SAN FRANCISCO, CA—While Twitter struggles to maintain marketshare in the battle of social networks, the company may have found its killer feature: Whistleblower. As a response to the recent headlines of Twitter becoming the new weapon of choice for political groups, the social network has announced that using its service to pressure companies to fire political dissidents will be easier than ever.
“Thanks to our new algorithms and partnerships, finding the perfect tweet to use against your political opponents is as simple as using our search engine,” Jack Dorsey, president of Twitter, told the Bard. “Whereas the search engine previously required users to search for specific words in tweets, you can now simply search their tweets based on what crime you want to accuse them of. Our algorithm will then not only produce the tweets most likely to cause the most damage but will also show any tweets they have liked or retweeted that could also be used against them.”
What really makes Whistleblower effective though is Twitter’s partnerships with hundreds of media companies. By clicking the Whistleblower icon on a tweet, not only will the tweet be sent to dozens of media sites, but if the corporation that employs the targeted Twitter user is one of Twitter’s partners, the tweets will also be sent directly to their HR departments.
Some critics have argued that the new feature will create a more toxic community, but others have pointed out that gamifying the social network will make it a more exciting and dynamic place. “Battle royal games are very popular these days, but what is more fun than destroying somebody in a video game?” said strategic analyst Kevin Thompson. “Destroying somebody in real life.”
Although these are exciting changes for the social network, Twitter stresses that the service is still in beta and only select users of select political affiliations have access to it right now, but they hope to have the service ready for the general public by next year provided that everybody has not been driven off by then.