"Authoritarians discovered they could use them to crack down on dissent. Extremists learned they could stir up hateful mobs to drive women and people of color offline. Celebrities and influencers realized that the crazier you acted, the more attention you got, and dialed up their behavior accordingly. A foundational belief of social media’s pioneers — that simply giving people the tools to express themselves would create a fairer and more connected society — began to look hopelessly naïve.... Since 2016, Twitter has tried to clean up its mess.... And some users grew nostalgic for the messier, more freewheeling Twitter they’d loved. One of those users was Mr. Musk.... Mr. Musk has framed his Twitter acquisition as a move to return the site to its former glory. 'The bird is freed,' he tweeted on Thursday night.... It’s possible that... relaxing Twitter’s rules could revitalize it.... It’s also possible that it could empower bigots and trolls... or that Mr. Musk could back off his plans for radical change.... But whatever happens.... Twitter won’t recapture its onetime identity as a place for rebels and revolutionaries to communicate under the radars of the powerful. That bird has flown."
From "Twitter, Once a Threat to Titans, Now Belongs to One/A decade ago, the social media platform was a tool for rebels and those challenging authority. But over time, the powerful learned how to use it for their own goals" by Kevin Roose (NYT).
Roose describes the bird that has flown so narrowly that he's not really committing to much of a prediction: We can't get back to Twitter as a place for rebels and revolutionaries to communicate without being detected by the powerful people who have grown accustomed to using Twitter to acquire even more power.
Nevertheless, conspicuous rebels and revolutionaries can use Twitter to attack the powerful, and Musk can resist the influence of the powerful and give the rebels and revolutionaries breathing room that the powerful had been convincing the old guard at Twitter to squelch.
That bird hasn't flown. I'm sure there are other birds. That's just the one I heard tweeting most noisily.
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I mean, it comes from the NYT, so it must be the correct narrative of the day.
You know, no one is forced to use Twitter. If people are mean to you, you can go away. The blue checks are mad that there are sometimes negative consequences for dopamine hits.
Diversity at the NYT? Twitter is now under African-American governance. Progress: one step forward or backward, time will tell.
"It’s also possible that it could empower bigots and trolls..."
Please empower bigots, trolls and fake news too. Anyone on social media understands how these terms are defined. Bigots are conservatives, trolls are people with a different opinion and inconvenient facts are considered fake news.
It isn't clear how to fix Twitter, but censorship isn't the answer. A good start would be to restrict users to actual verified humans.
Twitter will allow Donald Trump to post.
Twitter will allow links to articles about Hunter Biden's laptop.
Twitter will allow Babylon Bee jokes.
Twitter will allow users to write: "Learn to code."
That is what The New York Times does not like.
It is hilarious how Twitter is now suddenly a public utility whose majority owner can't be allowed to make changes implemented by the previous management of a private company, and in all the same ridiculous media organizations at the same time.
Ann, in one post, you say that normal people have an obligation to restrict their speech so as to avoid saying anything that might set off a schizophrenic person toward violence. Then, two posts later, you write that people can "use Twitter to attack the powerful."
So if one of your readers suffers a psychotic break and decides that Twitter is telling him to kill political leaders, are you prepared to accept moral responsibility?
And you don't get to say that you were using an obvious metaphor and not inviting violence. You can't predict how an unstable person is going to react to your words. You don't get to opt out of moral judgment.
Too bad we can’t go back to the time when book publishers or newspaper editors had to agree with you before your thoughts could be published widely. The information experts have proven to be such reliable gatekeepers.
"Extremists learned they could stir up hateful mobs to drive women and people of color offline." You mean like Donald Trump (banned), Milo Yiannopoulos (banned), James O'Keefe (banned) and the Babylon Bee(banned)? I've heard the claim that women and people of color are driven off twitter but I've never seen any convincing evidence that it's true. I don't doubt that a lot of people withdraw from twitter because they don't like the response their posts generate but I haven't seen any evidence that it hits women and minorities worse than any other particular group of people. It would be nice if those making the claim would back it up with statistics once in awhile. And in any case, that seems less of a problem than official bans designed to protect the 'official' government story line. IMO it's telling that those who espouse the latter theory usually have examples close to hand.
