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The Decline of the World Is Visible on X

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saturday

There was a time when Twitter seemed almost revolutionary in the best possible sense of the word. Created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, it began with a remarkably simple idea: allow people to tell the world what they were doing in 140 characters.

Nobody could have imagined what that little messaging platform would eventually become.

Twitter grew from “What are you doing?” into “What is happening?” and suddenly ordinary people could witness history while it unfolded. During demonstrations in Iran and later the Arab Spring, social media showed its enormous political power. Journalists discovered that breaking news could appear on Twitter before it reached a newsroom, politicians discovered that they could speak directly to millions of people, and activists discovered that information could cross borders faster than governments could control it.

But somewhere along the road, something changed.

Twitter became X after Elon Musk purchased the company for approximately $44 billion in 2022 and renamed it in 2023. Musk presented himself as a defender of freedom of expression, and there is something genuinely valuable about challenging the enormous power that social media companies possess over political discussion. No private company should casually decide which political opinions humanity is permitted to hear.

I know something about that personally.

For a long time, I refused to join Twitter. When I eventually created an account and began sharing material from my foundation, Time To Stand Up For Israel, I was permanently suspended. When Twitter became X, I decided to return and start again, this time completely under the name of my foundation. I purchased a Premium subscription because the platform offered something extremely valuable to a writer and Israel advocate: the possibility of publishing longer articles and reaching people without waiting for traditional media to decide whether my voice deserved space.

That part of X remains valuable.

Unfortunately, there is another X.

And that X tells us something deeply uncomfortable about the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)