In the early days it was seen as a place for ‘genuine public discourse’, but users have fled since Elon Musk took over. What went wrong? Oprah joi

The demise of Twitter: how a ‘utopian vision’ for social media became a ‘toxic mess’

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2024-04-28 03:30:04

In the early days it was seen as a place for ‘genuine public discourse’, but users have fled since Elon Musk took over. What went wrong?

Oprah joined the platform in 2009, tweeting for the first time live from her wildly popular TV show: “HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY.”

It was “a breakthrough moment” for the platform, says Axel Bruns, professor in the digital media research centre at Queensland University of Technology.

These days, Oprah still has an account on the now-renamed X, with 41.7m followers. But since November 2022, a month after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the site was finalised, she has posted just once – in January 2023, when she told Chelsea Clinton she was “still laughing out LoUD for real 😂” over Clinton accidentally wearing two different black shoes to an event.

Debates about X have reignited in the last week, as the Australian government has taken the platform to court in an effort to get it to remove a video of a Sydney bishop being allegedly stabbed as he officiated a church service last week.