On "Deleting Twitter"
Why I chose to leave the platform, and other thoughts
On Sunday, October 30, I deleted my twitter account (@mitchellepner). At the time I deleted the account, I had roughly 2800 organic followers, including a bunch of high-profile people (such as Martina Navratilova, George Conway, Ken White (@popehat) and a large number of journalists). Twitter had led directly to a few cases that I have handled, and a large number of opportunities to give quotes to the media. Nonetheless, I chose to leave.
Why leave Twitter?
There is an old saying in social media: “If you’re not paying, you’re the product.” I decided that (small as I was), I did not want to be Elon Musk’s product.
For me, the final straw was Musk’s tweet that spread a defamatory conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi and his attacker. I imagine that a number of people were also offended, because earlier today Musk deleted the offensive tweet.
The offensive tweet, however, confirmed all of my fears about the direction in which Musk would take Twitter. He latched onto the MAGA conspiracy theory, either in an attempt to curry favor with FPOTUS or simply to amuse himself.
[sarcasm alert] Plus, Twitter never gave basic users an edit button. [end sarcasm alert].
Why did Musk buy Twitter?
There is no way that Twitter, as it exists now, is worth the $44B that Musk paid. The company has not made a profit (unlike FB, which throws off enormous profit each year, even with the downturn and spending on the Metaverse). For example, Twitter lost $270M in Q2 2022.
The best explanation that I have read comes from my law school classmate, Caitlin Long. Her theory is that Musk bought Twitter as a financial services/payments vehicle, not a social media company.
Caitlin Long, a respected former Morgan Stanley banker who now runs a stablecoin company, told me she has no doubts Musk is using Twitter as a vehicle to further his long-held desire to remake the payments industry.
“He’s been trying to disintermediate ACH his whole career,” she said, referring to the money transfer network run by the banks. Long views Musk’s Twitter play as the reincarnation of Libra, which sought to provide crypto wallets to Facebook’s more than 1 billion users. The plan foundered under withering scrutiny from Congress, but Long says Twitter can succeed where Facebook failed because its payment backbone is the Bitcoin Lightning network, a mostly decentralized structure that doesn’t have the same political baggage as a project led by Mark Zuckerberg.
If Ms. Long is correct (and she is wicked smart), then the losses from the social media platform will be a pittance compared to the billions he can make from making Twitter a worldwide payments platform that does not clear through the Federal Reserve.
What does this mean for FPOTUS on social media?
I think that FPOTUS will regain his place on Twitter. Musk made the return of FPOTUS to Twitter a major talking point over the last six months. FPOTUS will once again have immediate access to an audience in the hundreds of millions, rather than the tiny fraction of that who followed him to Truth Social.
What does this mean for Truth Social?
The only thing that I know for certain about the future is that it has not happened yet. I would be shocked, however, if Truth Social survives once FPOTUS is restored to Twitter.
FPOTUS will no longer need Truth Social to get his message out.
Truth Social has been an abject failure in drawing users - only about 2 million monthly active users.
Truth Social has been even worse at drawing advertisers.
The SPAC deal for FPOTUS to take Truth Social public in return for $300M has been delayed indefinitely because the SPAC owners apparently violated the SEC’s rules for SPACs.
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Since I will no longer be posting threads on Twitter explaining legal issues of the day, I am likely to be putting out many more columns here on substack.
If you like what you read, please feel free to share on any social media — even Twitter. This column is, and always will be, free to all.
I respect your choice but don’t find it terribly compelling.
1. EMs body of tweets are all over the place, the idea that he is maga (as opposed to anti-woke) seems ludicrous. Maybe the guy is just a bog-standard contrarian internet troll
2. I get that don’t want to be the ‘product’ of an internet troll. But you were ok being the product of the creepy partisan hacks that were running the place? Yikes.
Anyway, glad to disagree and keep up the good work.
With thanks. Left a while back and signed up on a few alternative social media accounts (Tribel, CounterSocial, Discord/Twitch.