I admit... I didn't (don't) like Twitter.

[BWdem4life]

Part of it was/is just me being the wrong age, I think. Part of it was/is that my ipad couldn't (can't) resolve those blue "link to tweet" lines into images, forcing me to decide whether to click or not. Part of it was/is just the feeling that it was/is all a bit of a show.

But, there were (are) people to whom it is an important part of their lives. A community. Although I don't really understand it myself, I do understand community and what it is to lose one.

A billionaire should not be allowed to destroy one just because he can (and for whatever other nefarious right-wing / libertarian reasons he might have.

So, despite my own ambivalence toward Twitter, I empathize with those who are soon to be grieving their loss.

Congressional hearings will be too little, too late - but they should happen anyway.

This really is less of a laughing matter the more I look at it and think about it.

[FelineOverlord]

1. Important link to the outside world

I just posted this on another thread, but Twitter is an excellent way for those in other countries to communicate.

Link to tweet

Text:

A non-functioning Twitter will have a harmful impact on the revolution currently underway in Iran.

Twitter is a key communication tool not only for revolutionaries but also to expose the evil behavior of the Islamic Republic.

[yankee87]

2. Learned something today

I just learned today what Twitter means outside of free countries. I’ll never look at it the same.

[LeftInTX]

4. Oh yeah!

[Hekate]

3. Me too. But here's a thoughtful article from LA Times, Nov 8

Journalism’s Twitter pickle
Arts writers often depend on the site. Its new owner imperils that relationship.

Twitter is more than a cesspool of racist rantings, political infighting, cute cat memes and uncensored opinions that you wish you hadn’t seen — it’s also a news platform, made so by some of its most dedicated users: journalists.
According to a recent Pew Research study, Twitter is the most-used social media platform among journalists, with 69% of us saying that we use it the most, or second most, in the course of our jobs. (Guilty!)
We didn’t become addicts out of the blue: Twitter’s rise in the mid-aughts directly coincided with the devastating fall of print media.

The platform’s ability to drive traffic online was seen as a life raft for publications struggling to monetize the web. Twitter encouraged our ardor, and in those early days, entire newsrooms were given the coveted blue check marks denoting official accounts. We repaid the volatile social media site with our near-constant attention. I was once pulled into an editor’s office and reprimanded for not tweeting enough. He had been keeping track, it turned out — a practice not uncommon in newsrooms at the time.

When I ponder the role Twitter plays in society, I invariably think of Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story “The Lottery.” The chilling tale depicts a small town’s practice of picking a citizen at random and stoning that person to death in the town square. As a parable about the dangers of mob mentality, “The Lottery” is without rival.
As a modern digital town square, Twitter is ruled by crowd psychology and prone to online stonings of all kinds. Twitter pile-ons can target relatively benign offenders like “Bean Dad,” whose thread about his 9-year-old daughter’s trouble opening a can of beans led to condemnation so severe that he was forced to deactivate his account and issue a public apology. In its most extreme form, it can spill out of the digital realm into real life, as the world saw in terrifying detail on Jan. 6 after President Trump tweeted, “Be there, will be wild!” to participants in the Capitol attack.

The site’s greatest failing is now being exacerbated by the platform’s new overlord: rock-thrower-in-chief and billionaire apostate Elon Musk, who seems intent on offending almost everyone, recently tweeting, “Being attacked by both right & left simultaneously is a good sign,” and pinning to his profile a poll that asks what advertisers should value more, freedom of speech or political correctness.
(More at link —hopefully)

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?token=42e23962a5d74614be16bae3d62d13e7&utm_id=74480&sfmc_id=1778350&edid=5238ddfd-4ef2-4c56-ba9e-2184401ec030

[yankee87]

5. Great article

Thanks for posting

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. I have enjoyed reporters 'live tweeting' court proceedings, shared by DUers here.