Warning: bad puns ahead.
When I think of the moment that Twitter came into being, I tend to imagine a sunny March afternoon in a Californian office. Optimistic, tanned people with untarnished ideals and notepads bursting with new ideas are brainstorming words like, “instant”, “create”, “share”, and “no barriers” onto a quirky whiteboard. In my (arguably over-glamourised) version of events, as the first tweets are sent from 8:50pm on the 21st of March 2006 onwards, I’m pretty certain that Twitter’s future was being envisioned as the ultimate triumph of liberality over injustice, open-mindedness over intolerance, and freedom of speech over censorship. Continue reading