New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg declared her wish on Thursday for Twitter to be brought down by possible future owner Elon Musk.
If Musk takes over Twitter, Goldberg wrote she wants it to be the death knell for the platform in a piece headlined “Here’s Hoping Elon Musk Destroys Twitter.”
She wrote, “I understand why [a Musk-owned Twitter] is, for many on the left, deeply chilling. Musk’s politics are shaped by a fondness for trolling and a hatred of wokeness, and he’s likely to make the site a more congenial place for racist demagogues and conspiracy theorists.”
She also specifically warned that certain public figures and ideologies will be allowed to return to the platform because of Musk’s commitment to free speech.
“Among other things, he’s promised to reinstate Donald Trump, whose account was suspended after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol,” Goldberg said. “Other far-right figures may not be far behind, along with Russian propagandists, Covid deniers and the like. Given Twitter’s outsize influence on media and politics, this will probably make American public life even more fractious and deranged.”
She theorized that if Musk makes Twitter radioactive enough, the wide base that made it relevant will abandon the platform, crushing it.
“I have a shred of hope, however, that if Musk makes Twitter awful enough, users will flee, and it will become less relevant,” Goldberg wrote. “The best thing it could do for society would be to implode.”
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Among her reasons for wishing Twitter would disappear is that it has “a disproportionate, and largely negative, impact on [journalism and politics], and hence on our national life” and is “much better at stoking tribalism than promoting progress.” She claimed “false information” spreads much further than truth, noting that Trump probably would not have become president without the platform.
Goldberg followed by relaying a claim from Twitter’s own internal research that “Twitter’s algorithm amplifies right-wing accounts and news sources over left-wing ones,” and worried, “This dynamic will probably intensify quite a bit if Musk takes over.”
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“An influx of Trumpists is not going to improve the vibe. Twitter can’t be saved. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it can be destroyed,” the columnist concluded.
