Oh What a Tw**t – Part II

The saga continues with Elon Musk's chaotic management of Twitter, including the dramatic step of stopping keycards from working and literally locking key staff out of their building. This raises a fundamental question: is Twitter's potential demise actually good or bad for society?

While Twitter has certainly had its utility—particularly for calling out manufacturers about problems and holding companies accountable—we need to consider what would replace it. The reality is that if Twitter disappears, another platform would quickly emerge to fill the void.

But here's the concerning part: potential replacements might be funded by countries with far different values and intentions. Imagine platforms backed by China, Russia, or North Korea. Even if a replacement appears innocent on the surface, it would likely still engage in the same data tracking and conversation recording that concerns us today.

The uncomfortable truth is that social media platforms, regardless of their ownership, have fundamental surveillance and data collection as part of their business model. Whether it's Twitter under Musk, a Chinese-funded alternative, or any other replacement, the core privacy and data concerns remain.

This leads to a somewhat resigned but practical conclusion: maybe it's better to deal with the devil we know rather than risk something potentially worse. The platform landscape may change, but the underlying issues of data privacy, surveillance, and platform control will persist regardless of who's in charge.

Maybe better the devil we know, eh?

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