The rise and fall of Formerly Known as Twitter has been a long time in the making. But who could have predicted that unadulterated mayhem would be the only thing it could ever produce.

31 October 2023 | James Porteous | Clipper Media News

It is almost time to say goodbye to #BlueTick. I know. How can you miss it if it won’t go away. But seriously.

For the past month, I have enjoyed being able to edit my tweets, and I do thank the extra 10 readers per week it brought to the discussion, but the notion that this was ever going to be anything close to open, free media is absurd.

This piece, published on Formerly Known As, has so far garnered 13 hits.

It is impossible to scan more than a couple dozen tweets without reading comments so juvenile that they would be ridiculed on washroom walls in an elementary school.

And it is not an accident that there are so few ‘adults’ in the sandbox.

Zero proof has ever been offered that might suggest or prove that Formerly Known ever was or ever will ever be anything other than the playground of the USG Alphabet Soups.

Shadow the Ban – Ban the Shadow

Remember: Freedom is just another word.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Mr Musk has publicly stated that he has removed tweets that offended his sensibilities. As de facto editor-in-chief? Imagine a ‘real’ news outlet doing something like that. Never mind admitting that you have done so.

He is big on ‘open source journalism.’

What does that mean? Who knows.

But it is clear that a couple of OSJ pets can publish a weather report for Atlantis and secure thousands of hits.

More recently (above) he has decided that, should a non-OSJ publish something that is questionable, they will lose the right to be paid for said tweet.

The only problem is that the @communitynotes people are… well, people like you and me. They might have as much experience in real journalism as does their master.

Upon reading this, I asked what I thought were important questions. You can see that his tweet at that time had garnered many impressions, retweets and loves.

My tweet was seen by 12 of those people. Twelve.