Thread
1/Here's an opinion that's going to make some folks mad: If Elon rules Twitter as essentially a conservative-leaning moderator, that's much less bad for society than what Twitter's old management did, which was to stoke maximum ideological combat to boost engagement...
2/Anger and denunciation -- "open combat", as one tech person I know described it -- has been Twitter's basic business model for a long time. That's why it never changed the quote-tweet feature -- dunk-fights are Twitter's bread and butter.
www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet
www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet
3/The internet has been around for several decades, and we have learned what makes for a good, enjoyable community. And that solution is COMMUNITY MODERATION. This is the most basic fact that everyone on IRC, or web forums, or Reddit knows.
4/Twitter always doggedly avoided implementing anything that would have even slightly resembled community moderation. It refused to drop blocked trolls from reply-threads. It refused to let people remove themselves from quote-tweets. Etc.
5/Under a sustained years-long pressure campaign, Twitter DID reluctantly start to do some *centralized* moderation. This moderation had a liberal slant, which it never acknowledged but which was obvious to all. And that's what the "Twitter Files" people are now mad about.
6/Centralized moderation, though, is no substitute for community moderation -- again, as every forum user knows. The internet succeeds as a collection of fragmented self-governed spaces, and fails as one giant centrally moderated "public square". We know this now.
7/Twitter's old management fought against this. They did whatever they could -- including design choices *and* moderation choices -- to keep people who hated and feared each other's ideas in constant close contact, constantly fighting each other, in order to boost engagement.
8/Twitter's network effect is not invincible. Had they been more open about the editorial slant of their centralized moderation choices post-2018 or so, more users would have left for conservative-friendly Twitter clones.
And that would have cost Twitter money.
And that would have cost Twitter money.
9/Twitter, as a company, was shambolic and incompetent. They couldn't figure out a better way to make money than to cling to the kind of constant, neverending hate-fest that had boosted their numbers in 2015-2016.
10/So Twitter's management refused to make platform design choices that would have made this platform a better place to exist, and they also refused to be open and frank about their centralized moderation, out of fear that the "open combat" would die down.
11/Notice how everyone kind of assumes that if Twitter dies, no Twitter clone will emerge to replace the Twitter of 2021?
It's because people understand that keeping opposing political sides in equipoise, to maximize rage-based engagement, is an unstable equilibrium.
It's because people understand that keeping opposing political sides in equipoise, to maximize rage-based engagement, is an unstable equilibrium.
12/Once again: The internet works as a collection of fragmented self-governed communities with relatively free entry and exit.
This is what it tends toward, because these are the spaces in which it is actually pleasant to exist online.
This is what it tends toward, because these are the spaces in which it is actually pleasant to exist online.
13/Which brings us back to Musk. If Elon governs as an openly conservative mod, that is fine. Liberals -- including the liberal journalists who give the platform its social importance -- will migrate away, possibly all in a rush. Conservatives will stay.
14/If this happens (and it hasn't happened yet), we will move from a one-Twitter internet to a many-Twitter internet. AND THAT IS FINE. That is how the internet is supposed to work. There's no rule that says there only has to be one platform of this type.
15/Sure, none of the fragmented Twitters will be as big of a company as the old one. Who cares? It's not even that big of a company. And who cares whether we have one more social media giant? We don't NEED a single unified Twitter. It does not benefit our society.
16/Facebook already discovered that the internet likes to be fragmented. Social media started with experiments in grand social unification. Those experiments failed, and hopefully that failure taught us some important lessons.
17/People call Twitter the "town square", as if the global internet is supposed to be one town. But it's not! The internet is a collection of towns!! And if some towns have conservative mayors and others have liberal mayors, that is FINE.
18/Fragmentation, community-enforced quasi-homogeneity, safe spaces, Tiebout equilibrium, exit over voice. Whatever you want to call it. The Nam-Shub of Enki. AT fields. Pick your metaphor.
This is what makes the internet work.
This is what makes the internet work.
19/Twitter's real sin, as a corporation, was preserving the inefficient centralized equilibrium of Social Media 1.0 for far longer than it should have been preserved, thus exacerbating hate and division in our society (and in many other societies).
20/I despise Twitter's old management for this. Not for liberal moderation choices. Not for dishonesty and secrecy. I despise them for turning American society into a gladiatorial arena in order to line their own pockets.
21/Anyway, if you don't like Musk Twitter, then leave. There will be other platforms. People are leaving FB now; there's no reason to think that Twitter, alone among social media platforms, will reign eternal.
I speak the Nam-Shub of Enki! Let the Tower of Babel fall.
(end)
I speak the Nam-Shub of Enki! Let the Tower of Babel fall.
(end)
