It has been a few weeks since the change at the top at Twitter, so I thought I would add my two-cents. I have been happily off Twitter for a good 4+ years. There wasn’t really a single incident that made that decision easy, rather an eventual understanding that the platform was a net negative to learning and having fun with craft beer.
Fast forward to the MuskTwitter where you can’t make fun of the Musk but you can buy a verification from him. But only if you are hardcore. Who knows if Mastodon will run with this chance or some other non-Musked app will take to the fore but boy does the immature part of me want to go all, I told you so.
The push/pull of free speech but heavily monitored because we can’t trust Americans with nice things is never gonna be easy. There will always be people stepping over a line or snowflake conservatives setting up lines only for themselves. No social media will be perfect.
But can a lively, opinionated Beer Twitter (or equivalent) exist? Can it better than an unruly comments section? I have my doubts but I can quickly see what proponents of Twitter say about it and I do not harshly disagree, I just have a darker tint of rose colored glasses.
What I can predict with more certainty is that breweries with limited ad money and limited time are going to look for something safer, something steadier. Most business owners would probably say that, chaos doesn’t sell. More people will lean on the ‘Gram and Facebook and wait until a new app gains critical user mass rather than be associated with that Musky smell.