Twitter’s collapse under Elon Musk could wipe out records of human history, experts warn 

New Twitter owner Elon Musk has already said the company will go bankrupt and “will not survive” if it doesn’t find ways to make money.

The revelation, detailed in an internal email to Twitter employees last week, has cast doubt on the future of the popular microblogging platform.

Now, experts have speculated what Twitter’s collapse could mean for its vast library of tweets, many of which have historical value.

An expert claims the potential collapse of Twitter under Musk could erase “huge records of recent human history,” such as contemporary accounts of the war against Ukraine and the death of Osama bin Laden.

Since the first tweet was posted in 2006, Twitter has been the online place to document important events, but they could be lost if the site goes out of business.

“We’re going to lose so much digital history if Twitter goes down without warning,” said Elise Thomas, an analyst at the global think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). MIT Technology Review.

‘[Twitter] actually represents a huge opportunity for future historians; we have never had the capacity to capture so much data from an earlier era in history.”

Attempting to archive the vast library of tweets accessible on the Twitter website may also prove impractical or expensive.

It is said that over 500 million tweets are posted per day, so backing up every tweet can be too much of a challenge.

Third-party companies may also not have a chance to do so if the Twitter collapse comes too suddenly.

For eight years, the U.S. Library of Congress made a public record of all tweets, but stopped the practice in 2018, in part due to “an explosion in use” that made the task too onerous.

It now only archives tweets “on a selective basis.”

Ciaran O’Connor, also at ISD, said Twitter’s library of content from the past 16 years contains tweets that can be used as evidence.

“If Twitter disappeared in the morning, say, all this — all the first-hand evidence of atrocities or potential war crimes, and all this potential evidence — would just disappear,” he said.

MailOnline has reached out to Twitter about Musk’s plans to back up his tweet library in the event of bankruptcy.

Musk – who took out a large loan to buy the company for $44 billion (£38 billion) – is soon faced with the prospect of being saddled with huge debts, which could bankrupt Twitter.

He has already said in a tweet that his company is losing $4 million (£3.4 million) a day.

Advertisers have pulled out of Twitter in large numbers, scared by the bad publicity and reported rise of hateful content on the platform.

In a leaked Nov. 9 internal email, Musk said there was “no way to disguise the message” that Twitter “will not survive” unless its business model changes.

“Frankly, the economic picture is bad, especially for a company like ours that relies so much on advertising in a challenging economic environment,” Musk said.

“Without substantial subscription revenue, Twitter is unlikely to survive the coming economic downturn.

“The road ahead is arduous and will require intensive work to succeed.”

Since taking ownership, Musk — who also runs Tesla and SpaceX — has wasted no time making major changes to Twitter, including firing top executives and disbanding its board of directors.

He has also confirmed that he will charge Twitter users $8 a month for a blue check mark next to their account name, calling the current “lords and peasants” system “bulls**t.”

The rollout of the feature as part of Twitter Blue, Twitter’s subscription service, has been plagued with issues, including users impersonating celebrities and public figures.

Musk already has specified his intention forming a content moderation board with ‘widely divergent views’.

In addition, he reportedly brought more than 50 of his Tesla employees, who mainly worked on the autopilot team at the electric car company, to review and work on the code for Twitter.

Amid the changes, many Twitter users have started accounts on Mastodon, an open-source platform founded in 2016 by a German software developer named Eugen Rochko.

Mastodon has microblogging features similar to Twitter, but describes itself as a “decentralized” alternative with no “one single company monopolizing your communications.”

According to Mastodon, it received more than 70,000 new signups on Oct. 28, the day after Musk completed his takeover of Twitter.

On November 12, Rochko said one million more people are using Mastodon than on October 27, the day of the acquisition.