I really don't know whether such articles are merely naive or are actively misleading. Probably a little of both. Sure, the author was still a teenager when twitter was founded, but come on. Within two years of its founding, twitter already was a tool of big media and political consultants. (Anyone remember the 2008 presidential election?)
Let's also not pretend that twitter was some little garage startup. A couple of its founders had recently become wealthy from selling Blogger (the platform that hosts this blog) to Google, and they had enormous influence in the "Web 2.0" movement that produced the major social media platforms. At the time, I knew a few of the early investors and founders at a personal level. Despite their wealth (or perhaps because of it?), a few of them were radical leftists, at least behind closed doors. I found twitter to be very useful in the early days, but by early 2008, I think it was clear that it was at least as useful to the authoritarians as to the rebels and revolutionaries. Bullying and political intimidation was a part of the twitter culture almost from the beginning. Come to think of it, most of the rebels and revolutionaries I encountered in those early days had more in common with the Bolsheviks than the Founding Fathers.
Musk will outflank censors the and land the new Twitter rocket back on a pad 200 miles offshore. Hide and watch.
Seriously, Twitter has never been a Hallmark Card for church ladies. It’s a war crime between propaganda professionals. Musk just wants rules applied fair. That will make Twitter worth the money he paid for it. Women and children should not expose their innocent hearts on Twitter. The land of the brave tweeters will let you know who won after it’s over.
"Ann, in one post, you say that normal people have an obligation to restrict their speech so as to avoid saying anything that might set off a schizophrenic person toward violence. Then, two posts later, you write that people can "use Twitter to attack the powerful.""
Yes, this is not a contradiction. It's important for the sane, self-controlled people to express themselves and be heard being normal, intelligent, lucid, and sensible — to set a good example and to be aware of the effect of their speech and to uphold morality.
You decide how to speak and part of what you say is pushing back other people who are misleading others.
Right now, what we have are the sane, normal people CHOOSING IMMORALLY to distort the truth and to over-emote in the pursuit of power and they are failing to behave responsibly and to help the weaker people of this world get a grip on reality.
'Extremists learned they could stir up hateful mobs to drive women and people of color offline.'
When did this ever happen?
I do know of a woman of color who cancelled a white man's Twitter account.
Extremists learned they could stir up hateful mobs to drive women and people of color offline.
To drive them offline? Or to mock or criticize them, which - since they (especially the women, during from experience) may have been egged on by their friends to get online in the first place ("You're so brave! You're such a good writer! You're so smart!" - and especially, "YOU GO, GIRL!") - caught them off-guard, scraped up their thin skins, and caused some of them to quit?
Look at the women who didn't quit social media because of the evil H8ters. Some, like our host and Neo, have continued to blog independently. Some, like Megan McArdle, have moved to more traditional media but have been very successful there (even though I deplore the fact that McArdle went to the Dark Side in every way). Some, like Hoyt, have both continued to use social media as a promotional tool and also joined with like-minded people to form media consortia or other impact organizations.
The ones who were "driven offline" were... probably the same ones who submitted their novel to Random House and never got out of the slush pile. But now it's the fault of those who stepped on the tender shoots of their brilliance.
"Twitter won’t recapture its onetime identity as a place for rebels and revolutionaries to communicate under the radars of the powerful."
What?! Twitter was the radar - beaming out a stream of propaganda from "the powerful" focused by a bot lined waveguide.
I'm old enough to remember quizzes in magazines to test if you had some disease or syndrome of the month. I remember my family doctor blowing off steam on the Reader's Digest clogging his schedule with people who thought they might have a liver disease during flu season.
In Plato's image of the cave, a small number of people can give the impression of speaking for "everyone," just by shouting inside a relatively small enclosed area. I gather a lot of the competition on social media is among groups who know they couldn't win a free and fair election, but want to win the shouting match in the cave. Twitter, contrary to Jack Dorsey's earlier promises, had tilted to the left. I for one hope it tilts back while showing some genuine curiosity and openness to eccentric inquiries.
