The Ship of Theseus
Meet the new Twitter: chaotic, uncertain, & a bit more janky; this bird sings a very different tune.
A famous thought experiment, The Ship of Theseus, asks whether an object remains the same if its components are gradually changed over time. After the pieces have all been replaced, bit by bit, is it still the same ship?
I've been thinking a lot about this over the past month in the context of everything happening with Twitter. I've hemmed and wondered whether I should say or write anything given how charged the issue is, how quickly things are changing, and even if I know enough to chime in.
As of the posting of this article, I have no plans on leaving Twitter. I value the platform, from the people I've connected with to the opportunities it has granted me. I can't see a path where the things I have been able to create would've been possible without the unique reach and connections the platform provides. That said, November has been a challenging month, from hearing about layoffs conducted in a manner befitting an episode of Squid Game to worrying about the stability and longevity of the platform. Of course, there are other social platforms I could jump to, but Twitter offers a service unmatched in the industry; its format and style of connection currently have no equal. For that reason, I've regularly fretted if the current CEO and his decision-making pose an existential threat to the platform and, potentially, my account.
Background
The changes happening remind me somewhat of one of the first places I worked. Decades back, a radical leadership change resulted in management deciding that the entire clinic would be required to immediately follow a new decision-making model that based healthcare decisions on statistical models instead of the providers' professional judgements. For the patients, that meant services would be dolled out based on feedback on a statistical model. For the providers, it meant that their recommendations & judgements became second-class citizens overnight.
The decision resulted in more than 50% of the staff being fired or immediately terminating their employment. Those that abided by this new culture could stay, those that had any objection would be terminated.
Was it the right decision? That depends on who you ask and how you measure. It damaged a lot of careers and engendered an incredible amount of anger and animosity toward the company. And to this day, it still pisses off a portion of the patients who feel reduced to variables inside a model instead of feeling cared for with a personal touch. But it also, regardless of what you think about this approach, significantly benefitted many patients. When you eliminate human bias, you also eliminate a lot of human error. Was it the right decision?
Back to the Ship
The point I'm trying to make is that I don't know how what's currently happening with the bird app will shake out. Good may come out of it yet, we are in the early tumult of it all, and to that point, I'll say that I ache for the people affected by the bizarre & cruel approach taken to obliterate the staff and shape a new culture of the company.
What's next? I don't think the app will crash and burn in a week, a month, or even a year, though I wouldn't be surprised to see some breaches of the fail whale once again. I have seen more tweets failing to send, the app failing to refresh, and janky errors in the past month than across the previous two years of using the platform. I worry about content moderation and security, as reports suggest that large parts of the security team, including CSAM monitoring, have been gutted.
The exodus of people from the platform will ebb and flow over the coming months as people reevaluate their need for and use of the service based on the values & practices of the company builds its new identity on. Several high-profile accounts, including those of Apple Fellow Phil Schiller & FrontPageTech's Jon Prosser, had already shuttered their accounts. And with thousands of highly contentious and previously banned accounts reinstated without any apparent scrutiny, I worry about the cultural milieu Twitter is creating and the consequences it will have.
After just a month, I'm exhausted by the sabre-rattling, misinformation, and threats about Twitter remaining on the app store. I'm tired of impersonation mobs, the blanket policy of decision making under the guise of ‘free speech’, and picking fights because advertisers freely choose not to continuing pouring millions to support the platform's current chaos.
Eventually (I hope), things will form a new equilibrium. Will it be good? I don't know. It's in the interest of the man who spent 44-billion-dollar on the network that it remains good for most - his investment depends on it - but the new equilibrium may be worse for others. But as it stands, I'm less impressed so far. A lot of bad faith has been felt in the past month by advertisers, platforms, and users alike, given the platforms' shift in tone and directorship.
A wrinkle coming into play in the coming years is the emergence of actual competition with Twitter. Currently, Twitter flies solo, with no other social networks doing what Twitter does as well as Twitter does it. I can see a scenario where competitors emerge that'll provide a good platform for users and fierce competition to Twitter, which might just be the best thing for it. Competition may hold this platform accountable and hopefully check some of its worst impulses.
In Sum
Twitter feels much more chaotic, the impulsive playground of its billionaire owner, but for the platform's long-term viability, that needs to stop. It burns users out, it burns employees out, and it scares away advertisers and platforms. It stops being where people want to spend their time because it's buggy, the rules chaotic, the content miserable, or the values unpalatable. This Twitter is not the ship many of us first boarded; but its success depends on the people choosing to stay, something many feels more ambivalent about each day.
