Thoughts on Twitter (as both a user and a developer on the platform)

A month ago, when I saw the news that Elon had finally actually done it, he finally took over Twitter after months of “will he won’t he”, I was mostly in disbelief. It felt unreal that a public company employing thousands and operating a globally important communications platform could suddenly be under the sole control, and subject to the sole whimsy, of one man. What came next was shocking too. Intellectually, I knew that buyouts happen, management turns over, staff gets slashed, these are things that happen; but experiencing it up close, just about as close as one could be without being an employee, was still something else.?

The next emotion, which surprised me, was sadness and a sense of impending loss—in a purely personal capacity, as a devoted Twitter user. I’ve been on Twitter since 2009, spanning the entirety of my adult life as a working professional, and I would not be exaggerating to say that it has completely changed the course of my career and life, but it’s also a platform that I’ve simply enjoyed hanging out on. There’s nothing else that is so informative, interesting, and brilliantly entertaining. Without knowing what changes might come, but knowing that changes were certainly coming, I felt like I was mourning the loss of something that had been a constant in my life.?

Of course I also have a very strong professional interest in what happens with Twitter, having built an entire startup servicing safety on the platform, but my response with regards to business uncertainty and concerns was much more muted. Many of the people who reached out to me in those early days of the Musk regime expected me to have a much more dire outlook, especially with the dark predictions from some corners that the service might imminently topple over in a cascade of technical failures. But my instinct was that Twitter was too big to fail in any immediate, catastrophic way, and Elon’s moderation philosophy would only mean more need for Block Party’s user safety tools. The less the platform wants to be responsible for cleaning things up, the more the individual users need controls for what they see.?

With the caveat that anything could still happen and Elon is unpredictable if nothing else, the past few weeks have mostly proven out my instinct. Twitter is still around, and we’re (mostly) all still on it. Though moderation policies have as yet stayed mostly unchanged, with the notable exception of some account reinstatements, trust and safety enforcement has waned, and people emboldened by new leadership and norms have driven up the incidence of hate speech on the platform. One user wrote on Twitter yesterday: “@blockpartyapp_ has turned out to be quite the indispensable app in the M*sk era.”?

In a way, Elon’s takeover of Twitter has only underscored the necessity of an approach to safety like Block Party’s: one that’s controlled by end users, a layer above the platform standards and defaults. The generalization of this type of solution is what some policy advocates are calling “middleware”, software that sits in between users and platforms and allows users choice over their experience. I’ll save all the policy theory for another time but I am genuinely excited about a future for social media that empowers users to have the experience they want and I think we are leading the way on that path.?

The last month has been frenetic with all the Twitter chaos, but at least for me the heightened emotions have come down to a dull watchful anxiety as we wait and see what happens next with the bird site. As a user, I hope it continues to be that pulsing, real-time exchange of news, insights, hot takes, and glorious memes that I love so much. For Block Party, too, we’ll see if any changes in Twitter’s product, business, and community affect how we serve our users. But our vision has always been cross-platform and keeping people safe wherever they are online, and our plans for building beyond Twitter are already underway.