Elon Musk, who counts himself among the world's richest men, followed through in his purchase of Twitter, a social network that punched well above its weight in political influence and power, something that he was jokingly threatening he would do until he was quite literally forced into doing it. However, his takeover has marked a turning point in the trajectory of the social network, that for long has functioned as a town hall of public opinion, especially of the English speaking world, leaving its very existence and continuity in peril. And we are all worse off for it.
Institutions, like football clubs, newspaper and media houses, prominent bookshops and cafés even privately owned ones that were set up entirely for private profit come to become part of the public space that take on a life of their own depending on how the public uses them and what they come to represent. A centrally located coffee house, for example, may come to be known by the people who hang out there rather than who owns it and how much profit they make. Similarly, newspapers and media houses are come to be known for the causes they espouse and to a certain extent the readership.
Twitter had come to be one such institution and quite unlike Facebook that is more known for friends to connect with each other, Twitter had become a place where the world connected, governments made announcements and quite often received instant feedback for their policies. The Twitter brand has been built over years and decades and several persons including writers, journalists, artists and others had built a dedicated following over the years through which they communicated with their followers bringing value to both the artists, the brands as well as those who followed them.
Today, however all that is at risk when Musk, who is not known whether he has any kind of long term plan for the company, fired more than 50% of the staff, has been making conflicting and contradictory statements and overall doesn't appear to have grasped the gravity of the acquisition he has just made. Today without the adequate safeguards in place, the social network risks being overrun by malicious actors, disinformation, and even those who seek to deliberately mislead the masses.
This isn't to say that all of this hasn't been happening all this while, but at least there was a concerted effort, even though you can argue that it wasn't nearly enough, to keep disinformation in check, action was taken against fake accounts, misleading propaganda and the like.
As yet another institution falls, it is us, not just as users but as citizens that stands to lose out as another gatekeeper of our collective welfare and means of holding governments to account is taken away from us. Such institutions cannot be easily rebuilt, something that takes years if not decades to achieve and almost always happen organically. The brutal reality is that there is little else we can do except lament the death of another such institution adding to the list of many that have died before including newspapers, media houses and many others.
