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We May Not Have Twitter Tomorrow
Letting go is a complex process, and there’s no one right way to do it
In my filter bubble on Twitter, I see a lot of people saying that now is the time to walk away. I’ve had a few thoughts about it, and I’ve gathered my thoughts relatively rapidly. Though I often prefer to take many years to settle my thoughts before writing an article, now I’m writing about Twitter, and we may not have Twitter tomorrow.
What’s Happening Right Now
Tomorrow—Monday, November 7—Twitter will begin offering an $8 subscription.
The algorithm will privilege the tweets of paying users, meaning they’re more likely to be seen (and perhaps less likely to suffer consequences for “trashing” the owner), while non-paying users’ tweets will be buried. If you’ve been logging on to Twitter mainly to interact with certain people you like and respect, including people who won’t be paying monthly (regardless of whether you think they “could” or “should”), this is bad news for you.
One reason Musk’s subscription plan is bad is that it does nothing to incentivize the site’s best and most important users. Those users should be paid for attracting and retaining other users. Instead, Musk is asking them to pay to continue distributing their work.
S Peter Davis compared it to “asking the actors to pay the filmmaker.” Jared Yates Sexton called it “the equivalent of, like, a Roman emperor taxing the senators … It has that sort of desperate sweatiness to it … He is putting the onus on them as opposed to rewarding them or keeping them on the site.” (The Muckrake Podcast, “Biden Forced to Defend Democracy,” Patreon, Nov 4, 2022. 57:26–57:44, 1:05:03–1:05:11)
Of course, many of us enjoy subscription-based platforms. Here on Medium, I have a subscription and I create. On Patreon (where I heard Sexton’s commentary), I don’t create, but I subscribe to appreciate and learn from others’ work.
