Commentary: Twitter is at death’s door, one year after Elon Musk’s takeover https://t.co/XMat52sE4b
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 5, 2023
On October 26, 2022, Elon Musk took over Twitter after acquiring the company for $44 billion in a deal that he tried to back out of but was legally forced to see through. He entered the company’s doors holding a porcelain sink saying “let that sink in!” – his lame, unfunny sense of humor that he would become known for.
A year later, there hasn’t been a single improvement to Twitter. All of his ideas have been terrible. An $8 monthly subscription that’s so embarrassing that subscribers have the option to hide it. He discarded the valuable name brand and logo in exchange for a meaningless “X” (which prompted a legal lawsuit and an ugly metal X structure on the building’s roof that city inspectors removed days later). His latest terrible idea is to remove headlines from article links, leaving only an image and media source.
Worse, he’s reinstated right-wing extremists and people who spread information who were formerly banned, amplifying their conspiracy theories and garbage posts by having them pushed into “For You” feeds. He promotes white supremacist agendas and supports anti-LGBT accounts, causing advertisers to flee and then blaming the loss of revenue on a Jewish civil rights group.
How much longer can Twitter survive? It’s already lost millions of daily active users since Elon took over but the endgame is likely to come down to money. Seven banks led by Morgan Stanley hold $13 billion in debt after backing Elon’s deal and the website is presumably worth much less than that now. If Twitter can’t make its $300 million quarterly interest payments, the financial firms could repossess it to recoup some of their losses.
So why are people still on it? Spite and morbid curiosity, but also “there’s something to be said for making the most of the end with your remaining friends — sharing gallows humor and a sense of humanity as the situation continues to devolve.”
Elon spent the GDP of a small country just to watch it crash and burn like a Tesla on autopilot. It’s entertaining to watch him announce a feature you know will never come to pass, like removing the block feature, and then getting into a fight with @catturd2 about it. He’s laid off thousands of people and even personally fired an engineer who dared to correct him. Elon wants to transform Twitter into the “everything app” but that’s likely to be indefinitely delayed, just like SpaceX’s long-planned mission to Mars. Who could fail to be entertained by his failures?
Elon’s salesmanship combined with the “unconditional, breathless hype” from his supporters has kept alive the myth that he’s an entrepreneurial, innovative genius. His fans are spending more and more energy denying grim headlines and assuring everyone Twitter is thriving, but eventually reality will hit. Until then, Twitter will exist “in a state of waking demise, with a user base divided between those cannibalizing what’s left and the stunned spectators.”
