Twitter isn't broken, but it is breaking.
But first, the bad/good news (perspective dependent): I have regained control of my Twitter account.
It took a full 19 days for Twitter's support process to deal with the situation and give me back control of the account. Not confidence inspiring with respect to Twitter's ability to handle account authenticity and verification issues, and certainly not the kind of thing an average user who barely uses Twitter would likely even bother with. (Remember: the average Twitter user doesn’t really use Twitter). And of course my personal experience barely registers next to the fake real Eli Lilly account tweeting that insulin is free.
Allowing – or more specifically, actively fomenting via the "Verified -- Official" official verification debacle – exactly the kind of news cycle major corporate advertisers lie awake at night dreading is not great way to start your ownership of a ad revenue-dependent company.
And there are smaller ways that Twitter is pretty clearly breaking. As with Elon Musk not really having a plan for what he wants to do with Twitter and not even wanting to own the company at all, we don't have to assume anything here. We can just look at his public statements: Twitter is taking too long to load, he says, maybe for reasons he does not understand.
Then there's also a new quirk I've noticed. On the mobile app, if someone quote tweets something, you used to be able to click directly on the original tweet to look at it or, if the original tweet had a link or image you could click directly on those, just by seeing the quote tweet. Not anymore: now you have to click on the quote tweet, then click on the original tweet to read it or access any links or images it contains.
Not the end of the world, sure, but a clear sign that something somewhere is degrading.
Or, when I went to change the display name on may account back to my name after I regained control of it, the app and desktop version showed me any error message when I types in "Ben Walsh." Eventually, I got "BenWalsh" to work on the desktop site (any change to the display name was still error-laden on the mobile ap).
Again, not the end of the world but there's some obviously mundane technical debt accruing at Twitter, and the company doesn't exactly have a robust and motivated workforce to address these kinds of issues.
Twitter will probably not simply implode one day. Something far messier and less satisfying is probably in the works and, if I had to bet, it will be Elon Musk's personal financial situation that triggers another change in ownership.
To that end: Tesla shares are down more than 57% this year.