I see lots of comments here and other places how "Twitter is finished," etc. But I wouldn't jump the gun so soon. It still has a huge userbase and if you look outside of the western world (e.g. Japanese Twitter, etc) or the political world (e.g. art twitter, etc.) it's still being heavily used.
Remember to not be so idealistic about things "collapsing soon." All those alt-righters that got banned from places like youtube were clamoring about how the "streissand effect" would make them even bigger, but that never happened (they just migrated to bitchute or something like that and just slowly dwindled). I see ppl saying that about mastadon or truth social or whatever. Or comparing this to the digg/reddit situation, but are the material conditions really the same? Back then the internet was much more of a wild west than it is now. Now most things are so consolidated that finding another platform and, more importantly, getting ppl to move to it, is really hard. So step back and ask yourself, "what would a normie think?" Does anyone actually living in the real world and touching grass care about any of this shit? Like what even is mastadon? Or truth social? I see this extending to other areas as well, like ppl talking about how the "US will collapse soon" or "when the revolution happens, what will you do?" Sometimes empires collapse quickly, other times they take centuries to deteriorate.
Just some thoughts I had (feel free to dunk on me if it turns out I'm wrong in the future)
Twitter will eventually die when all its users get bored andgo elsewhere, but it's looking increasingly likely that it's going to die before then when one day the servers shut off and no one who still works there has any idea why.
I don't think it will collapse quickly. The difference with your examples is twitter was bleeding money before the advertisers started bailing. Plus It was obviously never worth 40+ billion dollars in the first place.
The collapse of twitter 100% depends on how Elon decided to make it profitable.... or at least slow down the bleeding. He can't run to the government and get subsidies for fucking twitter. I think he will be a bit worried about trying another cypto pump and dump in this market. What else does the genius business man have left ? Subscription fees ... and I am willing to bet "normies" are not going to be lining up to pay $8 a month to have their posts seen on twitter.
Turning twitter into a private company severely harms its (and Elons) liferaft .... continuous outside funding. If you remove big market cap numbers there is nothing left but a unprofitable website.
He can’t run to the government and get subsidies for fucking twitter.
The CIA and NSA probably beg to differ
I think you're right on. Musk will show his whole ass online for a while, then the people who actually run his businesses for him will start stabilizing things like our favorite skullboy said, until we're basically back at status quo.
Everyone except the people dedicated to rembering how Musk showed his whole ass will forget Musk showed his whole ass, and twitter will keep on chugging along until God finally takes pity on us and throws a Carrington event our way.
Eh, in the end, it's not like Twitter is that different from any other social media site. Mastodon and Telegram won't be the next Twitter, but I don't see Twitter lasting unless Musk is somehow removed from all decision-making. Most likely, people will move on from Twitter to the other social media giants like Reddit or Instagram or Tiktok, with Tiktok probably being the most likely candidate since a lot of Tiktok stuff already shows up on Twitter.
Things are more consolidated, yes, but it's not a complete stasis. And any shakeup towards the status quo is towards the direction of ever greater consolidation, which means the pool of major social media sites will shrink as past social media giants bite the dust and the remaining ones swallow up those stranded users.
Twitter and Facebook biting the dust won't lead to some pre-Web 2.0 paradise. It just means two less "where everybody is at" websites.
What happens when it becomes impossible to participate in art twitter without running across nazi propaganda 2-3 times a day?
