Perhaps we can look forward to some actual research, analysis and reporting beyond quoting tweets or obsessing over whatever somebody tweeted in some rabbit hole you’ve dug yourself into and now think is the only issue in the universe? “Newsroom of the internet”. Now I’ve heard it all.
Consumers of a variety of news sources often find that Twitter has very immediate news either posted by the big media players but also often by ordinary people. A lot depends on who people choose to follow in their Twitter feed (including Crikey of course).
Fine if you live on twitter I guess.
Sorry – I was referring to Journalists” using twitter as their sole news source, not the public.
Actually, it has been all worth it to see Musk, one of the dumbest hucksters of all time yet worshipped as some sort of oracle on how we should be pivoting our economies, revealed to everyone how stupid he is. Imagine vaporizing $44b of Saudi money because you want to be validated as funny and cool on the bird app, yet being one of its least talented posters!
I’m fairly sure that the Saudis would have security for their cash over his Tesla holdings……………….
…………a smart (and probably cheap) way of entrenching themselves in the EV market to replace their soon-to-be-worthless oil.
Musk will be the first to torch two multi-billion dollar holdings on the one deal.
Imagine living long enough to read 600 tweets.
that was another issue – no clarity about what ‘read’ meant. Did it mean ‘idly scrolling past’? – because if so, you can see 600 tweets in about 5 minutes.
On Windows click the mouse wheel on the page and you’ll get a circle with up/down arrows. Then just move the cursor down and walk away. The screen will scroll forever without having to do anything further.