Bye, Bye Tweety Bird? Unlikely

The downfall of Twitter may be happening as we speak and as we write. 

Could it also be the end of its billionaire de facto owner? 

Recently, Elon Musk tweeted that “If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya.”

This is a reference, according to media reports, came after Musk shared a post from the head of the Russian Federation’s Space Agency Dmitry Rogozin that said Musk had been “involved in supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment.

“And for this, Elon, you will be held accountable like an adult – no matter how much you’ll play the fool.” 

Proving Musk’s no fool, he issued his response on Twitter.

As the result of a nearly $44 billion deal, Musk, the CEO of Space X and Tesla bought the reform, he said, to reform it to include “free speech.” Musk vowed to “unlock Twitter’s potential,” by loosening what he sees as restrictions on free speech. 

Under Musk’s leadership, could we be seeing the end of Twitter? 

Will Twitter become the next Facebook – or worse, the next 4chan, becoming terrible, pest-infested, unmoderated?

Or are such public eulogies about the end of Twitter as unlikely to happen as Russia turning Elon Avatar blue or putting an assassin’s hit against him? 

While it’s unclear whether Musk plans on leaving an already, mostly unmoderated site even more open or just allowing racists and politicians to run rampant while opposers “aka people who believe in equal rights” are banned. The concerns have already been brought up before about the danger of opening up Twitter to become a platform for more misinformation and toxic posts being a huge probability. Twitter, most of the time, would only ban people if they tweeted illegal content or speech, as in the January 6th tweets that advocated the possible overthrow of the U.S.-elected government. I hope that if Musk plans on taking his moderation off of politics then he could at least focus more on law and moderation in those areas. Musk did say he wished his opposers to stay on the platform, didn’t he?

Of course, there are still people like the MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who previously had been banned from Twitter for trafficking in conspiracy theories, but was recently reinstated. That only lasted a few days before Lindell violated the platform’s current policies and was banned again. 

The former president, arguably the most famous person kicked off of Twitter, was reinvited to join. Of course, Mar-a-Lago’s main resident has chosen to stay on his failing social media “Truth” social.

While Twitter is my second most used social media platform, I am concerned about its future. Like others, I am worried about what will happen to this way to communicate, to organize. Free speech is a key pillar of democracy. It is cherished by people seeking to live free and weather attacks from powerful governments and publicly and privately-held companies.

Will people be able to use Twitter to try to form unions at companies owned by Musk? 

Or is this just another rich person buying another rich person’s company to quell views that don’t align with his worldview? 

I personally don’t believe there will be much of a change to Twitter. At this point, I only use twitter for sports. 

I do however believe billionaires buying companies to sway news and views on the site are scummy. I don’t believe billionaires should have this much control over online media.