2022: The Year Twitter Changed Forever
The Purchase of a Platform
The end of January marks three months since Elon Musk acquired ownership of Twitter on the 28th of October 2022. The recent takeover of Twitter and the events that followed are perhaps one of the most controversial social media happenings to date.
Three Months of Twitter
Musk is no stranger to controversy and half-truths. According to ExpressVPN, Musk’s name was mentioned alongside the words ‘fake news’ in posts reaching approximately 26,660,800 people in 2022. Since becoming a more prevalent figure in the public eye in the early 2010s, Musk has become known for his unpredictability and determination, and his takeover of Twitter was no different.
Forbes discussed Musk’s goal of creating ‘a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner,’ but the changes he has made so far only seem to have caused further polarization.
Twitter then let go of half of its 7,500 employees via email, a decision that was met with outrage. After firing several of Twitter’s top executives, Musk declared that any significant content moderation or account reinstatement would wait until after Twitter’s new ‘widely diverse content moderation council’ was formed. However, not long after this statement, Twitter Blue was launched: a paid subscription service allowing users to verify their accounts with the iconic blue tick. Just one day after its release, thousands of fake accounts impersonating individuals and companies sprang up. Previously only public figures were verified on a case-by-case basis. This feature was later removed due to the onslaught of fake accounts, however, it is now back with different colored ticks representing various types of individuals. This is in the hopes of lessening the abuse of the service.
Another controversy was sparked as users linking to their other socials, as creators and freelancers have done for years using the tool Linktree, found their accounts suspended. Musk later addressed this as a new policy stating users could no longer link to other social platforms. However, he later apologized in a Tweet and said future decisions like these would be made with the support of Twitters users.
The Future of Twitter
After the medium’s tumultuous year, the question on everyone’s lips is: What does this mean for the future of Twitter?
Given its current financial difficulties, the general public opinion is that Twitter is not finite. The platform could amble on for several months or even years, and eventually declare bankruptcy. For many, these changes signal the ‘death of Twitter’, but others, including one of Twitter’s original co-founders, are more optimistic.
‘I don’t know that Twitter as a company is going to succeed forever but the idea of Twitter I think will be around’ said Biz Stone in a Guardian interview, pointing out that many users seem to be flocking to the open-source platform Mastodon as the new Twitter.
Twitter was always supposed to be a shared place to have open discussions and add your opinion to the chorus of tweets, connecting polarized groups. Whether Elon Musk’s Twitter will continue to carry that legacy is yet to be seen, but it seems that this long-standing idea behind the platform isn’t going anywhere just yet.
