
What would happen if Twitter were to shut down over night? - m-localhost
Is that possible? What effect would that have on public opinion? Is Twitter&#x2F;social media the Bayer, Degussa, IG Farben of our time (See also facebook in Myanmar)?
======
daedalbug
the world would instantly become a better place, it isn't half as important as
it likes to think it is

------
CM30
1\. Loads of people and companies would set up Twitter clones/successors to
try and cash in. Some of these would be federated/open source, some wouldn't,
but either way, it's likely one or more would take off thanks to the Twitter
refugees.

2\. Existing Twitter alternatives would see a huge boost in popularity.
Mastodon would get thousands of new signups in a matter of minutes/hours, and
niche alternatives like Minds and Gab would probably see a fair bit of growth
as well.

3\. The media would panic as they realise the 'easy source of news' they've
been relying on is gone and they don't know which replacement will take off
yet.

4\. Some 'lucky' alternative would end up attracting Donald Trump, and the
popularity (from both fans and critics) would likely send the servers into
meltdown. Given his political views, I can see Gab being the winner there.

5\. The job market would see an increase in software engineers, designers, dev
ops guys, etc if Twitter's workforce were also laid off/the company didn't
exist anymore. It wouldn't be too noticeable (those fields are already super
packed with candidates as is), but you'd see a small jump in numbers none the
less.

6\. Many, many news sites, blogs, wikis and forums would break horribly, since
they used tweets as sources in articles and posts. Think the recent
Photobucket catastrophe was bad? Well, the number of Twitter embeds likely
dwarfs that by a thousandfold.

I think that sums it up.

~~~
m-localhost
Very good points. I haven't thought about the broken website problem due to
embeds.

------
tboyd47
There would be replacements but they wouldn't have staying power. Twitter
works because there's only one. Powerful people in the world can use it to
monitor popular opinion on any topic. So its main role today in the lives of
young people is political in nature. It allows them to come together and
deliver a message to the establishment in a way that no other institution in
society does. Think about the difference between Occupy Wall Street and
#MeToo. People complain a lot about Twitter witch hunts, but that just shows
you that Twitter movements actually get results. I can't think of a single
goal from the Occupy movements that was met. The thing is that Twitter does
not encourage dialogue or cooperation across subcultures of people. So likely,
if Twitter were gone, each community would come up with its own replacement,
and the powers that be would have no use for those.

------
gesman
I won't be able to invoke human intervention from otherwise ignorant service
providers.

Twitter is my fastline to customer support.

~~~
jackgolding
I hate this about companies that use social support. Because its still in its
infancy a lot of companies have marketing teams on their social media, someone
complains to marketing - they skip the queue and call the desk line of one of
the customer support managers.

------
rafiki6
Lots of annoying articles would be written about it, its stock price would
tank and we'd forget about it in about 3 months.

------
Daemon6
Some opportunist guy whould create a clone very fast, demand creates supply.

~~~
veddox
Mastodon would skyrocket, although it wouldn't take on everybody. Facebook
would probably profit too.

------
methusala8
All the political parties in India would lack an avenue to vent against each
other and also lose a wonderful avenue for mass-propaganda.

