“Solastalgia” for Twitter
The homesickness that comes when the environment changes beneath your feet
Lately I’ve been seeing quite a few laments for the state of social media.
Several long-term users have busted out essays concluding that today’s social sites have become, for them, deeply depressing affairs.
Over at The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel notes how Twitter/X — with its moderation staff slashed — had turned into a ghoulash of disinformation and agitprop during Hamas’ attack on Israel, and Israel’s attack on Gaza. “Our information environment is broken,” he writes, adding that …
It relies on badly maintained social-media infrastructure and is presided over by billionaires who have given up on the premise that their platforms should inform users. During the first days of the Israel-Hamas war, X owner Elon Musk himself has interacted with doctored videos published to his platform. He has also explicitly endorsed accounts that are known to share false information and express vile anti-Semitism. In an interview with The New York Times, a Hamas official said that the organization has been using the lack of moderation on X to post violent, graphic videos on the platform to terrorize Israeli citizens.
