Thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter has become a test case for what happens when you put all the worst things about social media on one platform. Of course Facebook and Instagram have had their share of problems, but I just can’t keep from looking away when the world’s (formerly) richest man destroys Twitter while simultaneously touting himself as a free speech savior — all while ginning up the social media machine with right-wing racists, antisemites, and conspiracy theorists.
The “Twitter Files” haven’t turned out to be filled with the earth-shattering revelations that Musk promised. A tech company wrestling with its content moderation policies is so much more boring than the promised government censorship that upended a democracy. If you scratch the surface of the Hunter Biden “scandal,” at this point you don’t come up with much more than a sad story of a Vice President’s addicted son trying to make some cash.
What you do come up with are some very interesting relationships between Steve Bannon and a Chinese billionaire and between Rudy Giuliani and a Russian agent. (Hey, I wasn’t going to bring up the Russia thing but Musk dug up all this old news!)