John Oliver on Sunday devoted a damning segment of “Last Week Tonight” to condemning the transformation of Twitter — now named X — under powerful Trump ally Elon Musk, the world’s richest person.
Oliver acknowledged the social media service wasn’t perfect before Musk’s 2022 takeover and had “helped platform a lot of ugliness,” including what he called “our first shit-poster president” Donald Trump, who relentlessly used Twitter to boost his profile before his first successful run for the White House in 2016.
But, Oliver argued, it is “genuinely worse now.”
Oliver pointed to what he described as botched verification systems that enabled spoof accounts, deep cuts to content moderation and the restoration of previously banned users such as Trump, Alex Jones and Tommy Robinson.
The result, Oliver said, is that the platform has become “a sewer of misinformation” and a breeding ground for hate and disinformation. He suggested people use other platforms, and said he now only posts promotional clips for his show.
At one point, Oliver noted how Musk arrived at Twitter HQ on his first day carrying a sink and posted: “Let thank sink in.”
It was “a joke so funny, I’m still laughing right now,” he sarcastically swiped.
At the end of the show, Oliver returned to the theme when he said “the Twitter that was fun and occasionally useful is just well and truly gone, and collectively, while it might be sad, it might be past time for all of us, too, if I may borrow a truly poisoned phrase, to ‘let that sink in.’”
He then held up a sink to the cheering audience.
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