Elon Musk’s Scorched-Earth Twitter Environment
The Russia faux coup was the first big test of how Twitter would handle a breaking-news crisis under Elon. It fared… poorly.
By Daniel Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
As Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow unfolded this weekend, I tweeted the following:
A real-time crisis—like this possible coup in Russia—is exactly the moment when one needs verified accounts to filter out news from bullshit rumors.
This is also exactly the moment to remember that @elonmusk has burned this once-useful information ecosystem to the ground.
This generated considerable feedback on the birdsite, particularly from those folks who insist that the Ford Pinto they bought is super-safe are paying eight dollars a month for their blue checks. They were unhappy with my assessment. One of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration went so far as to claim, “Twitter 1.0’s ecosystem did not filter news from rumors. It amplified official propaganda and suppressed dissenting ideas and scientists, regardless of the truth. At least in Twitter 2.0, there’s some chance of learning what’s true. With 1.0, all you got was official blather.” To which Twitter owner Elon Musk replied, “exactly.”1
It’s not just me who arrived at the conclusion that pre-Elon Twitter was superior to Elon Twitter at providing useful information during a real-time geopolitical crisis. On Sunday Semafor’s Ben Smith wrote, “The Prigozhin rebellion was the biggest geopolitical crisis of this new media environment, and Twitter remained essential — though I found myself reading the feeds of key analysts — Max Seddon, Kevin Rothrock, Rob Lee — directly, while the main feed proved pretty useless and Elon Musk promoted growth hackers (emphasis added).”
Having a substantial exchange was difficult even under “Twitter 1.0,” but the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World thought it would be a good idea to articulate exactly how Twitter’s value-added for reliable crisis info has degraded so badly. In other words, I wanted to explain exactly how Twitter pre-Elon ecosystem filtered news from rumors pretty goddamn well.
Whenever a crisis breaks out, there are inevitably experts in a specific, crucial area that are available to access new facts more quickly than others. When Russia invaded Ukraine, there were plenty of journalists, academics, and ex-officials who possessed a lot of background information. But what was needed were experts who could drill down deep on Russian media, the Russian military, the Ukrainian political scene, and so forth. These kind of experts are crucial, because during a real-time crisis an awful lot of rumor and ill-informed speculation is floating around the ether as well. The best experts are the ones who can filter rumor from fact, shine a light on heretofore neglected sources of information, and reference other experts for additional information.
This was where Twitter excelled in the pre-Elon era. It’s not that verified accounts were the source of 100% accurate information — they weren’t. But most journalists and academics who were verified excelled at two things: promoting experts that they trusted, and then self-correcting when they hyped a tweet that proved to be false. This is how each crisis often births fresh experts who quickly become must-reads. At the start of Russia’s invasion, I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea who Michael Kofman, Dara Massicot, or Rob Lee were. As the first week of the war proceeded, however, they became indispensable sources. The result was a system that proved to be superior to cable news at processing real-time information.2
When Prigozhin decided to march on Moscow, I naturally checked my social media feeds. Unfortunately, neither Mastodon nor Post were of much use. BlueSky shows some promise but remains underpopulated. Twitter retained of some value because I had already curated who I follow to be able to access decent sources of information on machinations inside Russia.
That value was badly depreciated, however, by Musk’s myriad, copious fuck-ups in running Twitter. Elon’s inherent distrust of anyone who is not a toady has warped the algorithms that provide useful and new information. The accounts hyped by Musk’s $8-a-month crowd proved to be the primary sources of bullshit about events inside of Russia over the weekend. Musk’s ecosystem failed to promote any experts of value over the weekend.
As Ben Smith noted, there were still Twitter accounts that proved useful. But sweet Jesus, the chaff has nearly destroyed all the wheat. Twitter’s inherited trait of pushing the best, most informed experts to the fore has been erased. Over the long term, that means that — much like Putin himself — Twitter is vulnerable to disruption. Even if it’s not BlueSky, some New New Thing will displace the birdsite as the focal point for breaking news.
It’s just a matter of time.
1 A fun fact about Elon’s intervention: I would have expected ex ante that an Elon intervention would have triggered a tsunami of Musk-heads to inundate my feed with vitriol, insults, and the like. Instead, surprisingly, there was only a minimal increase in the tempo of engagement. I didn’t even know that Elon had weighed in until a friend clued me in about twelve hours later. What I’m saying is that Elon is right to be worried that he’s not commanding the same influence he used to.
2 It used to drive my wife crazy when she asked me if I knew about some breaking news event and I’d say yes. Thanks, pre-Elon Twitter!
(This post is republished from Drezner’s World.)