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Alexandra Erin is a freelance writer based in Hagerstown, Md.

When I heard that Vine was closing, I just couldn't fathom it. Vine closing? That's like saying gif is closing, or meme is closing or emoji is closing. Vine isn't just a platform, but a growing part of the landscape of social media. A Vine's like a tweet; it's a format and a medium all its own.

How is it even possible for Vine to close? Well, in a more down-to-earth sense, Vine is a part of Twitter, and Twitter is in trouble, and it has been seeking a buyer to bail it out. In recent weeks, several high-profile companies with billions to spend have all considered buying the social media giant, only to back away.

Salesforce walked away from the negotiating process, with chief executive officer Marc Benioff telling CNBC that its stockholders nixed the deal. He declared that it wasn't worth owning Twitter at any price. Disney similarly was reported to be crafting a bid back in September, which they have since dropped. Microsoft passed on bidding. Other companies believed to have considered bids before ultimately giving it a miss include Google, Apple and Verizon.

The announcement of Vine's closing followed swiftly after Twitter's repeated failures to seal a deal, and the cause/effect here is obvious: Twitter is tightening its belt. They've announced layoffs. Video is expensive, and the six-second loops are hard to monetize,in part because Twitter itself has been slow to invest in or exploit the platform.

So, in one sense, the shutdown of Vine is perfectly reasonable. However, the decision suggests something troubling about Twitter's priorities.

Like a beautiful real estate development on land that hides a toxic waste dump, Twitter has built a social media powerhouse that no one wants to own. No one can deny that its reach and influence are invaluable, and that the data it collects from its users are priceless. But no one wants to live there.

This is because Twitter is a hotbed of racist and sexist abuse, with death threats, stalking and firehose-intensity pile-ons a regular occurrence. Every social media platform has its trouble with trolls, but the nature of Twitter is that if you don't have your account completely locked down, everything you do goes into the same general public stream as everything else.

Not all such abuse cases are as high-profile as the recent one targeting Ghostbusters and Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones, but that one put one of Twitter's problems in the public consciousness in a way that the everyday and still continuing abuse of people – particularly women and people of colour, and most particularly women of colour – has not.

But rather than implementing any fixes that could address the problem, Twitter has instead chosen to ignore it.

What is revealing about the decision to ignore Twitter's toxicity while axing Vine is that the most successful Vine loops (not featuring adorable animals) have all been come from the same quarters that drive so much of our culture: innovative artists of colour, creating new things and making the most with the least.

Just as movie studios and game developers often pander to the comparatively shrinking white male demographic , Twitter has decided it would rather remain host to a cesspool of racists, stalkers, abusers and belligerent trolls who also generate little revenue and cost them a buyout than to vibrant communities of colour producing meaningful and entertaining original content.

Alexandra Erin is a freelance writer based in Hagerstown, Md.

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Walt Disney Company
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