By Ranjona Banerji
How has this week under Elon Musk been for Twitterati?
The new billionaire owner has been on a rampage.
Large numbers have lost their jobs.
Protection services have been dismantled.
Blue tick verification owners are outraged that they will now be charged for ticks.
Comedy accounts which made fun of Musk have been suspended.
Musk recommended people vote Republican in the just concluded Senate elections.
Musk appears to be reading every other tweet.
Musk is everywhere.
Twitter users have rediscovered Mastodon as an alternative.
The importance of Twitter is hard to describe. It is not, after all, a money-making venture. Nor is it as large as other social media platforms. But it is influential. And therein lies its success and its tragedy.
Twitter is used by politicians, academics, public figures, governments, journalists, media houses, various organisations from political, judicial, social, scientific, cultural, activist, environmental… the list can be endless. It is also, most importantly, used by members of the public. Who can interact with each other, with people and subjects they are interested in from sport to science.
No other platform offers such easy access and flow of information.
And that is what attracted the world’s richest man to Twitter. Although he tried his best to wriggle out of buying it, until he was left with no legal way out.
The result is a direct threat to the way Twitter functions. Musk declared that he bought Twitter to allow free speech. But by taking away all inhouse restrictions on hate speech – by sacking all those employees who tracked and controlled hate – Musk’s idea of free speech appears to be at odds with all but the most ultra-right-wing definitions. He has tweeted Nazi memes which would not even have been allowed by algorithms 10 days ago.
His brutal management style is matched by his ego, which cannot take jokes, parodies or anything that attempts to apply humour to the situation. Twitter was one place where people critical of their governments found a certain amount of freedom. It now appears that the criticism might have to meet Musk’s own personal standards.
I can hear the mutterings of rage now.
O, Twitter was never perfect.
O, remember when the earlier owners did this or that.
O, give him a chance.
And all the rest of the usual grumbles and grimbles. My simple advice here is: do not be an idiot. (A word which Twitter disapproves of, by the way, although it is all right with several other abuses including rape and murder threats, sexual abuses and various other Anglo-Saxon and other familiar cusswords.)
No one ever suggested that Twitter was perfect. And many people have taken it on for transgressions in the past.
The issue now appears to be that Twitter is heading further downhill.
The billionaire is desperate to make money to justify this massive bill to his shareholders, who have been publicly unhappy by his new toy.
By making his political choices clear, the billionaire has directly informed us where he wants Twitter to head.
If he doesn’t get bored or better sense does not prevail or he doesn’t take off to Mars sooner than planned, this site is in danger.
We will find an alternative. We have in the past and we will again.
And it’s too early to start composing epitaphs.
But it’s still sad.
That so little is idiot-proof.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal