It’s no understatement to say that the past year has been tumultuous for the tech industry. From a series of mass layoffs to fraudulent crypto schemes to (sigh) the Metaverse, Silicon Valley has dominated news cycles and casual conversations alike in the past year, with perhaps no company experiencing as much drastic change as Twitter. After a lengthy arbitration process, Elon Musk acquired the company for $44 billion in October 2022, promising to repeal its policies on hate speech and its suspension of certain controversial media figures. Since then, millions of users have left the social media platform, citing reasons from a steep rise in hateful discourse to personal disagreements with Musk himself. One such account that is positioned to leave is Lakeside’s main Twitter account, and in early January, staff reporter Jackson B. ’25 sat down with Assistant Director of Communications Jane Ridgeway to discuss the decision and its implications.

Jackson (JB): Can you speak to the recent news about a shutdown of Lakeside’s Twitter account?

Jane Ridgeway (JR): Yes! So we’re not going to take the main account down — that is, we’re going to leave everything that’s been tweeted in the past up there as a digital record, so that if people search us up on Twitter, it’s all still there. However, we don’t have plans to make new posts to that account in the future. It should be noted that other Lakeside accounts like that of the athletics department will be left up and running.

JB: And why is that?

JR: When we looked at how frequently people use Twitter to get information that they can’t get elsewhere, the platform still seems like a really effective tool for athletics, whether that’s live-tweeting games or other things. For the main account, we just don’t see the same results. Unlike athletics, the main account has never been the first place that we break school news, so there wasn’t anything happening there that wasn’t already happening on our website. 

JB: How did the communications department arrive at the decision to retire their Twitter?

JR: Twitter simply isn’t the effective communications tool it was when we first created the account. When we look at who’s following the different links we provide and who’s interacting with our tweets, we see that our user base has migrated to a great extent to other sources of information. As a result, it seems like a poor use of time to continue managing that tool rather than looking at other sources. 

JB: What role, if any, did Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter play in this decision?

JR: Part of why we looked at Twitter with scrutiny now is because it’s been in the news a lot recently, and many of our peer schools have been revisiting what their relationship with Twitter is. For the most part, bad behavior, trolling, etc. have been at a distance from us, and we’re very fortunate for that. If it ever did directly affect us, though, we would take a really active role to moderate that space and keep things in line with our community expectations. 

JB: Will there ever be a return to Twitter? 

JR: The door’s certainly open to that, as we’re not deleting the account. If there’s a Twitter renaissance or something changes in the landscape of these tools, we’d absolutely return to it. Everything is subject to revaluation. 

JB: Where should people go for Lakeside information now that the school’s Twitter will be retired?

JR: For those who feel like they’re really missing something in our Twitter’s absence, we do hope you’ll let us know. For any kind of breaking or hard news that you’d usually go to Twitter for, I’d recommend you go to Lakeside’s website because that’s always where things are posted first. For the fun stuff? We’ll continue to post those things on Instagram or Facebook, and maybe we’ll even adopt new platforms in the future, since when we subtract, there’s always room to add.

JB: And on that note, any chance of a Lakeside TikTok?

JR: It’s not currently in the works, but it’s something we actually talk about all the time. I’d love to know what students think about it!

This interview has been edited for clarity.