01 Echoes

I joined Twitter in April 2009, and it's been my favourite “social network” since then. Over the years, I've followed smart people, meticulously curated my feed, and was quite happy with it.

That is until Twitter started fiddling with my chronological feed, adding ads, and turning itself into a walled garden. In addition, they killed off Vine and lost the betting war for Instagram. What a world it would be if Twitter had acquired Instagram, not Facebook! Men can dream.

In our cursed timeline, the current state of Twitter is quite sad, honestly. When people describe Twitter's reputation, they often say words like “cesspool”, “toxic”, “racism”, “misinformation” — I can't remember them all, but you got the idea.

Using an official Twitter client is a challenge — the constant stream of non-relevant ads, features nobody cares about (Spaces? Circles? Communities?), and sex bots in my DMs make me question the sanity of the people responsible for their core product. Do they even use Twitter themselves?

That's why I'm surprised by this recent trend where people say they are quitting Twitter because Elon Musk took over. So you didn't leave because of the above, but now you are quitting? Really? Listen, I don't have high hopes for or high expectations from Elon Musk, but it can't get much worse than it is. For example, it takes 6 steps and 6 different screens (!) to report a tweet or an account now. It's crazy.

A quote from Sergei Dovlatov, a Soviet dissident writer, comes to mind when I hear those people:

“We endlessly curse Comrade Stalin, and, of course, for the cause. And yet, I want to ask — who wrote the four million denunciations?”

So yeah, we endlessly curse Elon Musk, and rightfully so. And yet, I want to ask — who writes all these toxic or misinforming comments there? Or do you really think that Twitter was that great under the previous management?

Maybe, just maybe, this is what Twitter needs right now — a major shakeup that will change things. If it changes things for the better and brings Vine back, it will be fantastic. If it changes things for the worse, well, personally, I won't see a big difference.