To understand what Musk did to Twitter, we shouldn’t exaggerate the virtue of Twitter before Musk any more than we should exaggerate the health of our body politic before Trump.
Even before Musk, Twitter had become a toxic force in American culture, so toxic that I wrote last year it might be beyond repair.
It was also the best app for seeing the thoughts of journalists, politicians and scholars in real time, sometimes to our detriment.
He restored several banned accounts while stripping thousands of journalists, politicians and others of the blue verification badges that confirmed their identities.
Instead, he allowed anyone to buy a blue check mark by subscribing to a premium service, Twitter Blue, that also boosted the visibility of some subscribers’ posts.
Persons:
Musk, “ Catturd
Organizations:
Twitter, Trump