[BulgarianIdiot]

The Atlantic is trying too hard. Yes, the CEO is leaning hard right and has a bunch of weird opinions. But Twitter remains its users as of yet, and there aren't 450 million "hard right" users on Twitter for sure. If you compare it, say, with TruthSocial...

Twitter is however dying, and that's... another debate I guess.

[Timon3]

But it's that CEO that defines the direction of the company. He personally asks for users to be banned, and for other users to be promoted. Sure, he doesn't directly influence what users write, but he does directly influence what they see.

[BulgarianIdiot]

He defines the direction yes, but inertia also matters. Twitter may be small by Facebook standards but it's still one of the largest social medias in the world. If you grab the wheel of a giant ship moving full speed forward in a given direction, you may want to set direction, but it'll take you time to steer it in that direction.

In 5 years Twitter will be absolutely nothing like what it was a year ago. But we're still in a transitionary period that's merely starting.

[Timon3]

I don't think inertia matters. Even if the users don't change a bit compared to before the take-over, the network still moves to the right if people are constantly being shown right-wing tweets and pushed into right-wing topics. That doesn't take 5 years, it takes one day. And that day has passed a couple of month ago.

And since then Musk has been banning people on the left and un-banning people on the right, so the users definitely have changed already.

[Dudelander]

Everyone is trying too hard nowadays. It's one of the downsides of the internet. If you say "Rock and roll sin't as popular as it used to be" nobody will read your article. If you say "Rock is dead!" you'll get hits. I don't think it's fair to criticize the Atlantic for this. They're just playing by the rules of a game that many people here inadvertently designed.