Less than two weeks in, Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter is already mired in a web of controversies. The CEO of multiple taxpayer-subsidized companies moved quickly to fire Twitter’s board and crown himself the company’s supreme authority. Mass layoffs, a half-baked plan to start a subscription service, and a witch hunt for any users who dare impersonate him have been on the top of the new Twitter king’s agenda. The regime has been hit back by a class action lawsuit, spooked advertisers, and the razor-sharp commentary of a bewildered Twitterati. While some may take satisfaction in beholding the spectacle of a man entangled in his own hubris, the implications of Musk’s takeover of one of the most important and centralized media platforms in existence are wide-reaching. What happens once we can no longer verify Twitter sources? Who benefits from an algorithm reconfigured to boost subscribers over regular users? How will these changes to the platform shape the ability of independent journalists to communicate to the public, and ultimately affect our politics? Tech critic Paris Marx joins Maximillian Alvarez and Mel Buer to discuss the debacle unfolding before our eyes.

Paris Marx is a Canadian technology writer whose work has been published in a range of outlets, including NBC News, CBC News, Jacobin, and Tribune. They are also the host of the acclaimed podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, and the author of the book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation (2022), published by Verso Books.

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Maximillian Alvarez is an Izzy-Award-winning journalist and the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Executive Director of The Real News Network. He is the founder and host of Working People, "a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today," which he started after his family lost their home and life savings during the Financial Crash of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession. Alvarez is the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke, a collection of interviews with US workers recorded during Year One of of the Covid-19 pandemic. His forthcoming book—tentatively titled “American Sacrifice: Working People Fight for The Lives (and Our Future) in America’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’”—is under contract with Haymarket Books. From April 2022 to March 2024, Alvarez hosted and produced The Art of Class War series on Breaking Points. From September 2016 to January 2019, he was a regular contributor and then a columnist for The Baffler magazine. Prior to joining TRNN, Alvarez was an Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Prior to that, he was a graduate student-worker and rank-and-file member of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (AFT Local 3550) at the University of Michigan, where he earned a dual-PhD in History and Comparative Literature, taught undergraduates, and published academic articles in Media Theory and La Deleuziana: An Online Journal of Philosophy. Prior to that, he worked a litany of low-wage jobs in different restaurants, warehouses, factories, retail stores, etc. Alvarez’s writing has been featured in outlets like The Nation, Poynter, In These Times, Boston Review, The Baffler, Current Affairs, Dissent, Protean Magazine, The New Republic, Truthout, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. As an analyst and commentator, he has appeared on programs like PBS NewsHour, Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The Laura Flanders Show, NPR’s 1A, The Hill’s Rising, This Is Hell!, Krystal Kyle & Friends, The Michael Brooks Show, The Jacobin Show, CounterPunch Radio, Citations Needed, Bad Faith with Briahna Joy Gray, Know Your Enemy, Srsly Wrong, Left Anchor, Revolutionary Left Radio, The End of Sport Podcast, Pod Damn America, The David Pakman Show, The Megyn Kelly Show, The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, The David Feldman Show, and The Marianne Williamson Podcast.

Mel Buer is a staff reporter for The Real News Network, covering U.S. politics, labor, and movements and the host of The Real News Network Podcast. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and others. Prior to joining TRNN, she worked as a freelance reporter covering Midwest labor struggles, including reporting on the 2021 Kellogg's strike and the 2022 railroad workers struggle. In the past she has reported extensively on Midwest protests and movements during the 2020 uprising and is currently researching and writing a book on radical media for Or Books. Follow her on Twitter or send her a message at mel@therealnews.com