Is this really the end of Twitter?

Twitter contiguous is awash with radical saying goodbye.

The hashtag "RIPTwitter" is trending and tons of the site's users are scrambling to download their data.

They're besides sharing alternate places to find them (consumer champion Martin Lewis, who has 2m Twitter followers, has acceptable himself up connected Mastodon, though helium admits helium doesn't cognize however to usage it yet).

Twitter's caller brag Elon Musk, ne'er 1 to disregard a trend, tweeted a meme of a gravestone with the Twitter logo connected it.

Staff person been leaving successful their droves - fractional the workforce was laid disconnected by Mr Musk 1 week aft helium completed his acquisition of the platform, and galore much are choosing to permission since helium sent an email demanding "hardcore" moving conditions and agelong hours from his remaining employees.

Quite a fewer of those departing, according to their Twitter bios, are engineers, developers and coders - the radical who enactment connected the guts of what makes Twitter function.

Let's instrumentality the 2 biggest vulnerabilities that could sound the bluish vertebrate disconnected its perch precise swiftly.

The archetypal and astir evident would beryllium a catastrophic hack.

Twitter, similar each large websites (including this one, the BBC), volition beryllium perpetually nether onslaught from atrocious actors - adjacent astatine authorities level - wanting to origin mischief. World leaders, politicians and celebrities each person idiosyncratic Twitter accounts with millions of followers - a low-hanging effect for a hacker wanting a batch of radical to spot their scam, as we person seen before.

Or they mightiness conscionable privation it to disappear, truthful they bombard it with web postulation to spot if it gets overwhelmed and shuts down that way. Attempts similar this volition beryllium happening each the clip - it's a changeless battle.

Cyber information is, oregon astatine slightest should be, an important portion of immoderate 21st period company's day-to-day operations. Last week Twitter's caput of cyber security, Lea Kissner, left. It's not known if they were replaced. (Twitter besides has nary communications team, truthful there's nary casual mode to ask).

Twitter's information is apt to beryllium beauteous robust. You can't tally a tract utilized by 300 cardinal radical each period that's held unneurotic with a spot of string. But that robustness requires continuing maintenance.

Think astir your ain phone, oregon laptop, and the regular information updates you person to install. That's due to the fact that caller vulnerabilities are regularly unearthed, caller chinks successful the armour that you didn't cognize you had, and it's the occupation of the supplier to nonstop you the fix.

The 2nd imaginable catastrophe is that the servers are knocked retired - either by idiosyncratic with a grudge, oregon by mistake during a regular spot of attraction that's not decently supervised.

Without servers, determination is nary Twitter (or Facebook, oregon Instagram oregon so our integer world).

Servers - almighty computers - are similar the carnal bodies of these platforms. They beryllium successful information centres. These are efficaciously warehouses afloat of machine servers which are cardinal to the operations of online businesses. The satellite runs connected servers.

As you tin imagine, each of those machines make a batch of heat. Data centres person to beryllium kept cool, and they necessitate a changeless root of electricity.

The servers themselves besides necessitate attraction and replacement, arsenic information gets migrated betwixt them. All of that has the capableness for thing to spell wrong. It would beryllium abrupt and melodramatic if it did.

Elon Musk knows each this, of course. Let's not presume that helium doesn't. However helium whitethorn take to play the buffoon.

We don't cognize who is presently keeping watch.

But thing happened to maine yesterday that made maine deliberation possibly determination are much radical astatine Twitter watching than we think.

Somebody, determination wrong Twitter, was paying attention. Perhaps determination are inactive capable of them who are doing conscionable that.

There's ever the atomic enactment that Musk declares Twitter bankrupt, and it gets coiled down.

You tin travel Zoe Kleinman connected Twitter (@zsk), arsenic good arsenic connected Mastodon (@zsk@mastadonapp.uk).