in elon’s eternal wisdom, he’s decided that removing everything but the image from link previews will keep people from clicking and thus leaving twitter
in reality i’m now much more likely to click the link since i have to go there to see what i once could get from the preview
— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) October 5, 2023
Commentary: Twitter is at death’s door, one year after Elon Musk’s takeover https://t.co/XMat52sE4b
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 5, 2023
The smart money says All popular social media platforms eventually collapse, but as a devout Cynic (not to mention an Irish-American), I take some consolation in watching the public humiliation of the sociopath responsible for destroying this particular global public square. Per Rolling Stone:
…[Y]ou’d be hard pressed to name a single improvement to the site under Musk’s direction. His biggest ideas have all blown up in his face: An $8 monthly subscription fee for a blue check that verified users then needed the option of hiding to avoid mockery. The abandonment of a valuable brand name and logo in favor of the meaningless “X,” which prompted a trademark lawsuit and led to the installation of a garish metal X structure on the roof of Twitter’s office — city inspectors had it removed just days later. Musk’s latest move is to have headlines stripped from article links, leaving only an image and media source, which he seems to believe looks better and will keep users scrolling. But for those who follow news on the app, it makes X that much more pointless…
These days, when you mention Musk’s countless blunders in running X, you get a standard retort from his defenders. It doesn’t matter if you’re taking stock of his mounting desperation (like when he begged Taylor Swift to release music on the platform), or a technical fail that reveals an infrastructure coming apart at the seams (such as a frozen livestream at the U.S.-Mexico border, where he’d put on his cowboy hat to grandstand as an anti-immigration ideologue, a glitch that prompted him to send an email reading “Please fix this” to all employees). The reply is always more or less the same: If Twitter is really dying, why are you still posting on it?
It’s a fair question, even if it dodges the issue of Musk’s rank incompetence. I suppose a mixture of spite and morbid curiosity goes a long way toward keeping a person like me around. On the other hand, it’s not my first time having an online community hollowed out by a hostile force, and there’s something to be said for making the most of the end with your remaining friends — sharing gallows humor and a sense of humanity as the situation continues to devolve…
Musk is not without his salesmanship, which, combined with unconditional, breathless hype from supporters, has kept alive the notion of his entrepreneurial and innovative genius. He and this audience are both expending more energy each day on flat denials of grim headlines and vague assurances that X is actually “thriving” like never before. Sooner or later, that magical thinking will run ashore on reality, and until then, yes, the site will survive — but in a state of waking demise, with a user base divided between those cannibalizing what’s left and the stunned spectators.
That can hardly be mistaken for a healthy, habitable public forum, let alone an asset that could one day turn a profit. It offers the illusion of life, however, in arguments, abuse, recriminations, and disgust. The paradox of what used to be Twitter is that it is now sustained by little except the mutual contempt of hardened combatants fighting for an inch of territory. Nobody wants to cede the ground.
Also, there’s always the hope of a truly spectacular final implosion:
