The End Of The Twit.

Now we see Musk's true colors.  Guess we'll know exactly where he stands, so I suppose it's all well and good that platform is done.  I've been reading a lot of the news about this, and it's pretty clear that the company he now owns lacks the staff to follow through on any of the legal agreements they've made.

Mind you, there's a small part in the back of my mind that saw this coming, and sees the future strategy.  Musk will undoubtedly claim, once the legal roadblocks are tossed back in his way, that he no longer has the staff to follow through on these agreements.  Which we should probably simply fix by redirecting any traffic for Twitter to a billboard site saying that due to inability of the organization to maintain standards it had previously agreed to maintain, it no longer has a right to use the internet.  

Sure, the entire base idea about the internet is a robust network that routes traffic around outages.  However, due to legalities, I'm certain that the corporation responsible for maintaining the internet backbone is aware exactly how fragile this all is.  And exactly what needs to be done when traffic is looking to go to Twitter.com.  Just send it to 255.255.255.0, or some other dead end.  192.168.1.1, maybe.  Should work.

I do think that perhaps the future of social media should be regulated.  We started with hands off Television, when it started, then we set standards.  I'm all in favor of free speech, but the bottom line is that, if no one is responsible for the speech, then it's not free - it's noise.  We've had countless court cases which establish that there are limits on things people can say.  "Fire" in a crowded theater was one of the first tests on the limits, and we're still in the gray area that has no regulation.

So maybe we need to make the FCC responsible for regulation.  Since no one likes unfunded mandates, I'd propose that any organization which has a web site which permits non-employee users to enter content to be displayed should be taxed at, say, 15% of their gross receipts.  Not income, not profit, but a flat "you sold $3,000,000 of advertising last week, you owe the federal government $450,000.  Due when you receive the check."  Sure that will undoubtedly harm some of these organizations taking in billions upon billions in advertising.  I'm sure if they're well run - unlike Twitter - they'll find a way to survive.  

Perhaps it will be the end of "free" social media.  So be it.  You get what you pay for.  If Facebook decided tomorrow to start charging me for use, I'd continue to get along just fine without it.  My net worth and my self esteem are not defined by number of followers or likes.  I got through life before Facebook, I'm sure I'll be fine after.  Twitter was no great loss for me.  Yes, there were some interesting people, interesting moments.  I had some fun with it.  But I saw the damage that was being done to others, I saw the sort of things that tended to be "trending topics" and I realized rather quickly that Twitter offered nothing I absolutely had to have, I didn't need it.  I didn't need the grief and the agony that some dipshits promoted in their abuse of girls who dared to play video games, kids who felt it was cool or funny to call the police on a house somewhere else, and potentially get people killed because the police believed there was a crime going on.

I will grant that there are some useful uses of social media, but we do not know if the good outweighs the bad.  I've been able to maintain contacts with people I'd lost touch with over the years, because, you know, we all move on.  Will I miss them?  Undoubtedly.  I've made good friends - and of those, I'll keep the best, because my circle of friends on Facebook is limited to those people whom I know from other things, other places, other events, stuff in what we call "the real world".  Not the TV show, but the one that I get up and walk around in.  You know, the one where you eat, sleep, breathe, and ..  live.

So maybe shutting down social media, or putting regulation in place to keep it under control and responsible for it's content, that's what we need to do.  Failure to maintain standards is a plenty good reason to shut the crap down.  Maybe we should be putting into place restrictions on web site registrations so they're registered to validated addresses, verified people, and that person is responsible for the content of the web site.  If they wish to open it up to allow others to post content, well, then, no worries, anything that's illegal or adjudicated to be harmful or potentially so, they get to be an accessory to the crime, and they get to share in the punishment.  After all, it's partially their fault for letting someone use their web site.  

And maybe if we also make the advertisers responsible as well, that might help.  Seems like a good idea.