Edited by: Fiza Mishra
Karen, Elon Musk (yes, someone projected Elon Musk: Space Karen and other *interesting* nicknames onto the Twitter Headquarters building). Social media platforms are flooded with memes about what could very possibly be the end of Twitter, and #RIPTwitter has been trending on, yes, Twitter. To the people who have not been following the drama, this turn of events might have come as a shocker, but I am here to spill the tea on this issue, and get into the implications of what this means for us.
So, let me start from the beginning, or as I like to call it, the Twitter Big Bang— except here, instead of the creation of the universe, we see the downfall of an immensely influential platform. Things were going well in the Twitter world— politicians were promoting their propaganda, stan Twitter was having a blast, Kanye West and Donald Trump were banned from the platform— until one day our favourite billionaire CEO decided he wanted to buy Twitter. He had many mood swings in the whole buying process— Twitter having too many bots and the current lack of celebrity tweets were only a few of the many excuses he made to try and back out of the deal— but ultimately he found himself trapped in a mess he created all by himself. Finally, he bought the company on 28th October for 44 billion dollars, and it has been a mess ever since.
Elon, who barely knows a thing or two about running a company he knows, thought he could run Twitter, a company he thought he knew well but actually didn’t. Then, in an incredible display of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (a cognitive bias in which incompetent people greatly overestimate their own competence or intelligence), Elon went on to shut down entire content moderation departments and fire over 7500 employees. Sources from the company even suggested that he fired people on the basis of the amount of lines of code they wrote in the past year, which is such an Elon thing to do because that way he probably ended up firing some of his most efficient employees and keeping the most inefficient ones. The hardcore ‘do or die’ environment he had been hoping to cultivate backfired in epic proportions.
Secondly, he introduced Twitter Blue, a feature that provided a blue tick to anyone paying 8$ a month without being verified. This led to a nightmare for politicians, celebrities, corporations and even God, as people pretending to be them were now verified and could actually harm their image. The biggest disaster was when someone pretending to be Eli Lilly and Company, an American pharmaceutical company, tweeted “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” which caused the stock to fall by about 5% in a matter of hours. After numerous such instances, Twitter Blue was finally shut down 2 days later on 11th November. All of this severely impacted brands’ trust in Twitter both as an advertising platform and as a serious corporation— all due to Elon Musk not paying attention to Dwight in Season 3, Episode 20 of The Office.
Thirdly, but in my opinion, most importantly, given how big he is on freedom of speech, he really does not deliver— but what could you expect from one man having total control over the most important platform for communication and expression? It is honestly scary how much this resembles a dictatorship. People like Kanye West and Donald Trump, whose accounts had been banned for good reason are now back on the platform, while content Elon does not deem appropriate by his own standards will have “the freedom of speech but not the freedom of reach.” Thousands of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many others had expressed concern and fears of this exact thing happening, but it is now our reality.
Now, the question arises, what next? While memes like Elon posing next to Twitter’s grave, or people leaving Twitter looking for other alternatives are hilarious, we still have a very real problem on our hands. Twitter means so much, especially to our generation— be it simping for our favorite celebrities, taking part in heated political debates, keeping up with the latest happenings, or just regular shit-posting and following troll accounts— Twitter is an enormously important platform. I met so many people on campus who I initially interacted with on Twitter, some of whom have become my closest friends. This entire event has made me question my own freedom of speech, and what direction this might take in the near future. While I cannot foresee the future of Twitter, I do know we need to be more aware and responsible, and work towards a world where one person does not have influence over the voices of millions.