When Elon Musk arrived with his sink, I departed. Late last year I finally made the break from Twitter. It had become so full of hatred, bigotry, vitriol, culture warring, trolling and general bad vibes. It leaves no room for nuance, and the more extreme the sentiment the further it will go. Musk’s track record signalled this was to get worse – if he didn’t just destroy it first.
He misused Twitter to manipulate share prices, to promote damaging and offensive conspiracy theories and to accuse a man of being a paedophile on absolutely no evidence – because he dared to turn down a publicity stunt offer of a submarine loan to rescue kids stranded in a flooded cave in Thailand. Now he’s running the platform, he’s dismissed key staff, haemorrhaged many more, even mocked one of his staff for his disability.
Musk is just the most prominent and divisive in a line of social media and other big tech leaders who have built or bought huge companies the size of countries...