From Turning Point USA’s Twitter account:

It is with a heavy heart that we confirm that Charles James Kirk has been murdered by a gunshot that took place during Turning Point USA’s “The American Comeback Tour” campus event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

May he be received into the merciful arms of our loving Savior, who suffered and died for Charlie.

We ask that everyone keep his family and loved ones in your prayers.

David Heinemeier Hansson, on what he thinks we should do in the wake of this:

Continue to show up with our ideals held high while we debate strangers in that noble search for the truth. Where we share our excitement, our enthusiasm, and our love of technology, country, and humanity.

I think that’s what Charlie Kirk did so well. Continued to show up for the debate. Even on hostile territory. Not because he thought he was ever going to convince everyone, but because he knew he’d always reach some with a good argument, a good insight, or at least a different perspective.

You could agree or not. Counter or be quiet. But the earnest exploration of the topics in a live exchange with another human is as fundamental to our civilization as Socrates himself.

Don’t give up, don’t give in. Keep debating.

Josh Ginter, in his weekly Sunday Edition:

I’ve shed some tears. A young father with largely the same list of values was killed for having those values. To be sure, his realm of impact far exceeded mine. He presented those values boldly and often discussed them with less grace than those values deserve. But he and I — and I’m sure millions of other young fathers out there — were not all that different. […]

Kirk didn’t deserve such a death. Kirk posed no harm to anyone. He existed to share the gospel truth with those who were directed to listen. Alas, Kirk’s purpose was fulfilled. He met his Saviour. And God, as He has always done in the past, will use the event for His eternal glory. There has never once been a successful story of shutting down the gospel truth from spreading across the globe. The gospel works best in the valleys.

I wish I had the words to describe how I felt through this. Some kernel of wisdom that I could impart on the world that would help us all better understand how to process this horrific event. I don’t know if that’s something I’m really capable of.

Charlie was a father, a husband, a Christian, and an activist. Like Josh mentions above, I also share many of the same values that he espoused. He was too young and the world is a worse place without him. I hope, in his absence, there are many more that take on the baton of his work and continue to encourage dialog and hearty debate.

The final bit I’ll share, is Charlie’s response when asked how he wanted to be remembered on an episode of The Iced Coffee Hour:

I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith, in my life.

I think this is a foolish change. “X” just feels so incredibly generic when compared to “Twitter”. Not to mention the terms “tweet” and “retweet” being tied to the Twitter brand identity.

But it’s interesting to see so many people for whom Twitter is “dead to them” get so riled up about this. Perhaps their nine months of bickering was more of an attempt to convince themselves.

➝ Source: macrumors.com

Mark Gurman, writing on Twitter:

One item I haven’t mentioned in a while has been a major project to drop the “Hey” from “Hey Siri.” I’d look out for that possibility next week.

I’ve already disabled “Hey Siri” on all of my devices because the only time I ever invoke it is accidental. I can’t imagine this change improving the situation.

➝ Source: twitter.com

Jon Porter, writing for The Verge:

Twitter has begun removing blue checkmarks en masse from legacy verified accounts, fulfilling one of owner Elon Musk’s long-stated plans for the social media network. 

The change is apparent on Twitter accounts for several Verge writers and other journalists like LA Times reporter Matt Pearce, with the verification logos occasionally disappearing and reappearing between page reloads.

Twitter continues to be an excellent source of comedic entertainment.

➝ Source: theverge.com

Christina Maas, writing for Reclaim the Net:

The users of Substack, an email newsletter platform, are unable to embed tweets in their stories and Twitter users are currently unable to like or comment on a tweet that links to a Substack publication on the .substack domain.

Users are sharing screenshots that say, “Some actions on this tweet have been disabled by Twitter,” when they try to post Substack links to Twitter.

Reclaim The Net was able to confirm the restriction.

This would have irritated me a year ago, but at this point it’s just funny.

➝ Source: reclaimthenet.org

A great collection of reactions to the news of Twitter charging for API access. Elon sure is rocking the boat for third-party developers with this. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any additional details about pricing at all, but I’m hoping there will still be some amount of access for free — even if it’s only for accounts with sufficient verification.

➝ Source: mjtsai.com

Twitter acquired Tweetie in April 2010. Prior to that acquisition, the only native Twitter apps available were developed by third-parties. And now, they are explicitly prohibited by Twitter’s API policies.

Twitterrific was the first mobile Twitter app — originally developed during the jailbreak days before the App Store even existed.

It’s sad that it happened like this, but honestly, I’m not sure if the backlash would have been much different if Twitter chose a different path. If it was announced ahead of time, if access required a Twitter Blue subscription, if ads were introduced to the API feeds, or what have you.

There’s a group of users that exclusively interacted with Twitter through third-party apps and I can’t imagine any scenario where changes wouldn’t have resulted in a backlash and a very high attrition rate. I don’t agree with it, but I can see how someone at Twitter could come to the conclusion that it would be better to just cross their fingers and do it quietly.

The silver lining in this, though, is that talented developers that have spent years in an adversarial relationship with their API maintainers can move on to build bigger and better things. The folks at Tapbots are already well on their way to launching Ivory and hopefully Iconfactory will focus this newfound development time toward something neat as well.

➝ Source: blog.iconfactory.com

Josh Nicholas, writing for the Guardian:

The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted on its website. There were about 1.8 million active users in the first week of January, down from over 2.5 million in early December.

The article is titled “Elon Musk Drove More Than a Million People to Mastodon – but Many Aren’t Sticking Around” and the paragraph above is the lede. It paints a dire picture for Mastodon.

But then we get to this bit:

There were about 500,000 active Mastodon users before Elon Musk took control of Twitter at the end of October. By mid-November, that number climbed to almost 2 million active users.

Wait. Over the past three months, Mastodon went from 500,000 users to 1.8 million and they’re spinning this as a bad thing because it didn’t continue to climb or maintain its peak? That’s completely absurd.

There are going to be peaks and valleys. And you can’t expect any social network to maintain its peak number of active user when there’s a massive surge like this. Anyone could have told you that it wouldn’t last. But the important point isn’t that it didn’t maintain its peak. The important point is that the number of Mastodon users has grown 260% in three months.

That’s a tremendous accomplishment. And not just for Mastodon, but for ActivityPub, open source, and the health of the open web. That should be the lede.

Matt Hauger shared a couple of graphs charting Mastodon’s active user numbers. And it illustrates how the state of things looks drastically different depending on where the timeframe begins. And while I agree with him that I’d prefer to see the trend line curving upward, I think it’s dishonest to frame the situation with such a pessimistic bend like Josh Nicholas has.

When I first joined Twitter in 2007, there were less than 700,000 accounts on the platform. I have no idea how many of those were active — I could only find numbers that went back to 2010 — but given how early it was and the total user count, I would guess that the monthly active user number wasn’t too far off from the 500,000 that we had on Mastodon in October.

Compared to Twitter, Mastodon has a much higher barrier to entry. The competition is far more established than it was when Twitter launched and they don’t have the benefit of millions of dollars of venture capital to spur growth.

But here’s the thing, although I would love to see Mastodon and other ActivityPub-based services grow, I understand that what is already there is great. I had fun on Twitter in 2007 and I’m having a ton of fun on Mastodon now.

Mastodon doesn’t need to maintain the explosive growth it’s had in the wake of Elon acquiring Twitter. And for the long-term health of the network, it would be better for Mastodon to grow slowly, allowing developers to tackle the inevitable scaling issues with a steadier hand.

And it should go without saying, but it needs to be said — Twitter doesn’t have to fail in order for Mastodon to succeed.