You’ve probably heard the news about Twitter—I’m sorry, the recently rebranded ‘X’—and everything Elon Musk is doing with the social media giant to, it seems, drive the company right into the ground. (For fun? For profit? In a fit of megalomaniacal spite? Who knows, but as someone without a Twitter account and zero stake in the game, it sure is fun to watch.)
Which got me thinking about the movie The Social Network and the toxic histories (to match the largely toxic climates) of so many social media companies.
On the one hand, it’s horrifying, considering how much of our information these companies have and the control they can exert on our lived reality (see: fake news, as just one example). On the other hand, it’s definitely entertaining to dive deep into the dramas surrounding all these companies.
In the spirit of that, here are some stories of toxic tech companies, the wild egos behind them, and what affect they have on our society, our minds, and our future.
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