What was once a platform where you could access open-source information that was reliable and free…has now been laid to rest by Elon Musk. Yes, I’m talking about that little blue bird we’ve known and loved for years.
I’m not one for beating dead horses, but at the very least, I’d like to explain my reasoning. #1 is misinformation: the lax content moderation policies have opened the floodgates of disinformation. #2 is a lack of meaningful interactions: what was once a breeding ground for stimulating conversations has become a vat of unintelligible sludge. #3 is Elon Musk: I simply can’t support anything that man does anymore.
While I’m saying goodbye to Twitter (X) for personal use, we’ll still distribute my videos there. However, the best place to get my updates is via the newsletter or my YouTube channel (both of which are linked below)…
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Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from New York. I know normally people don’t like it when I do a video from my hotel room, but I’ve got a view of the cathedral right here, so I figured maybe we’d make an exception the day I’d stay here and talk about distribution channels and specifically why I’m leaving Twitter completely
So three things. First of all, I used to love Twitter because it provided me access to firsthand information in places that the mainstream media, for whatever reason, couldn’t or wouldn’t go. The best example I can give you is the Ukraine war. As technology has become more important in global media, the number of people who were employed in that space has dropped.
And so there’s a lot fewer eyes and fingers touching any particular story that has one of the reasons why we have a lot more opinion in our news than we used to. And a lot less fact checkers. Your editors, fewer people see anything. And so when something new starts up, especially when there’s something new, is kind of neo violent and dangerous, there just aren’t enough people within the existing media landscape to redirect in this case to either side of the front line in Ukraine.
And so Twitter was where individuals who had personal contacts in the area could provide information. And sure, there’s a lot to vet, but the point is, it was a source of information. Now, when the Ukraine war began, the old Twitter management went through and purged Russian bots from the system, which all of a sudden opened up Twitter to be glorious in any number of venues because it was no longer being spammed by disinformation.
It was not to the same scale. But then Elon Musk came in and as part of his commitment to free speech, he destroyed all content moderation and allowed encouraged the bots to come back in force. And so now I would say on my feed, my curated feed, it’s about 90, 95% misinformation. And so I’ve gone from spending an hour to thumbing through Twitter, getting a feel of what’s going on in the world, to spending 12 hours and having no idea what’s going on because it’s just crap.
So I’ve stopped. The second big issue has to do with interaction. Now, part of the thing that was wonderful about old Twitter is the people who were providing that firsthand information were accessible. And, you know, not to put too much of shine on it, but when you’ve got 100,000 or more followers, those people tend to pay attention if you ask them a question.
So for me, it became free information gathering and I could engage with conversations with potential sources as well as just normal viewers about what was going on. And it gave me ideas of what to do, for example, for these videos, because you guys could interact with me, you could access me, and vice versa. Well, that stopped basically the things that are in the for you category, a mention by you has disappeared from my feed.
And over the last six weeks I have had seven interactions with all of you combined. Now, if you want to spare me with porn bot that gets through and if you want to launch a crypto scheme and see if I’ll fall for it, that gets through. And if it’s a porn themed crypto scheme that absolutely gets through. But it’s gone from being one of the most rewarding parts of my job to just complete a time suck and a waste of everything that I do.
So that’s gone. And then there’s third is Elon Musk himself. What a wanker. It was one thing when he would blindly parrot whatever piece of Chinese propaganda came across the screen. And another thing, when he started doing the same thing for Russian propaganda and then Iranian propaganda. But of late, he’s gone down the white supremacist road in the anti-Semitic road.
And it’s almost like Musk has revealed to the world that in reality he’s not a green or a businessman. He’s just an unapologetic apartheid era, white South African, which apparently is exactly what he is. And so I’m done. I will still be using Twitter as a distribution channel for the videos. For those of you who are somehow able to find some sort of use for it, probably the crypto pros.
But for everybody else, I would just underline that the fastest way, the most reliable way to get the videos is to sign up for the newsletter w WW dot z e i h a incom slash newsletter sign dot com slash newsletter, which is always the first place that the video goes before Twitter, before YouTube, before everything else. So just sign up direct.
We will never share your data with anyone and the video remains free. Okay, that’s it. I’ll see you around. I’ll still be checking in on Twitter every few weeks to see if anything’s changed because, you know, God, it certainly can’t get worse, is my thinking. But then it keeps getting worse. But who knows? Maybe we’ll have a change in management.
Maybe we’ll have a change in policy, and it’ll be some version of what it used to be. But until then. Newsletter. All right. Ticker.
