This article is a slightly longer, edited version of my first article on Medium. It was largely written as a response to Elon buy and the discussion surrounding the site. With the launch of Notes which seems to be a more positive, healthier alternative I thought I’d rerelease and add on to the article here.
About a year ago I think everyone who uses and even didn’t use Twitter could probably agree that the site was a garbage pit, an irredeemable trash fire and a blight on the the information age. However, ever since the wrong tech billionaire bought the site, popular opinion has changed into something delusional.
First let me state my opinion on Elon Musk. I’m not a fan of his, I think he’s an impotent ideas man with poor execution and non-existent impulse control. The only but I’ll include is that I think there are far worse people that could’ve bought Twitter. I think him buying Twitter was a total meme move and I’m hoping it’ll bit him in the butt.
With the recent firings, the reveals of the code, twitter blue and that whole debacle. I can safely say that his purchase of Twitter is biting him in the butt.
Twitter being a trash fire extends to the sites founding. A social media site where all you post is: pictures, gifs, links to sites, and a paragraph of 140 characters. It’s as inane and dumb as it sounds. While cool things could be done with the idea I think humanity took it upon themselves to make sure those cool ideas were drowned out by the reality of awful that runs rampant on Twitter.
I’ve watched people’s home addresses get posted and receive hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets before finally being taken down. The site has repeated problems with illegal content, misinformation, and bigotry of all forms.
Alejandra Caraballo’s pizza box and Andrew Tate story is a prime example of misinformation being spread on Twitter.
Twitter doesn’t have the thin, almost nonexistent silver lining other sites might have. Reddit has it’s communities, (that are riff with issues) charities, and positive group efforts. YouTube is mostly full of creative people working to make content, and I guess it could be claimed Facebook keeps people in touch.
Twitter is just a terrible platform filled with the worst humanity has to offer.
The foundation is already terrible but the site refuses to grow into anything better. In 2009 Twitter created its verification system. A small white in blue check mark that signified that the account it was attached to was the real account of a public figure or company. This was made so I can’t make a Ryan Reynolds impersonation account and post suggestive replies under peoples tweets.
Many social media sites have this feature and had the feature remained this way the check mark would not be such a mess under the elongated muskrat. However, verification was something given out. It was not something received when someone went through a certain process or asked. It did change and for the worse.
In 2017, Twitter came under fire for verifying a white supremacist Jason Kessler. The reason being that people on the internet whose IQ is equal to their shoe size saw this as some sort of endorsement by Twitter. Several public figures also later lost their verification like Alex Jones reinforcing the verification=endorsement narrative.
Verification applications closed down in 2017, only opening again in 2021. Any new public figure was susceptible to impersonation. Sometime later Twitter gave verified users special tools. You might believe that these tools are to help deal with impersonation, fraud, or some other problem a public figure or group might deal with.
You would of course be wrong, these tools included restricting replies (which other social media sites do to an extent), sorting followers by verification, giving you better engagement, access to analytics, and I know this from personal experience, heavily moderated replies. All of this has created a weird class divide on Twitter different from other social media sites.
The experience of users changes on every platform whether you have 1 follower or 100,000. However, Twitter’s verification makes yet another weird distinction based on whether or not a company acknowledges you are who you say you are. We can see this distinction again in a recent AOC rant on Twitter. Most Twitter users have known for years that the site is buggy and prone to instability. AOC was apparently not aware of this and believed the Musky man was targeting her account specifically. (2:22 for the exact tweet) This shows us that verified users either get better support or a more stable version of the app.
We see more of this weird class division when it comes to Kathy Griffin. What Kathy Griffin did was a Twitter terms of service violation. It has been policy since before Elon even thought about buying the platform. This policy exists on other platforms. If you as a verified user, you cannot use your verification to impersonate another verified user. You will be suspended. It’s an anti-impersonation rule not a “apartheid Clyde got his fees fees hurt by the unfunny redhead” though in the court of public opinion it’s a fantastic clap against the long rodent, only ruined by Kathy logging in as her dead mother to continue her crusade.
Finally I come to peoples new borked view of the website. I’m going to provide various terrible takes in ascending order of bad and talk about why they’re terrible.
I think part of this view is informed by how different people use twitter. Experience is not universal and calling Twitter “the world’s main hub for news and politics” is such a stretch it’s almost pulling something.
Ignoring the fact democracies have existed for thousands of years and have been doing “well” in the Information Age, further ignoring Twitters age, and relative unimportance. The only reason I can see that some blue check might think Twitter is a pillar of our democracy (and not in fact as I would argue a detriment) is speaking truth to power. A power which is squandered is on Twitter. The average user’s apathy and misinformation has always been an issue.
There will always be ways for “experts” and influencers to get in touch with audiences, with or without Twitter.
I shouldn’t have to explain why this is ridiculous.
As Elon’s reign on Twitter has continued the site shows no sign of improving. The reader context feature which seeks to combat misinformation is nice. If Elon get’s hit with it one too many times that feature is going to vanish.
Hi, I’m Michael Vincent Hawthorne, writer for the Midnight Variety Hour. I do have a few posts on Notes. I intend to use that platform more in the future and I’m optimistic about it as a whole. Feel free to subscribe to stay update on content, which is coming soon.