Threads

Elon Musk’s X, the social media site once known as Twitter, is a wasteland. It consists of uncontrolled pornography, crypto spambots, broken “mentions,” unpaid invoices for subscriptions, a useless search algorithm and unverified accounts spreading baseless conspiracy theories and being financially rewarded for juicing controversial or untrue content. It has become practically unusable as a functioning social media platform. But old Twitter, after what it had become, had to be absolutely and unequivocally destroyed for the sake of the future of open online discourse. The Jack Dorsey-Parag Agrawal iteration of Twitter had become part of an intelligence and corporate media censorship apparatus, which would spring into action against any user it viewed as an ideological opponent.

Social media was always a weird place — and it's only gotten wackier. When Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which used to be Facebook, announced it was starting Threads, a rival to X, which used to be Twitter (catch all that?), X owner Elon Musk “took a dig about the world becoming ‘exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,’” the AP reminds us, “but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu-jitsu training.” Musk responded, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.” Since then, Musk and Zuck have continued to poke one another (remember when “poking” someone on Facebook was a thing?) with infantile barbs that show them to be the tech nerds they really are. Cockburn is enjoying the taunting tweets (if they’re still called that?