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Twitter: Breaking the Bird

The inside story of the tech entrepreneurs who created the social media app Twitter. They hope to build a digital utopia but are unable to control the dark side of their creation.

In 2006, a group of tech entrepreneurs created the revolutionary social media app Twitter. In just a few years, it transformed the way the world communicated. Using first-hand accounts from its founders and early employees, this is the inside story of how Twitter was invented, how it spread across the world through explosive growth, and how difficult it became to control the volume of hate speech and misinformation posted on the platform.

At first, the site grew on the back of celebrities who realised it offered them a direct way to communicate with their fans. After it went global, adopted by democracy activists across the world, it seemed to be fulfilling the founders' dream of a digital utopia where all voices would be heard. But as hate speech and misinformation flooded the platform, Twitter faced growing problems in its attempts to control them. The sale of Twitter to Elon Musk in 2022 represented the final end of the founders’ utopian dream.

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1 hour, 14 minutes

Audio described

On TV

Today 23:05

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Credits

Role Contributor
Narrator Nina Sosanya
Director Kate Quine
Production Manager Maureen MacPhee
Line Producer Olivia Edwards
Director of photography Pete Allibone
Executive Producer Ricardo Pollack
Executive Producer James Goldston
Executive Producer Fred Hepburn
Executive Producer Sheldon Lazarus
Executive Producer Ben Turner
Production Company Candle True Stories

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