Twitter is broken. Thanks, Elon.

just a disseminator of breaking news and commentary, but something like an arbiter. At its cultural peak, from about 2015 to perhaps 2020, what people talked about on Twitter seemed to set the agenda for discussions elsewhere. Even last year, it still mattered: After years of mismanagement and glacial innovation, Twitter, on the eve of Musk’s reign, was still the one place to visit when anything big happened anywhere.

Whatever Twitter is now, it is no longer that venue. Cultural relevance is difficult to quantify, but you know it when you feel it. And now, when something’s going down, Twitter rarely feels like the place where everyone is gathering to watch.

blowing my own horn, media organizations are vital to Twitter because the news is at the core of the site’s utility.

Musk has said that Twitter’s algorithms won’t recommend unverified users in its “For You” section, and that the free verification badges — the simultaneously coveted and maligned blue checks — that many journalists have will soon be removed. The change will further reduce Twitter’s usefulness: If many journalists are removed from the site’s primary feeds, why would people continue to see it as their go-to news source?

By FARHAD MANJOO

About six months ago, Elon Musk bought your favorite neighborhood bar. Then he fired veteran bouncers and bartenders, tried to stiff the landlord and at least one vendor, and demanded that regulars pay a cover charge. He’s frequently struggled to serve his customers, yet he’s penalized them for mentioning the competition. He’s tamped down the revelry in general, really — a lot of conversation at his watering hole has been drowned out by Musk’s own neverending stage act, which consists mainly of him yelling dad jokes at customers through a bullhorn.

Pour one out for Twitter, then. I’d been open to Musk’s purchase of the social network, but half a year in, it’s been an unmitigated disaster. Musk moved fast and broke nearly everything — the speed and totality with which he’s ruined the site has been almost impressive. By Musk’s own reckoning, the company is now worth less than half of what he paid for it. It has lost many large advertisers, most of its employees and, with them, much of its functionality.

More than that, Twitter under Musk appears to have lost the thing that made it impossible to quit: Its centrality. The site was once the most consequential place online, not

I noticed this when Donald Trump was arraigned. Trump, the most powerful tweeter the world has ever known, a man whose every typo could send Twitter into paroxysms of easy dunks, appeared in court and Twitter was, as Vox’s Shirin Ghaffary put it, “a snoozefest.”

There could be many reasons for the snooze, including that people care less about Trump than they used to — or that even after Musk reinstated Trump’s suspended Twitter account, the former president has stuck to using the platform he founded, Truth Social, for his ad hoc missives.

But I’d bet much of the problem stems from changes Musk has made to Twitter’s news feed.

These days it’s often it’s difficult to know what’s happening on Twitter. Musk’s self-serving changes to the site’s ranking algorithm have significantly reduced its usability: Where Twitter was once pleasantly varied, serving up ordinary people’s tweets pretty evenly with those of celebrities and politicians, now it seems to highlight the same few users all the time. (I love your tweets, Matt Yglesias, but I wish you weren’t always at the top of my feed!)

Other signs of Twitter’s declining relevancy: Several news organizations, including The New York Times, have said they won’t pay for Twitter Blue, Musk’s subscription service for acquiring a verified user badge on the site. NPR said it would stop posting to its official Twitter accounts because Twitter labeled it as “state-affiliated media,” then as “governmentfunded media.” PBS, which has also been labeled “government-funded,” said that it, too, would stop tweeting in protest of the label. (NPR is a nonprofit that receives very little funding from the government; the label, it says, undermines its credibility.)

Musk doesn’t like the news media — Twitter’s public relations email address auto-responds with a poop emoji — but I can’t see how fighting with the media can help his site. At the risk of

As a longtime tweeter, Musk’s trashing of the service saddens and angers me. Twitter’s employees and users didn’t deserve this fate. In the hands of a less volatile, more thoughtful leader, Twitter could have been so much more than the raggedy fiefdom of a thin-skinned billionaire it has become.

But as a person who wants to live in a just world with friendly people and nice things, I’m not altogether broken up about Twitter’s decline. As I’ve argued before, Twitter has been a font of misinformation, an accelerant to polarization and a contributor to cultural groupthink. Just before Musk’s takeover, my Times colleague Michelle Goldberg, worrying about similar problems, hoped for a quick, spectacular flameout: “If Musk makes Twitter awful enough,” she wrote, “users will flee, and it will become less relevant.”

Well, it looks like Michelle got her wish. Stick a fork in it, Elon: Twitter is done.

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SAN JUAN – La secretaria interina del Departamento de la Familia, Ciení Rodríguez Troche, anunció el domingo comenzará un esfuerzo masivo de orientación sobre el proceso de entrega voluntaria, una de las alternativas de adopción establecidas por ley en Puerto Rico.

“El proceso de entrega voluntaria es el acto de amor más grande que puede realizar una persona, cuando entiende que no puede responsabilizarse de la crianza de un hijo biológico. Nuestra sociedad puede ser bastante crítica cuando una persona toma esta determinación, que nunca es una fácil; acostumbramos a condenar y demonizar la acción sin tratar de entender la situación de vida de esa persona”, dijo Rodríguez Troche en declaraciones escritas.

“El Departamento de la Familia tiene la responsabilidad de asegurar el bienestar de nuestros menores. Si una persona entiende que lo mejor para su bebé es que sea ubicado en una familia que pueda garantizarle el amor y la protección que necesita, nuestra función, luego de orientar- la y explicarle todos los procesos, es cumplir con nuestro compromiso de ubicar al menor en un nuevo núcleo familiar”, añadió.

La entrega voluntaria, según la Ley de Adopción de Puerto Rico, es el acto mediante el cual la madre biológica o los padres biológicos, o aquellos que ostenten la patria potestad, acuerdan renunciar a ella y transferir la custodia de un menor, entre cero y tres años, para ser adoptado. Además, el estatuto contiene los lineamientos para que una madre, antes de considerar abandonar a un recién nacido, pueda entregarlo en un hospital público o privado, estación de bomberos, toda dependencia policiaca municipal o estatal, iglesias o toda dependencia del DF.

Igualmente, en cualquier instalación de hogar sustituto reconocido por Familia o en una agencia de adopción acogida al programa de entrega voluntaria de menores o de refugio seguro, de manera confidencial, sin perjuicio y sin temor de ser arrestada, procesada o enjuiciada, antes de transcurridas 72 horas a partir del nacimiento del infante. Eso podrá realizarse siempre y cuando el menor no presente señales de abuso o maltrato.

Aquellas personas con interés en conocer más de este proceso, pueden visitar el portal cibernético Consulta la cigüeña en el que tendrán acceso a información, completar un breve cuestionario e, incluso, obtener una cita con el personal del Departamento de la Familia.

La campaña, cuyo costo total asciende a 448 mil dólares e inicia en medios masivos el lunes 17 de abril de 2023, tiene como elemento principal a la figura de la cigüeña.