Twitter at 20: How we lost the public square
- Mar 22
- 1 min read
FAST COMPANY — Elon Musk called the platform the “de facto public town square” as he courted the company before buying it for $44 billion in October 2022.
Today, that public town square lies in ruins. The company’s value has yo-yoed, dropping below $10 billion in September 2024 before rebounding to roughly its original valuation by March 2025. User numbers have declined as people tire of puerile shitposting and sexual harassment through the Grok chatbot. The platform is now struggling under a morass of AI slop, its own staff admit.
Musk has framed these changes as a necessary evolution in service of free speech. The result, however, has been the erosion of the utility that made Twitter essential for journalism and public discourse.
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