As you may have heard, Twitter is tanking now that Elon “Apartheid Emerald Mine” Musk is in charge. Hundreds of people have been fired — including many of the engineers who run the place — many of the remaining executives have now quit to avoid legal liability and the FTC is threatening fines in the billions. It’s a dumpster fire.
On the one hand, it’s a funny way for the world’s supposedly richest man to light $44 billion on fire. On the other, it could be a death blow for small creators and independent outlets that rely on the platform to connect with their audience.
Sadly, there is no real alternative waiting in the wings. If Twitter goes down, we may lose touch with some of the accounts and outlets we rely upon to help us make sense of the world.
Here at Ricochet, we’ve been producing longform and investigative journalism that probes the intersection of capitalism, labour, climate and Indigenous rights since 2014. We’ve won numerous national awards and even a Michener Fellowship — Canada’s largest journalism award. We’ve also worked with Indigenous journalists like Brandi Morin and Jerome Turner to put boots on the ground in places like Wet’suwet’en and Fairy Creek, and helped found award-winning innovative journalism projects like The Rover in Quebec. We are a registered non-profit, our funding comes from foundations and small donors –- not ads — and our mission is to serve the public interest.
We don’t want to lose touch if, as is looking increasingly likely, Twitter breaks down. We’ve never pushed too hard to get people to sign up for our email list. We just aren’t the pushy sort. But now, with the loss of Twitter a real possibility, we have an ask. Will you give us your email address, so we can send you a weekly newsletter to keep you informed about our investigative journalism?
We would rather set our pants on fire and dive into a pool of piranhas than sell your info. In other words, we will never sell, share, trade or otherwise abuse your email, and we’ll never swamp you with emails. We just want to be able to reach you with important journalism that you’ll want to read. Or maybe not. You can unsubscribe anytime if it turns out we’re boring.
And if we break our promise, you can hold us accountable. Our names and personal emails are on the site.
In solidarity and hope for a better future, from our senior leadership team to you.
Andrea Houston
Ethan Cox
Erin Seatter
Derrick O’Keefe
Jahanzeb Hussein
