A Blog of Things

“My own view of the matter is that I hope Twitter implodes. At a minimum I won’t shed any tears if it does. I have always thought that we should resist any and all conceits from the social platforms that they constitute any kind of public square. A lot of good people on the outside and even inside these companies have spent years trying to figure out how that works, devising quasi-governmental rule making systems and bodies to adjudicate how things should work. It’s all wrong. Of course the companies buy into these ideas and even embrace the responsibilities the responsibilities that go along with it. Of course they do. It’s a great thing to own the public square. They eagerly work to stitch their enterprises into the economic and judicial frameworks they inhabit. But they’re not the public square and we should be on the other side of everything that advances those pretensions. They’re private businesses organized around profit maximization. No more, no less. What we are seeing is likely the start of an epic bonfire in which Musk tries to reconcile the various forces unleashed by his impulsive behavior and very likely fails. It won’t be pretty. It may be hilarious. But it will be important to watch.”

Stone wall, Fairy Glen, Isle of Skye, Scotland