The essay beginning below was published on Thursday, Oct. 27, on “Unreported Truths,” the website of the writer, a former journalist and author of books of fiction and nonfiction. — MCM
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Let a trillion tweets bloom
What will Twitter look like after the world’s richest man finishes buying it?
Very different. Very quickly.
And better.
Elon Musk’s takeover should close tomorrow [Friday, Oct. 28]. (It was always going to close; he was never going to walk away.)
Then Musk will have a hot mess on his hands. Twitter is awful, and getting worse by the day under current management.
The little bird is a uniquely important property, as Musk knows. When it is working, it is the world’s most important forum for journalism – and for debate. It is a no-holds barred public square where elite gatekeepers cannot stop reporting and research from being presented and judged on their own merits.
It is the world’s largest open journal, the ultimate peer-review site. Because on Twitter anyone and everyone can speak, and ideas are judged very quickly and rise or fall on their own merits.
When it is working.
It’s not working now.
I joined Twitter in 2009, but I only learned its power in March 2020, after I became publicly skeptical Covid was as dangerous as the media had claimed. In a matter of days, my views became known worldwide – because of the platform Twitter offered me.
Here’s one small but very telling example, from a May book called The Herd, about Sweden’s decision not to lockdown:
On 25 March [2020], Neil Ferguson testified before the Science and Technology Committee in the UK parliament. Among other things, he said that the British healthcare apparatus would be able to weather the storm of COVID patients, and that the death toll would come in below 20,000 people.
The magazine New Scientist ran a commentary on his testimony, which was subsequently quoted in a Twitter thread by the journalist and lockdown-sceptic Alex Berenson.
That thread, in turn, was pasted into an email… to both Johan Giesecke [Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist] and Anders Tegnell [at the time Sweden’s chief epidemiologist]. The subject line read: ‘Ferguson makes a U-turn?’
‘Interesting!’ Giesecke replied.
(Without going into too much backstory, if you’ve read . . . READ MORE . . .