Twitter is a mess. After owning the platform for less than three weeks, Elon Musk is already talking about bankruptcy. While I think that is unlikely—there are too many intelligent people in Musk’s orbit—bankruptcy came up because recent changes haven’t made the social media platform better, and advertisers have suspended spending.
Let’s be clear about a critical fact: Twitter wasn’t perfect before. It wasn’t just Musk and conservatives angry that Twitter booted former President Donald Trump from the platform that complained about its many weaknesses. There is hardly a Twitter user who couldn’t offer a list of things to be improved.
Still, Twitter was—and remains—a unique space in the interwebs for discussing important topics. The fact that Presidents Obama and Trump both used Twitter extensively is telling. Obama remains actively engaged, and Trump almost certainly would be if Twitter didn’t believe he had used the platform to incite a violent insurrect…