Appledystopia Deletes Twitter Account
October 30, 2022 at 3:37 p.m.
After Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, we at Appledystopia decided to delete our account with the troubled social media platform. The San Francisco-based company’s move to embrace extreme political views and allow conspiracy theories to thrive is antithetical to a functioning society. The fact that the company is five miles from where I type this sickens me, but San Francisco has changed significantly in the past twenty years. It’s no longer the liberal, progressive and tolerant city it once was due largely to the influx of social media workers employed at Twitter and Meta.
I was never fond of Twitter. Working at a company that created complicated and useful medical software, I thought it was odd for a few dozen lines of Ruby code to fuel a multi-billion dollar empire. Of course, Twitter’s value is not in its simplistic software. It’s in its users. It’s in its ability to generate hype.
From a technical perspective, Twitter is a joke. It started as a few dozen lines of Ruby code from a programmer (not a software engineer) struggling to make it in an area where he had to compete with Cal, Stanford, and MIT grads. Jack Dorsey’s skill was manipulating people with a grand vision that his few dozen lines of Ruby code would transform the world. It did. Twitter ushered in an era of remarkably vapid technology bolstered by massive egos.
Twitter didn’t improve over time. In its early days, they were incapable of scaling Twitter. It was so bad, they could only allow one celebrity to Tweet at a time, because the response would crash servers. The company experienced massive problems dealing with such a simple system. After all, how would an incompetent founder find competent employees? He wouldn’t even know what to ask in interviews. He would most likely want someone like him — another BS artist. Yet this became one of the world’s most prominent “technology” companies.
Recently, a Twitter employee admitted that the company’s security was ten years behind the times. It’s no surprise. Twitter isn’t a technology company. It’s a communications company that uses technology quite poorly. One has to wonder what their engineers do all day. I realize today they claim to utilize sophisticated AI technology and analytics. Twitter is exaggerating, like most tech companies. They’re using simple algorithms to push content into your feed. There’s nothing technologically sophisticated about Twitter. They’re the toilet paper of Silicon Valley. Twitter is what people here read when they’re dropping a deuce.
Twitter appeals to those who enjoy sucking up to celebrities. This is how Twitter gained traction in the early days. The company engaged a few celebrities, like Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz, and their fans were thrilled that they could interact with their favorite stars. Other celebrities saw this and became jealous. They, too, wanted their fans to adore them. Soon it became a race — who has the most Twitter followers? The number of Twitter followers became a gauge of your value.
Twitter itself created its own stars. Soon, people started following social media celebrities who had nothing going for them other than large buttocks in tights. A whole new business model arose — influencing. Getting by on one’s “good looks” was never easier.
Unfortunately, it looks like the gravy train is pulling into the terminal. The economy is souring, and advertisers are already pulling ads out of Twitter. We’re one of the first to delete our Twitter account, but others will surely follow as the social media platform descends into chaos.
The fact is, social media is optional for Internet publishers. Our advertisers prefer organic traffic — readers who come to our site from search engines, not social media. The problem with social media traffic is that it’s all the same followers. Since they visit the site frequently, they’re less likely to engage fully with it. Social media traffic isn’t the best audience for a website like Appledystopia.
If you followed us on Twitter and wonder where we went, we’re right here. Just bookmark our home page and visit whenever you’re looking for an insider’s perspective on the Silicon Valley, Apple, and technology.