Earlier today, I realized that I could not open tweets on my browser anymore—unless I was logged in. Considering how much effort Elon Musk is putting into the degradation of the platform, I was not really surprised.

The Verge soon confirmed that Twitter has effectively become a fully walled garden.

From the point of view of a content creator, it means that all of your tweets have instantly become private. As far as I can tell, embeds still work. But unless your readers have a Twitter account and are logged in, or they read your tweets as embeds, they are not able to read any of your tweets anymore.

It is a completely unacceptable situation, especially considering that Twitter users do not have any control on how public or private their tweets are. Musk unilaterally decided that all tweets are now private, full stop.

In a tweet, Musk said the following:

Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!

Considering his proven track record of having no idea how Twitter actually works, I would not be surprised if Twitter is absolutely not “data pillaged”. Most importantly, I do not believe him when he wrote that it is a “temporary […] measure”. I am not saying he is lying, I am rather saying that I have no reason to outright trust him.

In any case, this new development is another illustration that Twitter is not a welcoming place for content creators anymore. If your content can instantly go private without any option for you to change that, it means you have lost a large amount of control on your content.

Personally, this new development is fortifying my plan to leave Twitter as soon as it is economically feasible. The unreliability and chaotic nature of the platform is a major distraction. I want to write content, not to spend my time having to deal with the consequences of the actions of a billionaire man child who has no idea what he is doing.