Twitter Won’t Get Better: It’s Time to Shut It Down

As an explosive whistleblower report demonstrates, Twitter can’t stop disinformation on its platform. It’s time to roast this bird.

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Like many internet users, I love schadenfreude. And few things have given me more pleasure to read than August’s Twitter whistleblower story.

It’s a veritable feast of terrible things. The company allegedly has half its 500,000 server fleet running an insecure operating system that’s no longer supported by vendors. And the site has allegedly experienced one security incident per week. Delicious!

As thrilling as that is, there are other parts of the story that are a lot less entertaining. An internal report says in no uncertain terms that Twitter is completely unequipped to cope with misinformation and disinformation on its platform. That’s more than a little worrying, especially with the US midterm elections coming up. (In the company’s defense, Twitter says it’s working hard in advance of the midterms, which is good to hear. But this week’s report doesn’t inspire confidence.)

Twitter has been around for 16 years, and its disinformation problem has been extremely obvious for at least six years. I spent nine years on the platform before it ceased to be fun. It’s clear to me that the time has come to bid farewell to the whole thing. Take the site, wrap it in a heavy wet blanket, and drop it into the sea— ideally before it can damage any more elections.

MISINFORMATION MISFIRES The Washington Post broke the story about the Twitter whistleblower—former head of Twitter security Peiter Zatko, aka Mudge. Along with the whistleblower complaint and a report authored by Zatko outlining the many security problems at Twitter, the Post also included an internal report on Twitter’s attempts to squash misinformation and disinformation on the platform. The