For a while now, Twitter has been constantly changing it’s code and API because of cost revenue changes at the corporation and turnover in the engineers. Following the takeover by Elon Musk, Twitter has continuously done strange things with the way that it handles its own code, tagging and unassigning ✅, and its own sharing structure. WordPress users received an email saying that WordPress, and its other subsidiary Jetpack, will no longer use Twitter push calls because “Twitter decided, on short notice, to dramatically change the terms and pricing of the Twitter API. We (WordPress) have attempted to work with Twitter in good faith to negotiate new terms, but we have not been able to reach an agreement. As a result, we will need to remove the functionality.”

It feels like the last 6 months I’ve been tied to a waiting game with Twitter. As a teacher, creator,and publisher, I’ve constantly used Twitter as a way to connect with fellow educators across the world. However, as Twitter continues to undermine its own users’ ability to integrate content structures and creativity, I find it more difficult everyday to use the platform in a way that I’ve been using it for the last 14 years. I was an early adopter and I stuck around. I was there when the whole mess happened in 2016 and in 2020. Every election cycle, every hellscape, every “I hate you moment,” I’ve stayed and shown teachers how-to join and connect with others. I’ve championed Twitter as a way to be positive for others, promote teacher’s work, share their classroom achievements, and generate threads between educators, creators, and students. I wanted to connect with others and show them the successes that were out there in the world. Make Twitter a bright place, be positive, and like this webpage actually says, “be the good.”

Great teachers are not always self-promoters. Which is why a lot of us who are, need to help out the ones who are not. For a long time, Twitter was a way for us to connect and do those things. Now, either because of the structures being changed by Musk and his leadership or because of a failing business model that was in place before he took it over, I’m beginning to wonder if Twitter is even sustainable for the educators who use it and how we’re going to connect when we leave. I know that the new subscription model is being rolled out and touted as a revenue generator for content creators, but how am I to trust a business that has changed its code multiple times in the last 6months on the whims of it current CEO.

When I’m in my classroom every single day I usually have things that I can share The sad thing is I don’t even know if I can share my Twitter feed with my students anymore. One of the greatest moments in my educational career was when astronauts on the ISS answered my #AskNASA question that I had for @AstroMegan about reading. It’s at the top of my feed on Twitter. In November 2022, I took a screen shot and video of the tweet because I was worried the whole Twitter scape would crash and it would all be gone. I still don’t know what’s going to be at the top of feed everyday, this time next year, or if there will even be a feed to share tomorrow.