The involvement of actual media, with actual reporters, in the suppression of Hunter's laptop is a disgrace. Jonah Goldberg, trying to keep up with the woke, has tried to argue that since there was no evidence the laptop would swing the election either way, it was legitimate to suppress it. I can remember when Republicans in Congress were determined to investigate Nixon, provided the investigation was fair, and let the chips fall where they may. The reporters who ridiculed Carter to the point that he didn't seem presidential were largely Democrats. Social media seems to tell actual reporters, professors and even scientists what to think, all driven by somewhat fanatical young people who are sure they are right.
"Extremists learned they could stir up hateful mobs to drive women and people of color offline"
What a bunch of pathetic bullshit.
The extremists of the Left learned they could stir up hateful mobs and Big Tech employees to drive anyone who disagrees with them offline.
Between "block" and "mute" no one can "drive you offline" unless they have Big Tech "deplatforming" you.
All other claims are bullshit.
Are there Lefties who have nothing but shitty ideas, who left "social media" because they couldn't' handle the thought the someone might point out the flaws in their ideas?
I'm sure there are
So what?
The choice to remain an idiot is a personal choice. You don't want people to point out what an idiot you are? Protect your tweets so that only the people you choose can see them
But where's the joy in being a left wing fascist if you can't stamp out everyone else's freedom of expression?
"Extremists learned they could stir up hateful mobs to drive women and people of color offline."--oh please. Where does this happen? By disagreeing with feminists or POC you drive them offline? hahaha no. The people driven offline are conservatives and the religious. It is the Bee that was banned, not BLM or Antifa or even the Iran Ayatollahs. It was the site that was documenting global acts of terrorism that was banned. It is people calling a XY "female" by "him" that get banned, including Jordan Peterson.
"over emote in the pursuit of power." and right there Althouse hits the 10-ring.
The "emoting" is, of course, only the current tool. In the past everything has been used, or tried. Claims of divinity, logic, birthright, intellect, science, religion, force, majority right, oppressed right, "it is written", etc. etc. ad infinitum.
The really depressing thing is conversing with my young (20-30) relatives, for whom there is no history. Whatever the current thing in, is the worst thing ever. With, to be fair, the possible exception of the word "fascist", where they do seem to have some vague grasp of the past. The word itself has come adrift from its past, though, and like "racist" and "phobic", now can be applied to anything.
“ Authoritarians discovered they could use them to crack down on dissent.”
Funny how changing “Democrats” for “authoritarians” does not change the meaning or truth of that sentence. I don’t remember Trump working to silence dissent like the Democrats have.
Everybody on the internet thinks they are rebels, a revolutionaries, dissidents, and iconoclasts, even as they are begging moderators to censure and cancel other internauts.
I don't think today's couch potatoes are going to actually stir up or be stirred up to attack anyone. It's likely, though, that some people will view any blowback they face as bigoted incitation to violence that justifies bans imposed on their critics.
The authoritarians cracking down on dissent were twitter's own employees.
In the end, if it not an environment where advertisers are willing to be screencapped next to random tweets, they will not be spending their money there.
Twitter is only a profitable town square if advertisers are willing to buy in.
Free speech might be wonderful, but Pepsi doesn't want us to feel they are connected to antisemitism, et al. Folks might think it is the leftists trying to censor Twitter, but it is the corporate ad committee who don't want any negatives associated with their brand.
Bring on the proud boys and Trump, advertisers will remind Elons creditors who is providing the payroll
Mark said...
In the end, if it not an environment where advertisers are willing to be screencapped next to random tweets, they will not be spending their money there.
Which explains why so much of the pressure on Twitter came from Democrats in the White House and Congress, not advertisers.
And also explains why Twitter stopped accepting political ads.
Oh, wait, it doesn't at all.
Because Mark is completely full of shit, as usual
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Folks might think it is the leftists trying to censor Twitter,..."
Yeah, people might think that precisely because it was leftists actually cesoring people in a 100% pro-leftist New Soviet Democratical way in collusion with those democraticals.
And I wonder what those long-time advertisers will think when they discover just how many lies the lefty Twitterati leadership was telling with artificially and fraudulent eyeball/user numbers...and Elon now has access to that info and is already tweeting about it, after firing the completely corrupted lefty former leaders for cause.
A very good start.
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