So, Twitter hasn't yet broken down, even temporarily, due to lack of staff. Instead, we just have been watching the increasingly gratingly immature tweet behaviour of the new owner. He's giving off a strong "please look at me/like me" vibe, which is something I would have thought having a squillion dollars might cure, but apparently not.
I am very sure that as soon as an alternative is ready to fly, most of the centrist/Leftist/anti-Trump people I follow will happily migrate to it very quickly regardless of whatever changes Musk may want to make. (No one seems to have any idea as to what he thinks it can do in future that will make it the essential app that will conquer the world.) Twitter will just be left to the Musk fanboys and Right wingers who don't care about misinformation and moderation.
There are some who argue that it's giving up too easily to abandon the place - it'll be letting the MAGA and the culture warring Right have a win! But really, you can't keep participating at a site which does more harm than good without tacitly endorsing it, and I can't see that there is any chance of changing Musk short of personalty transplant.
Mastodon is, it seems, not going to be the alternative (too many people saying that it is too complicated, and I don't understand how decentralised moderation can work), but there's one or two others which seem to be waiting in the wings, probably with people trying to line up enough funds fast enough for it to be able to cope with an onslaught of new users.
Interesting times, but not very gratifying...
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