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| I joined before he did. |
Whenever I reflect on historical events that have happened since 2009, I find that my memories of where I was when I heard about them are tied not to physical locations (where were you when you heard about...) but to where I found out about them. That place is virtual. That place is inevitably Twitter.
It was never perfect. It was deeply flawed, but Elon Musk's takeover has made it worse. Incidents of hate speech have increased sharply under his leadership. Consider this post I found in which the n-word appears over 50 times.
When I reported it, this was the official response:
It's disgusting to think that his new safety team has no problem with this. Disgusting but not surprising since the management thinks that finding a post like that offensive is a symptom of something he calls "the woke mind virus." I appreciate this commentary from a Black South African woman who called it like she saw it.
When he first took over the site, I said that I went to school with a bunch of Elon Musks, but that's not true. Those guys may have been racist and they may have been insufferable know-it-alls, but, unlike him, they actually knew something because they were actual geniuses.
He's just a rich man's son who got lucky. I suppose he sees himself as a merry prankster, a trickster archetype. I see him as an immature, insecure dork who deals in a literal, pedantic, sophomoric, bigoted edgelord humor that I despise. And he's not even tech-savvy enough to crop a screenshot.
As he continues to run Twitter into the ground like a suicidal airline pilot, the chaos he's manufactured has led to the rapid inversion of the meaning of a blue check mark next to a profile .
I am frustrated and disgusted that the imperfect site I had come to rely on for useful information has been rendered unstable and unsustainable by an over-privileged internet troll.
Related Articles:
Elon Musk broke what made Twitter great. It’s going to cost him — and us
Twitter Backed A Bunch Of Underrepresented VCs. Under Elon Musk, It’s Trying To Dump Them.
A Grand Unified Theory of Why Elon Musk Is So Unfunny
Elon Musk: My dog is running Twitter now
The world: We've noticed.
Elon Musk just shut down automation for important public safety accounts
Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are now prioritized, whatever that means
Elon Musk’s Free-Speech Charade Is Over
Twitter’s API-charging plan is the latest innovatively bad idea from Elon Musk. (slate.com)
Elon Musk says he wants Twitter to support democracy. So why is he acting like a tyrant?
