Bad scenario when Elon Musk ‘kills’ Twitter: The world loses ‘mountain of data’, not even Facebook or TikTok can replace it

What if Twitter “crashes”?

That question is being asked, after the “erratic” new owner Elon Musk repeatedly threw the future of the platform into turmoil. If Twitter suddenly disappears, the consequences are expected to be huge due to the indispensable role this social network plays in global communication.

According to CNN, Twitter is still dubbed the “Digital Town Square” and is more than simply a social media site. World leaders use Twitter to communicate. Journalists use Twitter to gather news, while dissidents see it as a place for debate. Celebrities and big brands also use Twitter to make important announcements.

Twitter users track all of that in real time. If this platform “collapses”, no social networking site can replace it. Communication will even be disrupted on many media sites, thereby causing “blockage” to the flow of reliable information.

At that time, some people will think of using a copy of Twitter. Mastodon, the blogging platform similar to Blue Bird is a good example. However, the explosion in popularity is only relative because Mastodon is much smaller than Twitter in terms of size and ability to attract users.

It is known that most Twitter clones are designed to serve conservative users who have hated the platform for years. A good example is Truth Social of former US President Donald Trump. It calls itself the “Twitter for Right” where people are free to share their views.

Facebook, Instagram or TikTok may be safer options, but neither platform is destined to inherit all Twitter users. They cannot become the center of public conversation and debate – something Twitter has built up over the years.

“What if Twitter ‘collapses’? – This question is being asked, after the future of the platform is constantly in turmoil.

Social networking platforms – with billions of user interactions every second – are likened to ‘artificial brains’. Twitter currently processes around 500-700 million tweets, plus about 12 terabytes of data per day. This number is quite small compared to Facebook, but is still considered a huge “mountain of data”.

“This will be a great resource for future historians. Humans have never been able to collect so much data in any given period,” said Elise Thomas, an analyst at ISD.

Thus, the death of Twitter means that the world will lose a large amount of data. Before that, the Library of Congress itself archived all Twitter posts from 2010-2018. However, this work was stopped in 2018 due to the large amount of data.

“In a way, Twitter has become a kind of information aggregator,” says Eliot Higgins, founder of the open-source investigative firm Bellingcat.

Many theories are drawn around the risk of “crash” Twitter causing data loss. A specific solution has not been given, but it is still expected that in the worst case, Musk will not immediately “unplug” but close the door in an organized way to retain important information.

“We’ll lose a lot of digital history if Twitter goes down without warning,” Kilbride said.

Last week, Musk announced that he was starting to shut down Twitter’s “microservices” service, saying it was bloated and using too many technology resources. A wave of protests rose among Twitter engineers, who thought that Musk was not sure what he was talking about.

According to CNN, Twitter is still dubbed the “Digital Town Square” and is more than simply a social media site.

“Microservices are a tool for most modern large websites to organize their code, thereby helping software engineers work quickly and efficiently. There are many such services and each service manages a different feature. Instead of experimenting with eliminating microservices, Musk directly removed Microservices,” said Gergely Orosz, author of the Pragmatic Engineer blog and a former Uber programmer.

Last weekend, Twitter’s office suddenly closed, after hundreds of employees of the social networking platform refused to continue working on Elon Musk’s new vision. According to BI, this is the second time that the Twitter office has “frozen” since the Tesla CEO took over the social networking platform. The billionaire started making mass layoffs about 3-4 weeks ago to “ensure the safety of each employee as well as the Twitter system and customer data”.

The decision to close was announced on Twitter by Zoe Schiffer, taking place about an hour after Musk’s 5pm deadline for Twitter employees to officially sign the commitment.

“If you are sure you want to be a part of the new Twitter, please click OK in the link below,” reads Elon Musk’s email to all Twitter employees. In addition, if they do not sign this commitment before 5pm on November 17 (US time), Twitter employees will receive 3 months of severance pay.

Immediately after the announcement, hundreds of employees among the remaining nearly 3,000 people announced their departure. According to Robert Graham, a cybersecurity expert, Twitter employees hold a lot of information about major security infrastructure and “when they leave, you know, it all goes with them.”

By: CNN, Bloomberg