The micro-blogging, social media platform, Twitter, emerged into the media ecosphere in 2006 almost simultaneously with Facebook (now Meta). The era of pervasive social media, as we now know it, began.

Twitter evolved through a series of changes and difficulties. The demagogue, Donald Trump, used it as his personal "broadcast channel" before being banned for contravening the Twitter "rules" around disinformation.

More recently, the oligarch, Elon Musk, whose name (and personal brand) is attached to the Tesla electric vehicle company and Space-X, finally purchased the Twitter company for 44 billion US dollars, after a fraught period of trying to back out of the acquisition and a legal battle. Since his take-over, there have been mass firings of Twitter operational staff, firings and resignations of key executives especially in crucial privacy and security roles and a sharp drop in advertising income as a spooked advertising industry recoils from a now chaotic social media platform, especially around its authentication protocols. There has been a marked uptick in "impersonations" and hate speech on the platform. And its new owner and "sole director", Elon Musk, seems driven by erratic whims in terms of management of the company and his particular views about "free speech" while continuing to post almost non-stop, a series of ambiguous, contradictory and toxic tweets including linking to far right-wing disinformation himself and urging Twitter users to vote Republican in the USA midterm elections..

Many are now predicting the demise of Twitter. Musk himself, while communicating to Twitter staff, has raised the spectre of "bankruptcy".

Is this the end of Twitter? If it does survive, what form will it take and for whom? Margo Kingston, Tim Dunlop and Peter Clarke, all long term and active Twitter users, discuss the unfolding plight of Twitter.