For what it's worth, I'm as anti-Trump as they come. Trump was at the top of my "can't wait to read about his passing" list until Putin decided to "de-Nazify" Ukraine by emulating Hitler. However, I'm pretty "meh" about whether Musk's Twitter allows him back on the platform in six months (how long folks are expecting for the deal to close).
Thoughts I posted over at Facebook that explain why (I hope you don't mind the repost):
I think that the fundamental issue in evaluating the "Future of Twitter" is that the pundits are projecting their visions of Musk's free speech views on Dick Costolo's Twitter.
Who is Dick Costolo? He was the CEO that decided to turn Twitter from being a tech company into the media company it is now. Prior to Costolo, Twitter had a robust application programming interface (API) that allowed third-party developers to build on top of its infrastructure, and we saw a lot of useful innovation in that space in the form of better Twitter clients for different audiences, easier access to public data, and so forth.
Costolo shut that down under his leadership[1], resulting in a single uniform Twitter experience that ran through Twitter and one that Twitter could monetize through ads and other feed manipulations. I just pulled up the Fresh Comics Twitter page, and it was encouraging me to check out "The Real Housewives of Lagos" (?!?!).
People's complaints about harassment and other issues on the (current) platform are the outcome of Costolo's Twitter deciding that it and it alone decided what The Twitter Experience would be (and what it had to be to hit its quarterly numbers). If Twitter under Musk reverts to a pre-Costolo state where third-party developers can meaningfully access the platform, that opens up whole vistas of opportunities to deal with the issues that folks are concerned with.
Worried that you'll be harassed by right-wing trolls? Use a third-party client that supports block lists that filters them into the spam bin.
Worried about false information being spread on the platform? Add a plugin that hooks into reputable fact-check sites that adds context to single tweets.
If Musk reverts Twitter back to an open platform, he also opens up the space for creating innovations to address problems on the platform to its community. Twitter on its own - operating in its ad-imposed silo - haven't proven to be doing that good of a job on that front themselves. Why not crowdsource some of the problem solving to the folks most affected themselves, and be ruthless about assimilating the useful innovations back into the core platform?
Interesting days are ahead of us, should Musk follow-through (and I have ZERO reason to doubt that he will).
Go to any right wing social media site and tell them your Jewish. And then watch what "free speech absolutist" is going to do to twitter. I honestly don't think its going to happen. Musk isn't stupid and the last thing he wants is a mass exodus from twitter and that is what will happen if it becomes a cesspool. I'm not really bugged by the buy, I really don't understand it but whether I stay on twitter isn't worth stressing over. But it is just like twitter for everyone to jump to conclusions and hyperbole about the sale.
For what it's worth, I'm as anti-Trump as they come. Trump was at the top of my "can't wait to read about his passing" list until Putin decided to "de-Nazify" Ukraine by emulating Hitler. However, I'm pretty "meh" about whether Musk's Twitter allows him back on the platform in six months (how long folks are expecting for the deal to close).
Thoughts I posted over at Facebook that explain why (I hope you don't mind the repost):
I think that the fundamental issue in evaluating the "Future of Twitter" is that the pundits are projecting their visions of Musk's free speech views on Dick Costolo's Twitter.
Who is Dick Costolo? He was the CEO that decided to turn Twitter from being a tech company into the media company it is now. Prior to Costolo, Twitter had a robust application programming interface (API) that allowed third-party developers to build on top of its infrastructure, and we saw a lot of useful innovation in that space in the form of better Twitter clients for different audiences, easier access to public data, and so forth.
Costolo shut that down under his leadership[1], resulting in a single uniform Twitter experience that ran through Twitter and one that Twitter could monetize through ads and other feed manipulations. I just pulled up the Fresh Comics Twitter page, and it was encouraging me to check out "The Real Housewives of Lagos" (?!?!).
People's complaints about harassment and other issues on the (current) platform are the outcome of Costolo's Twitter deciding that it and it alone decided what The Twitter Experience would be (and what it had to be to hit its quarterly numbers). If Twitter under Musk reverts to a pre-Costolo state where third-party developers can meaningfully access the platform, that opens up whole vistas of opportunities to deal with the issues that folks are concerned with.
Worried that you'll be harassed by right-wing trolls? Use a third-party client that supports block lists that filters them into the spam bin.
Worried about false information being spread on the platform? Add a plugin that hooks into reputable fact-check sites that adds context to single tweets.
If Musk reverts Twitter back to an open platform, he also opens up the space for creating innovations to address problems on the platform to its community. Twitter on its own - operating in its ad-imposed silo - haven't proven to be doing that good of a job on that front themselves. Why not crowdsource some of the problem solving to the folks most affected themselves, and be ruthless about assimilating the useful innovations back into the core platform?
Interesting days are ahead of us, should Musk follow-through (and I have ZERO reason to doubt that he will).
[1] https://slate.com/technology/2012/08/twitter-api-changes-social-network-cracks-down-on-third-party-apps-outrages-developers.html
Go to any right wing social media site and tell them your Jewish. And then watch what "free speech absolutist" is going to do to twitter. I honestly don't think its going to happen. Musk isn't stupid and the last thing he wants is a mass exodus from twitter and that is what will happen if it becomes a cesspool. I'm not really bugged by the buy, I really don't understand it but whether I stay on twitter isn't worth stressing over. But it is just like twitter for everyone to jump to conclusions and hyperbole about the sale.