Twitter provided something unprecedented in the early days of social media: a new way to be completely spontaneous and anonymous. Having a limited number of characters at your disposal allows you to make a bigger impact by using fewer words and being more concise, direct, and clear. The platform giant evolved to become the most used social media among journalists, civilians and personalities.
It became apparent that Twitter had gotten ahead of itself so much that it had spun out of control. The site was able to grow at an incredible rate due to its simplicity and ease of use, but as fast as it grew, so did its problems.
The Twitter Cleansing
When Musk started exposing their dirty little secrets, his Twitter cleansing began. News about awkward and weird exchanges within the Twitter HQ way back in 2020 surfaced and Musk, who initially backed out from acquiring the tech giant, seemed too passionate about disclosing this crucial piece of information to the public.
Musk is a very eccentric businessman, and people who don’t understand this don’t know how to swallow him. Take this for example, in election season, releasing internal emails about censorship of Biden’s son’s 2020 issue makes the perfect PR for a social networking site.
For a businessman, purging is vital.
I’m talking about the kind of purge Elon Musk did with Twitter—the kind of purge that makes your business foundation stronger. The platform has been dealing with issues for years: abusive users, bots, harassment, and more. So when Musk bought it, he knew he had some work to do before he could make it profitable again.
It’s been interesting to see how much Elon has accomplished just a few days after acquiring Twitter. He’s done an excellent job at shaking up the boat and getting rid of all the garbage that was weighing it down and advertisers such as Apple started to roll out their ads again.
Obviously, Twitter is in a better place right now. It has made some big moves like launching its live-streaming feature and becoming more transparent with its users.
Twitter, Free Speech, and Politics
Despite what critics say about Musk becoming a lapdog of the left, Twitter’s very nature makes it a perfect space for challenging the existing fragment of how society works. As far as information consumption goes, social networking sites are relatively new. In theory, the left would embrace this change much more easily and convert to this new way to consume information much faster, only to be disappointed at what Twitter has become now.
Putting divisions within communities is easy, and Twitter is no exception. Throughout history, we saw how both of these political inclinations have had their own advantages and disadvantages.
So in order for us to thrive well and progress virtually, the leaders of these communities must act impartially based on transparent guidelines that can’t be easily modified or abused by anyone, regardless of their political views and affiliations. They messed up that one job they should’ve done right.
Takeaway
Online, we all share a shared reality, a bubble of others like us. How we perceive the world, interact with others, and make decisions is shaped by the things we see and hear. But what happens when those things are filtered through social media platforms?
It looks like we are fracturing into smaller groups of people who all think differently from each other. And our ability to function as a society, depends on having a shared reality on a larger scale. It is the only true platform that allows for healthy and realistic discussions.