Chris Stokel-Walker

Almost from the time the first tweet was posted in 2006, Twitter has played an important role in world events. The platform has been used to record everything from the Arab Spring to the ongoing war in Ukraine. It's also captured our public conversations for years. But experts are worried that these rich seams of media and conversation could be lost forever if Elon Musk tanks the company.

Throughout the pandemic, in-person and analog services have rapidly fallen to digital alternatives. While the digital divide has been excluding economically disadvantaged and elderly people for years, its rapid expansion is creating a new problem: The technology is often terrible. The replacement of in-person services with digital alternatives is becoming an ever-growing inconvenience for those on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Russia is making progress in creating a “splinternet,” a move that would effectively detach the country from the rest of the world’s internet infrastructure. Such a move would allow Russia to control conversations more tightly and tamp down dissent—and it's getting closer by the day. Controlling a country’s internet requires two major components: separating yourself from the rest of the world, and cutting access from within. But both are harder for Russia than China because it’s starting from a comparatively open internet, after years of engagement with the West.

The way we use the internet has changed—and fast.