Thank You, Garbage Dump

A slopocalypse, if you can keep it. Surfing a tidal wave of virality, in part triggered by an apparently incorrect infographic targeting a bunch of right-wing influencers, the statistician, public intellectual, and overall good lib Nate Silver has dominated Twitter for two full days following the publication of his latest piece. His arguments are, first, Twitter (now X) has become more right-wing under Elon’s stewardship (true). Then, the most popular accounts on the platform, from both the left and the right, are “extremely low-quality” (also true). But as Nate and his followers carried on discussing the piece over the following hours, and then days, conversation shifted to something more general: does this platform just kind of suck? And — the big question — is it worse, both practically in terms of its usefulness for writers, intellectuals, and the public, and morally in terms of its value to the country and world, than it was before Elon bought it and made it his Clown World internet castle?