Twitter is Dead! Long Live Twitter!

I never cared about Twitter. It’s not real life. I joined just as another place to post stories from Medium and my 173 followers are a speck.

Now, I can’t get enough. Is it because I get to watch a slow-motion train wreck? Maybe a little. How about because now I am suddenly seeing other people with views similar to mine? Maybe. Because the Twitter Files are shining light into dark corners? Yes.

Most of all, though, it’s just darn good entertainment watching the whining snowflakes and the corporate media implode.

I pity the Tweeps!

I don’t hate the Tweeps, but I pity the fools, and I will destroy any man that tries to take my freedom of speech. [If you don’t get the reference, try here at 19 seconds in.]

Most of the people laid off from Twitter were reasonably hard-working folks trying to make a buck and get along, just like the rest of us. I’ve been out of work and it sucks.

That said, I recently attended a presentation where the speaker explained Price’s Law. As applied to business, fifty percent of the results in any organization are delivered by the square root of the total number of employees. At Twitter, that was maybe 120 people.

This explains how Elon Musk can reduce staff by two-thirds or more. Did the endless acronymed departments in the Twitter Files really produce much as they batted around policy and decisions? No.

Musk wants to turn back the clock and instill a startup culture. Until Twitter eventually bloats up again, it will be a more nimble and fast-paced company. And it will have to eventually bloat up at least a little; the fifty percent of work done by the non-high performers isn’t all fluff, some of it really needs to be done.

Maybe Musk could have had a little more outward empathy, or at least hires someone to project empathy, but so what? There’s no real surprise here after the reports of how he dragged Tesla production forward through fear and force of personality. Let the rage-firings begin!

The Tweeps I don’t have much sympathy for are the Yoel Roths of the company, the arrogant authoritarians with their shadowbanning and algorithms that steered Twitter from a marketplace of ideas to a left-wing echo chamber. When Jack Dorsey testified to Congress that shadowbanning wasn’t a thing, was he complicit or just negligent? Did he never go back and ask? He didn’t investigate? Really?

When they suppressed the laptop story, was Twitter infected with sheer hubris of believing itself to be the arbiter of truth? Or was it just a cynical, deceitful play to pull for fellow travelers? Pro-tip, if the Orange Man is so bad that you cheat, then you have already destroyed democracy.

Let Freedom Ring

The most exciting thing about the new Twitter is the promise to respect the democratic values of free speech. Peril lies ahead; the company must come up with a coherent set of guidelines. Right now, the guidelines change by the minute.

Some of what we’ve seen so far is great. Contrary to what the snowflakes say these days, words are not violence. Violence, like getting punched, stabbed, or shot, is violence. I would also argue that arson and some vandalism are violent. But not mean tweets.

To that end, Musk has decided that doxing, specifically providing real-time information on exact locations, abets actual violence, and accounts will be suspended. Apparently, a lot of journos didn’t believe him. They proceeded to F$#@-Around and subsequently Found Out.

It’s great to hear them squeal. Remember that Libs of TikTok received suspensions for merely reposting other people’s videos because the Twitter overlords felt that by repeating the Left’s own words, they were in a round-about way indirectly inciting violence. If that’s your standard, you can ban anyone who criticizes anything.

The most promising development, though, might be Musk’s ambition to turn Twitter into a network of services, specifically a payment application. PayPal ‘accidentally’ changed its terms of service so that it could fine people $2500 for misinformation…like what, the lab-leak theory? Or data from Hunter’s laptop?

PayPal quickly retreated, saying that it never intended to insert that language into its terms of service. Was there an intern over there that updated their terms and conditions as a prank? How exactly did that happen accidentally?

That’s not PayPal’s only problem; as The Free Press reports, the little Stalins in charge are canceling with abandon to suppress opinions they disagree with. They hold the money for up to 180 days, and there’s no due process.

In the best world, we would subject banks and payment processors (and social media!) to some form of common carrier regulation, but until then, I’ll take free market alternatives dedicated to robust discourse.

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I haven’t written anything in a while, but you might find this amusing.

Brian E. Wish works as a quality engineer in the aerospace industry. He has spent 31 years active and reserve in the US Air Force. He has a bachelor’s from the US Air Force Academy, a master’s from Bowie State, and a Ph.D. in Public and Urban Administration from UT Arlington. The opinions expressed here are his own. Check out brianewish.com. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.