Pal: Twitter is in bad shape. What now?

Last week, Twitter said goodbye to its bird logo and rebranded the platform to X. 

The change comes after a series of rapid decisions by Elon Musk, signaling the potential demise of the platform. 

For The Times of India, University of Michigan School of Information associate professor of information Joyojeet Pal talks about Elon Musk’s leadership, the effort to rebrand Twitter and the future of X. 

In terms of competition,Twitter is safe from threats for now, but they’re definitely not safe enough that they can risk further alienating their users.

 

“What Musk has also done now is effectively kill the globally recognized brand,” Pal says. “It had a valuation of four billion alone and now that’s gone.” 

As for whether users and stakeholders can bid adieu to Twitter, Pal says “it’s definitely not dead yet” but we’re definitely watching a “long, slow death.” 

"It’s in bad shape,” he says. “It’s having technical outages on a scale it never has. It’s having reliability and privacy issues. In terms of competition, Twitter is safe from threats for now, but they’re definitely not safe enough that they can risk further alienating their users."

Users have noticed the proliferation of bad advertisements, misinformation and bizarre content in their feeds since Musk took over the platform in 2022. Though the platform is still active with some users, Pal says it risks becoming an eco chamber of hate speech. 

“Historically, we look at what has happened on other platforms where hate speech is allowed to flourish,” he says. “This has a dangerous risk of going down the 4chan and Parler way where eventually the only people left there are the people who love the hate speech and it’s an echochamber for them and them alone.” 

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Listen to “Bird’s flown, is the end of Twitter near?” on The Times of India. 

Learn more about associate professor of information Joyojeet Pal by visiting his UMSI faculty profile.