The Battle for Twitter

Elon vs. the Swarm. Here's a frame for understanding what is going on.

We now have considerable evidence that Twitter in “swarm mode” is extremely dangerous.

I’ve previously detailed how Twitter, in swarm mode, successfully escalated Russia’s war in Ukraine into a global conflict (shades of WW1), which now puts us on the edge of nuclear conflict (step 20 on Kahn’s escalatory ladder).

Most recently, Twitter amplified the false claim that the missiles that hit Poland recently were an attack by Russia on NATO. The reality was that these were Ukrainian missiles that went off course.

Here’s what made this false claim particularly dangerous:

• It immediately spread to millions worldwide (people inside the media, governments, and corporations). Furthermore, since Twitter sits upstream of the news, significant major media fell over themselves to report it as fact (as you can see above).

• Worse, people instinctually believed this claim because it fits like a puzzle piece into the swarm’s Gleichschaltung narrative (“our global war against existential Russian evil”).

• It’s existentially hazardous because it could have instigated a reaction that would have brought Russia and NATO into direct conflict while already on the edge of nuclear war.

The simple fact is that we need to do something to fix this if we’re going to survive networked decision-making.