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How Twitter Became Twitter

Twitter, which was once a peer with Facebook, is now 1/15th its size, and its most fastidious user is trying to take it private, while everyone—Democrats, Republicans, mom-fluencers, journalists—hates the damn thing despite their own contrary addictions. Herewith, an anatomy of a social media tragedy.

Jack Dorsey
Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Baratunde Thurston
April 21, 2022

For two weeks, we’ve been paying a lot of attention to Elon Musk’s intentions toward Twitter, including his announcement today that he has the $46.5 billion in financing to take it private. But I’m not here to write about Elon so much as I am to write about Twitter. Why is Twitter, which came to prominence for helping to catalyze the Arab Spring and then largely shirked all responsibility for platforming the uncontained id of Donald Trump, being trolled by a bored mega-billionaire? It didn’t have to go this way. But the story of how Twitter lost its way is as much about changes in our culture as it is about a lack of changes in the business.