I was pleased to join Sarah Tallier and The Future Of team to discuss how Twitter has changed since being purchased by Elon Musk, what this means for Twitter as some form of public sphere, and what alternatives are emerging (Mastodon!).

We discuss:

Will Twitter ever be the same since Elon Musk’s takeover? And what impact will his changes have on users, free speech and (dis)information?    

Twitter is one of the most influential speech platforms in the world – as of 2022, it had approximately 450million monthly active users. But its takeover by Elon Musk has sparked concerns about social media regulation and Twitter’s ability to remain a ‘proxy for public opinion’.

To explore this topic, Sarah is joined by Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University.

• Why does Twitter matter? [00:48]
• Elon rewinds content regulation [06:54]
• Twitter’s political clout [10:16]
• Make the internet democratic again [11:28]
• What is Mastodon? [15:29]
• Can we ever really trust the internet? [17:47]

And there’s a transcript here.