If you are still hanging out in Twitter, you know that Nate Silver was the Main Character yesterday, for a very good reason.

This chart struck a nerve. Twitter’s Head of Product engaged in a snarky exchange with Silver, with Elon Musk piling on. Most of the engagement in the conversation was with Silver; today, the consensus position is Twitter’s algorithm has gone to the dogs.

This piece offers a good brief history of platform shifts in the social media era. Come for the history, stay for the state of the state of Twitter: “Here, voilà, are the Twitter accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026”: natesilver.substack.com…

As someone who started an entire Substack newsletter in an attempt to stitch the socially-fractured literacy community back together, I have personally experienced the dynamic Silver describes, about Twitter contributing less and less of traffic for my writing by the month. Viva Substack! (Until the next platform shift…)