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CNN –
Bye, birdie.
Twitter, the text-based social media platform that has played an outsized role in society as a digital city square, was killed by its bewildered owner Elon Musk on Sunday. It was 17 years old.
A zombie twitter known only as X reluctantly perseveres. A deformed and disfigured platform, X marches on like a White Walker, an ugly shell of his former self under the command of a vile leader.
While Twitter was once a source of authoritative information, X is a platform where, for a small fee, trolls can arrange for their ugly content to be shared before legitimate sources.
X is a platform where identity verification is gone and impersonation is just a paid subscription away.
X is a platform where journalists are banned and vilified while the most repugnant and dishonest voices are raised.
X is a platform where the rules are unclear and moderation of content is mostly a thing of the past.
X is a platform where the most important and consequential decisions can be made on a whim and without warning.
And X is a platform where critical infrastructure breaks down and the most basic functions often don’t work.
X might resemble Twitter. It could occupy the same address on the Internet as Twitter once did. But make no mistake, it’s not the same platform it used to be — even nine months ago when Musk took over, quickly decapitating former leadership and plunging the company into chaos and turmoil.
This platform no longer exists. It arguably went under for some time before it was revealed to the public through a sudden and disorderly renaming.
In many ways, Musk did to Twitter what Donald Trump did to the Republican Party: made it entirely in his own image. At the very least, Musk gives the deformed entity a different name that may allow the public to separate Twitter from what Musk transformed it into.
X will, of course, inherit all of Twitter’s business problems. Musk is the company that has proven toxic to advertisers and much of the user base, not the widely known bird logo. It’s unclear how the billionaire will ultimately turn that ship around, especially as he faces new competition from Mark Zuckerberg and Threads.
So far, however, there is little hope that Musk can successfully steer the ship out of the iceberg-strewn waters. After all, he’s the captain who led the ship into her – and all while laughing madly at the helm next to his closest circle.