Ok, Twitter has changed/is changing.
Let's look at recent events, reports, announcements etc. and see if it forms any kind of meaningful picture.
Note, this isn't science. unless you count the really important process that leads up to one making a hypothesis, in which case, it totally is science.
1. API rules enforced, effectively killing third party apps.
2. Charging for the API, to kill anything still not dead.
3. People reporting fewer followers, starting at the same time.
4. People reporting fewer interactions/activity.
5. People reporting inability to see content from those you are following.
6. The need to go to user profiles to see all their activity.
7. Charging to see fewer ads.
8. People reporting that private mode increases engagement.
9. The conspicuous introduction of 'For Me' and 'Following' named choices.
10. Those choices not working properly and showing the same content.
11. More people using private mode, Elon drawing attention to it
12. Announcing that this is a for the people platform, wont be influenced by the media.
13. Ads in the comments, ok this last one is a giveaway.
Hmm. This is bad.
What this looks like to me is a very real attempt to turn Twitter into Facebook. And not the old Facebook, the new one.
You know that platform that everybody used to be on, and is now 80% ads and 20% is 5-10 of your friends and nothing else. And is 100% cash cow that's allowing a company to build another big thing somewhere over there?
I think that's what Elon wants to do, but Twitter is built on a very different dynamic, it's mostly strangers, lots of people following a few. That kind of transition will be tough. And it will have to be gradual.
It will require slowly getting people used to the idea that they will have to scroll for hours to see maybe 50% of the content they are looking for, rather than 20 minute to see it all.
Next, distract people from noticing how the platform is becoming more ad focused, make a big song and dance about your political neutrality.
You can't control the stream of data when people are using third party apps, they need to go. Facebook can only be viewed with facebook, Twitter needs to be the same.
Also, stop people from following others, at any cost, every person they follow is ad space lost. Killing third party apps slowed that down.
But, private mode, encourage the shit out of this because, it's more like Facebook, stuff going on out of public view. Private content for followers only, which is basically, like friends on Facebook
If people want to see less ads or use the API, they pay, that fixes loss of ad revenue.
Try and polarise the user base as much as possible, the more arguing and shouting, the less reading and thinking, the less people will notice it turning into a giant ad board. Bring back all the toxic populist crowd.
Also, introduce 'for me' and 'following' tabs to suggest that you do have a choice, but at the same time imply that what is 'for you' is not who you are 'following'.
Then confuse people even more by making those two streams overlap, reinforcing the idea that maybe you don't know what you want to see, people you're following includes content you didnt ask to see, and content for you, includes people you're following, up is down, black is white, and look at some ads while you figure it out.
Make it easy to lose tweets in all the confusion. Yours, other peoples, do you even know the difference now.
..here. look at some more ads.
But make sure you do all this slowly, otherwise people will notice the bait-and-switch from useful platform to money spinning ad orgy.
Update - Ads now in comments section, it all seems to be pointing towards this article being true.
Then Elon can build his spaceships while Twitter does a long slow death spiral gushing out money, and Zuckerberg does the same thing with Facebook and the Metaverse.
I really think it's time for a new player to take over this space, and do a much better job.
I already ranted about this from the Facebook side a few weeks ago