Please God, Don’t Let Twitter Die
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported today that trolls are flocking to Twitter to post offensive hate speech. But two out of the three tweets that it describes were taken down from the site a few hours later. Another tweet mentioned of just the n-word repeated over and over may still be up. But there’s never been a ban on tweeting just that word by itself. Nothing seems to have changed moderation-wise yet. But the trolls have made their point, noisily: “We’re here, we’re pieces of shit, get used to it.” It’s intimidation, and it’s working.
It’s impossible to predict right now what’s going to happen to Twitter in the short or long term. For all the saber-rattling Musk is doing about “free speech,” the reality is that most of the policy and moderation work is less about edgy “wrongthink” in the US and more about complying with restrictive laws in other countries. Or it’s dealing with plain old harassment. It’s hard to guess what the impact of letting a few dipshits back onto the platform will have on those bigger-picture issues that Twitter has spent the last few years cleaning up.
I’m an optimist, admittedly sometimes naively so. I want to believe that Twitter might change, and some of these changes I might not like, but they won’t be so bad. I want to believe that it’s not going to become 4chan, overrun with shitlords. I also want to believe it won’t die a slow death as the result of dwindling usership and choked-off revenue.
I want to believe Twitter will still be OK, because I love Twitter. How can you log on and see something like this and not love it?
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported today that trolls are flocking to Twitter to post offensive hate speech. But two out of the three tweets that it describes were taken down from the site a few hours later. Another tweet mentioned of just the n-word repeated over and over may still…
