Opinion Express View on Twitter logo “X”: To kill a tweeting bird

At least Meta stood for something, if only as an abbreviation. Elon Musk, in a move emblematic of the narcissism of great men, has made the new Twitter logo stand for everything. The iconic blue bird, which has been Twitter’s logo in one form or another for over a decade, has been replaced by a stylised version of the letter “X”. And the inspiration – from behind China’s Great Digital Wall — for the self-confessed “free speech absolutist” all-encompassing symbol makes it clear, once again, that profits are more absolute.

An X, of course, can stand for many things. For anyone who remembers the crosses on wrong answers, in red pen, across answer sheets through school, the mark hardly inspires free speech. For treasure hunters, it can mark the spot. And for those given to abstract thinking — as Musk seems to be — it is a variable, any variable. X is a stand-in, and it can fill up with meaning just as a balloon fills with air. But, it is important to remember, that the meaning can go out of it just as quickly.

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Musk’s love for the “X” logo is not new. It is his designation for the yet-to-be created “everything app”, inspired by China’s WeChat. WeChat allows and facilitates many things — messaging, ordering services like taxis, and digital payments. The app is one of the largest digital products in the world. One reason for this success could be its insulation from competition, as it serves up Communist consumerism. None of this is to say that the tweeting blue bird represented perfect virtue — Twitter — like Meta and so many others — has always been a profit-making enterprise, vying for attention in a cyberspace fuelled by divisive algorithms. But the bird, at least, did not represent free speech absolutism inspired by anti-free speech totalitarianism.