The Selfish Takes

Pretty wild something that is clearly a public utility can be single handedly destroyed by a bored unfunny emerald mine heir in less than 60 days.

— maurice (@mo87mo87) November 18, 2022

Twitter is weird, destructive, and occasionally kind of beautiful, @cwarzel writes. What will we do without it?https://t.co/egpY6rqB9Q

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) November 18, 2022

The much less selfish take:

Shout out to all the workers at Twitter. You all built a vital place for connection and deserved so much better.

Millions of people appreciate the space you built and the hard work that went into it. Thank you 💙

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 18, 2022

"Public utility"? I wonder how many people are on Twitter versus, say, cable TeeVee; or Netflix; or Facebook. Or even broadcast TeeVee. Which is regulated largely because the bandwidth was limited back in the day (digital broadcast has changed that).

And none of those are public utilities. Until cellphones telephones were available from a single provider (Ma Bell). Gas, water, electricity still come from one connection to your house.

Twitter is a public utility? Not even close. And what will we do without Twitter? Get by just fine.