SignalGate Is Making People Rethink Who’s in Their Group Chats

Tom Linnemann considered himself a Twitter loyalist until fairly recently. “It was the greatest invention in the world,” he says of the platform, reminiscing on its golden years, which he pinpoints from 2012 to about 2016. “You cast a wide net and found people as crazy as you were.” His experience finally soured when Elon Musk bought the company in 2022, later rebranding it X—“there was this inundation of bullshit”—and Linnemann, a toy executive who splits his time between Toronto and Los Angeles, started to rely on group chats even more. He does his best to honor the code of conduct set by each group, which includes “no hot mics,” meaning, what is said in the group chat stays in the group chat. It’s meant to facilitate the sharing of hot takes among his WhatsApp group, which consists mainly of media professionals—journalists, a former editor in chief, a filmmaker, but also “a guy who works at a weed shop.” “The mafia calls it omertà. We call it Hot Mic,” he says. While the popular ... Read full article.