A note to the next Twitter chief

Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. I tried to enjoy Elon Musk’s Twitter until my social connections began quiet quitting. But first… Tod [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. I tried to enjoy Elon Musk’s Twitter until my social connections began quiet quitting. But first… Today’s must-reads: • Sam Bankman-Fried’s [US extradition hit a snag]( • Epic Games will [pay a $520 million privacy fine]( • Meta [recommitted to its struggling metaverse]( Got a minute? We’d love your input on Bloomberg Tech and how we can best serve you. [Please take this short survey](. Time for Twitter 3.0 In a matter of weeks, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter Inc. went from a [case study of corporate acquisition challenges]( to an online Absurdia of [erratic executive behavior]( and [farcical moral hypocrisy](. During all the exhausting drama — involving Musk apparently [writing himself out of a job]( using a Twitter poll — I’ve found that the hardest thing to do on Twitter is to enjoy using Twitter. It seems inevitable that a lot of [power users would grow tired]( of Musk’s [slapdash content rules]( and management [decisions](. But I’ve noticed, anecdotally, that a bunch of my followers aren’t really contributing any longer to the digital public square. They’re biding silently, watching the theater without playing a part. The effect on my own usage is surprising: Hanging out on Twitter is a pretty darn isolating experience. I’d never been much of a prolific poster. Since joining Twitter in late 2010, I’ve always had a bit of stage fright when it came to tweeting and preferred a stay-in-my-lane approach that mostly had me boringly linking to magazine articles I wrote or favoriting ones I didn’t. Although I refreshed Twitter probably a dozen times every five minutes over the next decade, finding myself addicted to the real-time updates from the community of tech entrepreneurs and reporters I gravitate toward, I also hated how phony and smarmy the place could be. Yes, pre-Elon Twitter [could be a depressing hellscape](, too, but at its best, the 140-character era of the service was, for me, a public chat room that could flatten societal hierarchies and lead to serendipitous exchanges on eclectic topics. Like [T. Boone Pickens teasing Drake]( about making his first million or Val Kilmer tweeting years ago that he was game to [reprise his role as Iceman in the greenlighted Top Gun sequel]( or even [Musk joking about a tweet]( from Space Exploration Technologies Corp. regarding Elon parody accounts. Nowadays, even this kind of warm superficiality is hard to come by, never mind more nuanced or insightful conversation. My feed has essentially become a television tuned to a channel only showing 24/7 programs about [what should and shouldn’t be on TV](. Bad-faith debates have replaced good-faith dialogue. Everyone seems afraid of getting dunked on or sub-tweeted. What’s especially weird is that I’ve been tweeting more than ever, even as my friends have ghosted. My wife thinks something is wrong with me, and I’m embarrassed to say I’ve been sucked into some stupid dunk contests. But most of all, what I’ve tried to recreate is the thing I loved about the old Twitter, one where you could have a decent and well-intentioned conversation in public. Sure, that was never the predominant experience before Musk, but it did happen. I can’t say I see a lot of it now. My hope is that the next head of Twitter fosters a more civil venue for discourse. I would vote for that. —[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) Today in (more) Twitter Elon Musk wants Twitter to become the “most accurate source of information about the world,” but the company’s [fact-checking system has serious limitations](. Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked Tesla’s board if Musk is [fulfilling his legal obligations]( to the automaker’s stakeholders after his purchase of Twitter. As Musk says “no one wants” the CEO role at Twitter, [some potential candidates raise their hands](. What led Twitter users to vote Musk out? [A timeline of his performance](. Get fully charged With Apple’s challenges in China mounting, analysts said India and Vietnam are emerging as the [tech giant’s next manufacturing hubs](. Venture capital for late-stage Latin American tech companies [has dried up](. Not even the technical magic of James Cameron’s new Avatar movie can [help Disney revive its slumping stock](. 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