Twitter Meltdown. Free-Speech Phony.

[canyonwalker]

When I wrote about Elon Musk's controversial plan to charge users $8/month for Twitter Verified accounts 11 days ago I was quietly thinking to myself, "I wonder if this is the start of a Twitter meltdown." Already Twitter users were up in arms about it, with many talking about leaving the platform. But users grumbling about any social media platforms is almost as old as said social media platform. "Twitter can easily pull out of this tailspin," I told myself. "They just need to make some reasonable decisions." Then the next 11 days of ridiculous decisions happened.

• Twitter laid off half its (permanent) workforce, several thousand people


• Twitter tried to hire back critical staff it "oops" fired in its haste


• Twitter slowed or blocked access to accounts of people critical of Musk's actions, including US Representative Alexandria Occasio-Cortez


• Twitter laid off most of its considerable contractor workforce, another several thousand people


• Twitter's pay-for-checkmark implementation was so poor that it enabled a surge of fake accounts, some of which caused significant financial harm to other companies (expect lawsuits from this!)


• Musk canceled the pay-for-checkmark program


• Musk publicly fired at least one employee for publicly disagreeing with him on a factual matter


• Dozens of other employees have been fired for criticizing Musk's actions, either on public Twitter or in internal Twitter forums.

Specifically with respect to the AOC situation and firings, Musk, who's prided himself a "Free speech absolutist", is proving what a transparent lie that is. He's a thin-skinned tyrant.

Taken altogether these missteps show an enormous breach of trust— with advertisers, who are the source of revenue; with users, whom those advertisers pay for; and with employees, who develop, operate, and maintain the platform. Twitter appears to be in full meltdown right now.