AT THE TIME OF WRITING, the story of Musk’s conquest is not over. It may yet end with a bang or a whimper—or an improbable success. But what is clear already is that Musk has destroyed the platform. What he owns is no longer Twitter—not in name, but also neither in substance nor in spirit. Gone are the people who built it idealistically, at a time when Silicon Valley’s utopian promises seemed much easier to believe, and gone is its company culture of debate, equality, and idealism.
