Briefing Room: The Official Mets Twitter Survival Guide

Elon Musk is not a stupid man but he has made an egregious error acquiring Twitter. He seems to know that and is currently drowning in what has become a very public, very piss filled pool. I know many people think that despite all the bad press, Twitter is still working fine and it is not going to just disappear overnight. But trust me when I tell you, it’s a strong possibility and don’t make me remind you about my very high IQ. What is obvious to me is that the daily, around-the clock barrage of erratic and obnoxiously un-funny tweets by Musk are really his panicked screams. The army of Musk-worshiping troll bots that have been deployed to fill our timeline with praise and applause for him are the distraction. The news coming directly out of Twitter or from recently released Twitter employees is the clear signal. Let me explain further.

Previously on Twitter:

Just two weeks ago, on Elon Day 1, Musk snap- fired the Executive Team. A few days later he fired about half of the approximate 7,500 Twitter workforce, reducing it to around 3,500. Within a few hours, Musk was made aware that many of the people he fired were essential to operations of the platform. Embarrassingly he had to beg them like a dog to return. Very few of those essential workers took him up on his offer. Since that time Musk invited the entirety of his remaining staff to either embrace a “Hard-Core” work ideology or accept a three-month severance parting gift. Shockingly, an estimated 1,200 workers took him up on the paid vacation.

Why is your brave Chief worried?

Risk 1: Operational Failures

Twitter is now being run by a skeleton crew. I am sure you have read the variation of tweets like this one:

Blum’s tweet and the one hundred variations of it are complete bullshit. Twitter may have been overstaffed, but not by 50%-60%. Anyone in IT Operational Engineering (Ops) will tell you they are always strapped for resources. If Twitter was bloated it would have been in sales or marketing or in Musk’s eyes in content moderation. But Ops is never bloated because the workers charged with keeping Twitter or any application safe and upright have the most important jobs in the company. If Twitter is down then nothing else matters. This is called Running the Engine or Keeping the lights on. How much money can Twitter make while it’s down? Easy, zero.

Twitter has around 238 million daily active users and runs on hundreds of integrated services, APIs and first and third party applications. Some of the core components date back to the inception of the company. Any platform with that complexity combined with the sheer scale needed to support so many users is going to require a serious amount of man-power to maintain. We have heard from numerous sources within Twitter that Musk’s layoffs have reduced Ops support for many mission critical systems to one or zero heads. These systems can run on their own for a while but will eventually run into something and go down. Twitter can pull someone from another system to resolve an incident but without expertise on the system the time to restore will be much longer. As incidents pile up the likelihood of a major outage increases exponentially.

Risk 2: Cyber Attack

Twitter is now a HUGE target for cyber attacks. Twitter houses PII and direct message data for millions of users and recently received credit card information from thousands of users to pay for blue check marks. Their Chief Security Officer quit and their Cybersecurity team was vastly depleted by layoffs and voluntary hardcore severance resignations. Musk is only focused on Dev, growing users and owning the Libs…not security. Meanwhile there are legions of hackers out there ready to ambush Twitter cyber like Jeff McNeil jumping on a first pitch strike. A massive data breach would be a technological and reputational disaster for Twitter and could be all that is needed to lead to a temporary or permanent closure.

Risk 3: Twitter may suck now

Advertisers are going to see that Twitter is now a cesspool of alt-right trolls, anti-semites and racists. They will leave. When this reaches a tipping point the party is over and Elon will turn off the lights and get in his space car and fly back to his home planet. If this occurs it will be a long slow death but I am more worried about terrible user experience first killing off Mets Twitter and other niche communities like it. Currently, I am experiencing 100 times more Musk-Twitter than Mets-Twitter. That is a bad user experience for anyone with good taste.

Maybe it was the influx of Verifieds from the blue checkmark fire sale or a not so subtle tweak made to the algorithm but my entire timeline is off the rails. It is now saturated with Musk himself, Musk fanboys, MTG and huge 200K Follower Conservative MAGA accounts that no one heard of a week ago. Mets twitter and the accounts I follow are nowhere to be seen. My own tweets seem to now vanish into the void. I am willing to consider the possibility that this phenomenon could be attributed to the simple fact that the hot stove is currently cold and the holiday is taking everyone’s attention away but I am not optimistic.

We will know if this is the new reality very quickly. The minute the Mets make a big acquisition, Mets Twitter should explode. The same goes for when deGrom signs a deal with the Mets or elsewhere. If the Braves or the Phillies make a major addition, say a Trea Turner, then we should expect to see 100% Mets tweets for 48 hours. If that doesn’t happen and we still see Elon Musk’s pale, ugly mug all over our timelines and not Anthony Dicomo’s, then we know this place is broken

But what should we do Chief?

Don’t Quit Twitter As your Chief, it is my duty to advise you how to protect yourselves should things go wrong. I am not saying anyone should leave Twitter. We need to stay and continue to try to grow and nourish our community. 2023 is going to be an Amazin’ season and we all need to stick together to support the team and each other.

Find a Lifeboat In addition to this site which I created as a big beautiful lifeboat, I created an account on Mastodon and I recommend all Mets Twitter users do the same. Together we will survive a Twitter failure and one day we will have a huge boat parade!

Why Mastodon? After five minutes of extensive research, it appears to be the best option. Mastodon is a decentralized platform which means it is not subject to the whims of any tech bro or political entity. It is free to use and has the look and feel of twitter minus some search capabilities. I have set up my account on the .World server (@NYMetsChief@Mastodon.world) and many of the best Mets Twitter accounts have already set up backup accounts on Mastodon as well. It’s a little disorienting but downloading the app and creating the account literally took 10 minutes. The hardest part is picking a server. I’ll be honest with you, I picked .World because it sounded like it was cool and the other servers sounded like they were either lame or not in English. I also think the server doesn’t matter but I’m not really sure. I do know you can migrate servers later. You don’t have to post much on Mastodon but make an account with the usual hashtags and post a few times so we can find you if we need you.

Is Mastodon the only option? YES! It’s where the Chief is, so of course it’s the best and only option. But, if you don’t like it, there is also Tribal and something called Post that may be options. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter is also building something that is almost in Beta which sounds very interesting to me. Mets Twitter will eventually land on whatever Twitter alternative gains critical mass. The key is to get set up somewhere or in multiple places and leave some breadcrumbs so we all know where to find you if shit gets real. What platforms are not an option? Truth Social…no fucking way. Regardless of your politics, it is destined for failure, perhaps faster than Twitter. Also hard no on Facebook. There is already a Mets Facebook and it sucks. Let the Facebook losers have it to themselves.

Thanks for hearing me out on this very important issue that is only tangentially connected to actual baseball.

Billy Wagner is not a Hall Of Famer