I’m a random “time traveler” – how 2023 will pan out for Elon Musk and Twitter and if TikTok will be banned in the US

THIS random “time traveler” has predicted how 2023 will unfold for Elon Musk and Twitter, and whether TikTok will be banned in the United States.

Drew Curtis is the founder of a news aggregation site called Fark and has also been what he jokingly calls himself a time traveler since 2015.

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After Curtis went viral in 2020 for his sinister prediction about the year Covid hit the US, Curtis made some fresh calls about the year ahead in an exclusive interview with The US Sun.

Curtis’ run as a “time traveler” began after a 2015 tweet that resurfaced in 2020.

On December 31, 2015, he wrote, “I’m a 2020 time traveler. Enjoying 2016 – it’s as good as it gets for a while.”

When he retweeted his prediction during Covid, along with the words ‘this tweet has aged well’, people began to believe it really was from the future.

They asked him questions about everything from that year’s presidential election to their own love lives.

Curtis agreed to the gag, but assured people he wasn’t a real time traveler.

He told The US Sun: “It was based on nothing more than an observation that everyone thinks every year is mostly getting worse.”

He said his retweet “exploded because, in hindsight, it looked like it was a pretty good call.”

Over the years, people have always asked Curtis what’s next, and from time to time he enjoys entertaining them — and this time, just before the new year, he’s made some new predictions.

2022 was filled with drama over the $44 billion deal and subsequent legal battle between Elon Musk and Twitter.

After all of this was settled and Musk became the owner of Twitter, more headlines made about how Musk was handling his new acquisition.

Some have criticized Musk’s human resources management – citing the thousands of workers he has laid off and his scrapping of the Twitter labor policy.

ELON MUSK’S FUTURE

Curtis claimed Musk has made “every classic mistake” so far.

“There is no textbook on how to ruin an online community, but if there was, Elon Musk seems to have a copy,” he said.

“Communities are strange creatures, and at this point they’re pretty well understood, but so far, Musk is making each classic mistake one at a time.

“Before Facebook, there were hundreds of online communities, and whenever one imploded, what’s happening right now on Twitter is pretty much exactly how it would play out,” Curtis said.

However, Musk has also made strides towards banning bots and armies of trolls from Twitter, which have been damaging the platform for some time.

On December 11, after the Curtis interview was conducted, Musk announced that Twitter was “taking down IP addresses of known bad actors.”

Twitter going bankrupt?

Curtis said that “the range of results for Twitter is pretty wide.

“First of all, it depends on how long Musk stays interested. When he gets bored or fed up and wanders off, things get weird.

“Even now, if someone coded even a rudimentary Twitter clone, it would probably take off — although that’s easier said than done.”

The long-term future of Twitter doesn’t look too bright for Curtis.

“In the long term, there seems to be no chance that Twitter will ever be able to pay off its debt.

“So it looks like a possible bankruptcy to me. Maybe not this year, but eventually creditors will lose patience due to a lack of progress.

“It’s a shame because if it had been handled properly, Twitter might have had a chance,” Curtis said.

TIKTOK BANNED?

TikTok has already accumulated more than 100 million monthly active users in the US since its inception in 2016.

However, the fast-growing app has raised concerns among Americans because the company that powers TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

There have been talks of banning the app, with the FBI director citing “national security concerns” about TikTok’s use in the US in November.

Director Christopher Wray warned that the Chinese government could potentially influence Americans or control their devices with TikTok.

Congress is currently working to make the app illegal to use on federal government devices.

In September, however, TikTok told The New York Times it was “confident” that it was “on track to fully satisfy all reasonable US national security concerns.”

Curtis appears to be unanimous about the national security risks that TikTok could pose.

“Eventually, enough people will realize that TikTok is truly a national security threat and leave the platform.

“Even though Facebook still exists and they have the same business model.

“I don’t know why it seems less creepy when it’s a for-profit company evaluating people than a foreign government,” he said.

The US Sun reached out to TikTok for comment, but no response had been received at the time of publication.

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