Social Media: all that is solid melts into air. The return of the Fletter
Elon Musk’s latest pronouncement on the future of X, that he plans to charge all users a fee in some form reflects the fracturing of social media.
The fact that Musk is on the hard to far right of things doesn’t help but the pronouncement reflects the likely failure of the current subscription offer, Blue, and the longer standing reality that Twitter/X can’t be made to work as a commercial concern.
Musk hasn’t helped because by his own admission by losing around 50% of the advertising revenue. Given that X has significant debts one wonders if the real aim is to make it bankrupt and allow Musk to walk away.
Meanwhile social media is fracturing. I have accounts on Mastodon, Threads and Blue Sky but still use X mostly at the moment. It still has a vitality with all the issues that the others lack.
The reality is though that with social media, as so often with market capitalism, all that is virtually solid is melting into air.
From this two interim conclusions:
1 It’s a reminder that the letter form still exists, and still appears in print and on-line. A moderated and edited way of seeing a balance of views (at best). The Times (19th September) has an Editorial on letters, although I don’t write Fletters to the Murdoch press.
2 The potential demise of twitter will pose more issues for archivists, historians and all those who like delving in past tweets. As the historian Evan Smith has argued the fact that in the on-line world all that is solid regularly melts into air is becoming a huge issue for those who seek to capture and understand recent history
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