Last Call For No Solving For X

As we come up on the one-year anniversary of Elon Musk taking over X/Twitter/Whatever, Miles Klee at Rolling Stone documents the atrocities as the once-premiere social media platform is now a toxic neo-Nazi-filled trash fire destined for the wrecking ball.

ON OCT. 26, 2022, Elon Musk enjoyed his first and last good day as the head of Twitter (now X). Following a $44 billion acquisition he tried to scuttle but was legally forced into closing, he attempted a bit of prop comedy — entering the company’s headquarters with a porcelain sink while flashing a mischievous smile. It was all the setup to a groaner of a pun announcing his arrival: “Let that sink in!” he declared in the video caption of his entrance. It was a master class in cringe.

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Nearly a year later, you’d be hard pressed to name a single improvement to the site under Musk’s direction. His biggest ideas have all blown up in his face: An $8 monthly subscription fee for a blue check that verified users then needed the option of hiding to avoid mockery. The abandonment of a valuable brand name and logo in favor of the meaningless “X,” which prompted a trademark lawsuit and led to the installation of a garish metal X structure on the roof of Twitter’s office — city inspectors had it removed just days later. Musk’s latest move is to have headlines stripped from article links, leaving only an image and media source, which he seems to believe looks better and will keep users scrolling. But for those who follow news on the app, it makes X that much more pointless.

i love clicking on a stock Getty image and having no clue what the article is going to be about, great job https://t.co/vYpw9aYgIZ— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) October 4, 2023

Of course, these mistakes pale in comparison to the rancid vibes Musk has cultivated by reinstating right-wing extremists and peddlers of misinformation previously banned from the platform, amplifying their conspiracy theories, and ensuring their garbage posts are shoved into “For You” feeds by Twitter’s algorithms. He buys into white supremacist propaganda, panders to anti-LGBTQ hate accounts, and, with advertisers fleeing these intolerable conditions, found a way to blame the catastrophic loss of revenue on a Jewish civil rights group that combats antisemitism.

How much longer can this wreckage of a formerly semi-functional website stay afloat? Although it has shed millions of daily active users since Musk started tinkering with it, the endgame is more likely to come down to money. Seven banks led by Morgan Stanley hold some $13 billion in debt after backing Musk’s blockbuster deal last year, and the company itself is presumably worth much less at this point — even according to his own math. If X can’t keep making its $300 million quarterly interest payments, the financial firms may repossess it in order to recoup a fraction of their losses.

 

I'm still in the camp that says Elongated Muskrat is doing this on purpose, that he spent tens of billions on Twitter in order to destroy it ahead of the 2024 elections in order to sow chaos going into the 2024 elections. With Facebook/Threads/Whatever now out of the election integrity game, there's little hope to stop voters from being targeted with voting disinformation to a degree that it could throw the entire ballgame to the GOP and Trump's promised authoritarian takeover attempt of the federal government.

 

Whether or not voters can see the light in all this coming darkness, well, we have to try to light the way.