Why X remains the spot: A transformed Twitter has trapped its user base
As anyone who uses it knows, the notorious hellsite, never conspicuously well-run, has been in a state of chaos ever since it was bought by Elon Musk. The mercurial billionaire indeed seems bent on running it into the ground, firing much of its staff, alienating its advertisers, welcoming back the trolls and racists banned by its previous owners, and attempting to blackmail users into paying for a “premium” service with the threat that they will be impersonated if they do not.
But they seem to be joining these sites in addition to Twitter rather than in place of it. The point having been made – We’reclose! – most continue to natter away at each other on Twitter as before, only with renewed hostility, sharpened by despair. This is the “network” or “lock-in” effect, and it’s the source of the social-media platforms’ immense power: not just Twitter, but the much larger Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the rest. It is a power that, as we now know, has been the source of enormous social harm: not only the misinformation that has addled half the population’s brains, but racist propaganda, revenge porn and so on.
So no: decisions about what appears on the platforms – how to balance a commitment to free speech with responsibility for the results – must ultimately be theirs. What’s needed is not censorship but editorial judgment, enforced not by the government but by the spectre that haunts every editor: losing readers. That can’t happen so long as the platforms have their users, in effect, under lock and key.
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