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The Internet is Dead

04/22/2022

The problem with Elon Musk buying Twitter isn't that it would usurp a consensus driven corporations to the whims of a sociopathic glutton. It isn't that doing so would pollute the "global town square" that many claim Twitter to be with a necessary oligarchical interest group only out for itself. The problem is that we have allowed Twitter to become that "global town square" in the first place. The internet is open and extensible, or at least it used to be. If Twitter becomes garbage, a new better one would theoretically take its place. But that is not what is happening, and it's because the amount of people who are on Twitter is a constant allure for anyone else who decides to hop off onto one of its alternatives. There is no longer an underground or network of sub-societies, connected tenuously by web rings and links. It is just all Twitter. It's all owned by Twitter, it's all governed by Twitter, and it bows the whims of whatever Twitter and its shareholders wants.

If Elon Musk cared about free speech (he doesn't and there is no way you can ever convince him to care. He makes enough money to have you killed, wherever you are in the world, and face no repercussions) then he would delete Twitter and Reddit. Force something new to take its place.

Websites should have mandatory expiration dates.