The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, took over Twitter Inc. exactly one year ago. "The little bird has been released," Musk tweeted on October 27 last year.
Then he fired the management and half of the 7.500 employees. He eventually embarked on a so-called rebranding, changing the name of the network to "X" (X).
Twitter was launched in Silicon Valley in 2006 as a 140-character micro-blogging platform. By the end of last year, it had 368 million active users, and was held up as a catalyst for major protests, from the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.
In terms of numbers, Twitter has never been close to networks like Facebook and Instagram. Twitter has always drawn its weight from political weight - politicians, businessmen, and journalists write on it.
Return of written offs
Before buying the network for 44 billion euros, Musk called Twitter "a de facto public town square" and criticized the previous owners for allegedly restricting free speech.
As boss, Musk fired hundreds of content moderators and reinstated the suspended accounts of people like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Anglin, as well as other Holocaust deniers and white racists.
Just weeks later, researchers at Tufts University in the US claimed that "the quality of communication has declined" on Twitter "with more extremists and propagandists or hateful content testing the limits of what Twitter will allow".
Now, a year later, critics say the "town square" is flooded with hate speech and misinformation.
"It is obvious, and this has been confirmed by numerous studies, that the amount of hate speech has increased," says Rafaela Andres of the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim.
Andres participated in a study assessing the impact of legislation on hate speech on Twitter. That's important, he says, because "what's on social media translates into the real world."
Is it worse than elsewhere?
Musk has sued or threatened to sue critics who accused him of allowing hate speech or urged advertisers to avoid Twitter. According to some estimates, since Musk's arrival, Twitter has lost a third of its value.
Saša Altaj, an experimental psychologist who researches misinformation and (dis)trust at the University of Zurich, says that there is no doubt that Twitter has changed with the arrival of Musk. But, as he adds, there are few studies that compare this platform with other networks.
"Mask, of course, introduced a lot of things that didn't contribute to the level of discussion, but it's hard to say if it's really worse on Twitter than elsewhere," Altaj told DW. "Is it worse than TikTok? Maybe. But I don't think we have good data to make that claim."
Altaj says the spread of fake news on Twitter has been a problem. And not so much when it's done by bots or trolls, but when it's done by people of power and influence in the real world.
By the way, Musk abolished the "blue badge" that public figures previously had with their name, which proved that it was really them, and not someone who presented themselves as such. Today, anyone who pays a few dollars a month can have a "blue badge".
Even with the earlier "blue badge" there were a lot of lies, says Altaj, and now it's even worse. "A lot of disinformation has been launched before by verified accounts, like some politicians," he adds.
Showdown with the German authorities
There were even rumors that Musk intended to withdraw from Europe due to EU rules on the spread of hate speech and "harmful" content.
In September, the Twitter boss lashed out at the German government, blaming it for Europe being allegedly flooded with refugees. Musk called to vote for the right-wing Alternative for Germany.
Criticizing naval missions rescuing migrants from the Mediterranean Sea - which are partly funded by the German budget - Musk asked: "Does the public know about this?" On Twitter, the official account of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied: "Yes, it's called saving lives. "
Will Twitter die?
Many came up with the idea of demonstratively "leaving" Twitter. In Germany, too, some of the more important politicians deleted their accounts. However, most politicians and media remained.
Of the major media networks, the exception is the American NPR. When in April of this year "X" labeled them as "media linked to the American state", that media network with 8,7 million followers left Twitter. It was later learned that after that move, NPR lost only one percent of its audience, that is, leaving Twitter did not harm them.
"I don't think Twitter will die," says Rafaela Andres. "There are alternatives, like Mastodon or Blue Sky. I don't expect them to become as big as Twitter, I just think we won't have one dominant platform anymore."
"I hope that one day people will be able to communicate from one of those platforms to another, I think that's the direction they're going to go," Andres expects.
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