Opinion: Twitter debacle reminiscent of another digital disaster

History has a way of repeating itself, especially on the internet.

Memes become stale with overuse, content is constantly regurgitated, and the same old logical fallacies plague discussions.

We’re watching history repeat itself yet again with the train wreck situation at Twitter after its much-watched $44 billion acquisition by Elon Musk.

Now the petulant stomping grounds of a billionaire internet troll, the social media network is seeing users and advertisers fly away in response to some questionable decisions. Twitter has shed more than 1 million users, according to the MIT Technology Review, and Newsweek reports at least six major advertisers, including General Mills and General Motors, have called it quits.

We’ve seen at least 3,700 layoffs – and layoff reversals when, oops, those impacted workers happened to be crucial to the company – bickering over the price of Twitter verification, havoc created by users impersonating brands, reinstatement of controversial accounts and even public firings by Musk through the platform. I’m sure Hollywood writers already are furiously clacking away on their keyboards to come up with a future movie or television series based on what can perhaps best be described as a digital disaster.

Interestingly enough, this kind of thing has happened before.

We’ve seen promising platforms come and go, swallowed up by the whims of the internet. Google Plus and MySpace are examples of social media networks that ultimately lost out to the Facebook suite of products, and probably Twitter, as well.

One of the best examples of digital downfall happened in 2010, when news and entertainment aggregator Digg lost users in droves to Reddit and never fully recovered.

An avid Digg user and now a Reddit account holder and enthusiast, I was part of the infamous mass exodus from Digg that came amid a controversial redesign, the exit of key leaders and acquisition talks.

Digg, for a time, was a great website that allowed users to share content with an upvote and downvote system that felt similar to a democracy.

Posts went to the top based on desirability among users, giving it a unique feel compared with looking at a blog or news site for content.

The infamous redesign led Digg down a path where users no longer controlled the fate of content. With that being the primary draw of the platform, you can see why the exodus occurred.

Today, Reddit has its own problems, but it still feels, arguably, like the good days of Digg. And you better believe Reddit management took notes. It doesn’t want a similar debacle.

Let’s get back to Twitter.

It has yet to be seen whether a true mass exodus will occur, but movement is happening.

Reporting in November by startup and technology news website TechCrunch found Twitter alternatives Hive and Mastodon were gaining traction. Each had millions of users at the time of reporting, with TechCrunch citing the drama at Twitter as the primary cause. It’s still a far cry from the hundreds of millions of Twitter users, but the saga hasn’t finished unfolding yet.

It’s difficult to tell what Musk wants with the Twitter platform. Under a million layers of irony, he probably does want the social media platform to succeed just by virtue of how much money went into the deal.

And Musk appears to believe the platform is going strong. On Nov. 17, he tweeted, “And … we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol.”

One response from author and satirist Frank Lesser seemed especially fitting: “‘Rome has never been this brightly lit at night!’ -Nero.”

This is the kind of dumpster fire you just have to let burn to fully reveal the consequences. It’ll be an interesting watch.

Springfield Business Journal Digital Editor Geoff Pickle can be reached at gpickle@sbj.net.