Bookmarked Welcome to hell, Elon by Nilay Patel / The Verge

Such a fantastic phrasing, in an otherwise entertaining read about the issues with Twitter and large social media platforms. Those issues center on how to moderate mostly (this in turn is why I never saw those platforms as communities, as maintaining a fine balance between safe space, to feel at home, and excitement, to make you return, and a balance between internal and external perspective is important there, yet severely lacking in those platforms). The quote centers on what drives engagement on Twitter, and who feeds that engagement in order to be able to feed off it. A group that includes Musk.

Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.

Nilay Patel