Twitter – one of the Internet’s most popular platforms since 2006 is falling apart after a major change in the company’s leadership. It was previously owned by co-founder Jack Dorsey before billionaire Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion. Ever since, Twitter has been falling apart and is on the brink of shutting down.
What does this mean to us? Yes, we lose funny Tweets and easily accessible communication amongst the world; however, we are also losing so much valuable information that has contributed to the history of our world. This could impact the future of understanding our history.
The article, Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast swathes of recent human history, described Twitter to be a “living, breathing historical document” and that the end of the app would be problematic because “Twitter is teeming with significant content from the past 16 years that could help tomorrow’s historians understand the world of today.”
It is because of Twitter that the public was informed of many major, important events first-hand: Osama Bin Laden’s death, Malaysia Airlines flight drowning and the Russia and Ukraine war. From political debates to sports competitions, the app has served as a place for people around the world to discuss current events, express opinions and share news. This capability represents the thoughts of our society during the years of Twitter’s existence and the major role it played in how the world communicated with each other.
With this, Twitter has encapsulated tons of information about our world and its events. Historians have used Twitter as an incredibly helpful tool to understand history because of its immense accumulation of the public’s thoughts and all in one place. Tweets have come to act as historical records of human history – so losing the platform is losing valuable information.
It is also important to note that there are many other social media apps still available like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat – yet none are comparable to Twitter in the sense of immediacy and “conversation-like” sharing. This shows how impactful the downfall of Twitter will be to not only the future of communication between the world, but in documenting and understanding history as well.
Another aspect that Twitter has that many other social medias do not, is the vast amount of generations that use it. Multiple age groups, from young to old, use Twitter in their own ways. It has become very popular among my generation to create memes or jokes on Twitter – as a Gen Z, I loved using it for the “PSAT memes.” However, older generations use the app…just not for the same reason. My parents use the app to get the latest updates on the news. The multifaceted app is used for so many reasons; furthermore displaying how impactful the disappearance would be.
To combat this issue, many users are backing up their data so it is still available once Twitter is (potentially) gone forever. Although this would be beneficial, not everything can be saved. This raises the question…can Twitter be saved? As much as I want to say yes, it will be very difficult to accumulate these randomly saved Tweets in the same place and remain as accessible as they once were. Also, once the app does shut down, what would have been Tweeted during future events would not be able to be shared, losing documentation of future thoughts and opinions of the public.
Let’s just hope this is just a temporary problem that will not impact the future of the widely popular app.
