Absolutely tragic and completely expected to see Twitter's fantastic security, privacy, and trust teams completely dismantled. A hard question emerges: at what point do other platforms start considering links to Twitter fundamentally untrustworthy?

The question will arise on the integrity side first as more scams and spam start to redirect to Twitter. Do platforms limit the reach or discoverability of all Twitter links? Those changes will be invisible - with some important exceptions. If Twitter develops a major child porn or terror content problem, you could see hard blocks on the domain (or at least accounts).

The next shift will be from security. How long is Twitter able to maintain domain security, websec, etc.? When their certs expire, are they refreshed? Will the site host malware? Will the app become a data harvesting nightmare?

Any of these could create a huge impact on the reciprocal, cross-platform traffic sharing ecosystem all social platforms rely on. We haven't seen a site the size of twitter be amputated from that body before. It won't be like blocks on 4chan/8kun or stormfront.

I'd say this is why Musk thinks he can get away with a paywall - bc he's about to own an internet island anyway. But I really don't think he understands this at all.