Tag Archives: Twitter

Replacing Twitter

Yes, I’m still referring to it as Twitter and not by its new name of X, a desperate rebranding by man-child Elon Musk. Afterall, some symbol formerly known as Prince is still called Prince today.

Nomenclature aside, soon after Musk purchased and destroyed Twitter, I joined the exodus to Mastodon. Several months later, bored rigid with Mastodon, I decided to close that account as well. I haven’t been tempted to migrate over to the recently launched Threads. I already have Facebook, WhatsApp and a mothballed Instagram account. I don’t wish to be owned by the ethically dubious Meta.

I’m starting to wonder why I need to continue with any massive social media platform like Twitter. Most of the accounts I followed belong to news outlets, political groups or organisations. Mostly I liked and retweeted within my bubble of like-minded acquaintances and strangers while ignoring the occasional hostilities of Brexiteers. Were these worthwhile ‘conversations’?

Cal Newport, who lectures in computer science at Georgetown University, argues that we don’t need a new Twitter. Newport calls Twitter at its best: ‘a global conversation platform on which everyone can gather to make sense of ideas and events, or, failing that, at least identify some strangely entertaining memes.’ Agreed. But at its worst, Twitter has been a victim of its own selection bias, which places popular and fast-spreading tweets ahead of others for users to see. Newport explains that with Twitter’s selection bias system of promoting some tweets over others, ‘the more aggressive messages are more likely to succeed in catching the attention of a sufficient number of retweeters to drive viral expansion…The result is a Faustian bargain for our networked era: trusting the wisdom of crowds to identify what’s interesting can create an intensely compelling stream of shared content, but this content is likely to arrive drenched in rancour.’ Indeed, that is the main drawback of Twitter, and it was made worse by Musk inviting hatemongering influencers back to the platform.

Newport also notes the flipside of this – on Twitter, breaking news can spread quickly. That for me was part of the appeal of the platform, a sense of having a finger on the pulse of the latest happenings in the UK and abroad. It was feeding this news junkie’s habit. Of course, other ways of getting up to the minute news can be had through apps and newsletters. Newport’s article came to my attention from a New Yorker newsletter sent to my email inbox.

Getting news in these Twitter or non-Twitter ways is rather passive and spectator-like. For want of conversation within like-minded groups, I joined a few Facebook groups, but they either don’t have much activity or are ennuidated with minutia of personal stories. I have however found a digital home of sorts on LinkedIn. I reopened my account with them after a five-year break to bring in some new writing and editing business. Surprisingly, LinkedIn has morphed into a network that goes beyond the curriculum vitae. Yes, identity on LinkedIn still revolves around careers, but I have found news sources and political action groups and organizations. When I post something or repost something, I can receive various reactions and occasionally a comment. A mini conversation forms. Unlike Twitter, I haven’t witnessed any rage or nastiness. I suspect this could have something to do with the politeness of writing professionals in the format of LinkedIn. I know, writers have been involved in cantankerous verbal sparring on Twitter and long before the internet through newsprint, television and by any means available.

Newport ends up dismissing the mega-platforms like Twitter and Threads that try to play the role of being a global town square, ‘aggregating as many of its potential connections as possible into a single service.’ Instead, Newport recognises the value of ‘small groups that gather in their own bespoke corners of cyberspace.’ This includes conversation threads of niche and hobbyist websites, podcasts and email newsletters. To this, I add finding stimulating conversations in the comments that follow digital news stories.

I agree too with Newport’s conclusions and borrow them for my own: ‘To make the online experience less hostile, we don’t need ever-more complicated algorithms deployed by ever-larger platforms. It’s enough to instead return to a conception of digital interaction that occurs on a much more human scale.’

One of my LinkedIn images.

Twitter, You’re Out!

This blog will appear in my last tweet. Ever. I mean it this time. I’m not particularly fond of baseball metaphors, but for me, Twitter has committed its third strike and is now out and should be sitting on the bench humiliated.

The first strike occurred during the Tr*mp presidency. If the orange one’s affectation for the social media platform weren’t enough to make someone want to quit, the twitterer-in-chief was making false claims about Covid. It took Twitter a dangerous while to start posting warnings that the tweets were medically untrue. The delay had to do with ‘freedom of speech,’ allowing anyone to say anything regardless of their position to influence. In the interest of public safety, Twitter finally gave in.

Strike two was made this summer, when Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi PhD student at the University of Leeds, was jailed by a Saudi terrorism court for 34 years for the ‘crime’ of following and retweeting a couple of Saudi social and feminist activists on Twitter. It was obvious that this dental hygienist was not a terrorist. In fact, it would be a stretch to even call her an activist. Not taking on any duty of care for its users, Twitter made no public statement on this. Many have speculated that this has to do with Mohammed Bin Salman’s sovereign wealth fund having an indirect stake in Twitter.

I really wanted to leave Twitter then and make a stand against the Saudi regime’s human rights abuses and the way they are buying democracies throughout the world to ignore their actions. I was in a right huff over it. But then, I selfishly thought about my writing being promoted on Twitter, along with my academic life and socio-political interests being shared on the site. To my shame, I chickened out. I remained on Twitter and spoke up for Salma al-Shehab by tweeting articles about her case and signing yet another Amnesty International petition and posting that on Twitter.

Strike three came about over these last few weeks. This is where the baseball metaphor falls apart as a strike of a bat is quick – perhaps it’s strike three in slow motion. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has seen three weeks of crashing chaos with the firing of staff, charging users for a special ‘blue’ status only to reverse it days later, and then reinstating Tr*mp to the platform. This last act in this vanity project was made worse by the way this was conducted. Musk held an online election, using Twitter, of course. The Twitter-using public supposedly voted to let Tr*mp with all his vulgarity, racism, misogyny, infantile vindictiveness and misspellings back on to the social media platform. After the vote came out in Tr*mp’s favour, Musk, with his warped sense of democracy, tweeted about the voice of the people being victorious. Firstly, I’m not so sure about the people really being heard. As I placed my vote, I imagined bots and users with multiple accounts voting en masse. Secondly, Musk is again conflating public debate on social media with a form of truth. John Naughton beat me to the punch on this point in his brilliant commentary on Musk’s flailing with his new ‘plaything.’

I joined Twitter in 2011 at a time when the site had just morphed from a place where people recorded the banalities of their lives in 140 characters (‘I’m now mowing the lawn’) to a forum for academics to share their research. Or so I thought. Reluctant to share work-in-progress, academics and their publishers use Twitter as a stream of billboards advertising published work. Despite that and those three strikes, I’m going to miss Twitter. It does remind my followers that I’m a blogger and draws people into conversation with me. I’m also going to miss Led by Donkeys, J.K. Rowling, a few academic journals, some linguists and yes, Joyce Carol Oates (cats and all). That is, I’ll miss them until they join the mass migration over to Mastodon. You’ll find me there: @paolatrimarco@universeodon.com