{"id":82021,"date":"2022-11-22T12:26:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T17:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=82021"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:54:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:54:37","slug":"opinion-blayne-haggart-discusses-changes-at-twitter-and-the-future-of-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2022\/11\/opinion-blayne-haggart-discusses-changes-at-twitter-and-the-future-of-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Blayne Haggart discusses changes at Twitter and the future of social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article written by Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, was originally published in\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of Twitter has been\u00a0a fast-moving disaster<\/a>. It has also created a tangible problem for journalists, politicians, activists and academic scholars: Where do we talk to each other if or when Twitter finally collapses or becomes unusable?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a useful question. Contemplating life without Twitter pushes us to look beyond Twitter\u2019s odious underbelly to consider what we liked about it. In doing so, it can help us understand better what social media is, for better and worse, and to consider what we want it to be.<\/p>\n

Twitter communities<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What I will miss about Twitter is its large scale and reach. It has become the default way for so many groups to communicate with each other and, because it\u2019s basically just one big message board, across groups.<\/p>\n

Social media companies regularly argue that this scale is why there is so much\u00a0hate speech and disinformation on their networks<\/a>. As harmful as this speech may be, Twitter\u2019s reach has nonetheless been a boon for, say, emerging researchers wanting to easily reach the largest number of their peers.<\/p>\n

Smaller online communities are fantastic for any number of reasons. They allow members to share their interests and knowledge. Their smaller size makes them easier to moderate effectively. However, their smallness can also inhibit the serendipity of running into ideas that you wouldn\u2019t otherwise see.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, smaller online communities still depend on the benevolence of whoever happens to be in charge of the server. Twitter\u2019s open design somewhat mitigates against the formation of strict hierarchies among groups on the platform, although as we\u2019re learning, commercial social media still leaves us\u00a0subject to the owner\u2019s whims<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The end of Twitter<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Thinking about where to go after Twitter also highlights that social media networks are not substitutes for each other. Well, they are for advertisers, who will go wherever the audience is. But people use different social media for different purposes.<\/p>\n

As an academic, TikTok has nothing to offer me in terms of creating and sharing knowledge with my peers. The Twitter-like Mastodon may allow for\u00a0easier communication among colleagues<\/a>, but it lacks Twitter\u2019s out-of-community reach.<\/p>\n

That there is no equivalent substitute for Twitter highlights that there is a strong public interest in fostering public social media, to provide communities with stable communication infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Relatedly, this debacle also confirms that advertising does not provide a sustainable business model for socially responsible social media. Twitter has\u00a0only turned a profit in two of its 16 years<\/a>.\u00a0Advertisers are currently abandoning Twitter<\/a>\u00a0in the face of\u00a0Musk\u2019s content-moderation follies<\/a>\u00a0which, combined with Musk\u2019s incompetence, could drive the company into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Most important, however, its ad-based business model is based on the viral spread of content designed to engage our attention at any cost, be it bullying, harassment or hate speech. As journalism professor Yumi Wilson notes, \u201cTwitter was a scary place even before Elon<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life after Twitter<\/strong><\/h2>\n

All this suggests that we need to think seriously about how to move beyond ad-funded social media. Mastodon on its own\u00a0offers a decentralized, community-based paradigm<\/a>. However, depending on the long-term commitment of volunteers and small operators is itself a recipe for instability.<\/p>\n

Much more interesting is the proposal that Mastodon-based services could be used by an arm\u2019s length public agency like the CBC to\u00a0publicly fund stable, well-run social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Searchability<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Finally, we need to talk about search engines. Twitter is valuable in part because it allows individuals to broadcast easily to a large audience. Without large-scale social media, we\u2019re\u00a0back to the problem of how to discover other people\u2019s work<\/a>\u00a0and how to get your work in front of an audience.<\/p>\n

Search engines have flown under the radar in our discussions about how platforms should be governed. If we want to reduce online platform power and make the best information easily locatable, we need to reconsider whether our current search engines are good enough.<\/p>\n

There is cause for concern:\u00a0Google\u2019s gold-standard search engine has been \u201cgetting worse,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in large part because the company has been clogging its results with advertising that makes it more difficult for users to find relevant information. Given that the big online\u00a0platforms<\/a>\u00a0continue to rely heavily on advertising revenues, this is a problem that will worsen.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not glorify Twitter. It is, in\u00a0many ways<\/a>\u00a0and for many people, a malevolent force. Even pre-Musk, it was a breeding ground for\u00a0harassment<\/a>, particularly of women and individuals from marginalized groups. It can enable often life-ruining\u00a0bullying<\/a>\u00a0and disproportionate\u00a0public shaming<\/a>\u00a0of otherwise private individuals, particularly through the\u00a0quote-tweet function<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Twitter has had a negative effect on the quality of our social discourse, serving as a\u00a0conduit for mis-<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0disinformation<\/a>, designed to\u00a0encourage outrage<\/a>\u00a0rather than substantive conversation.<\/p>\n

As bad as it was \u2014 and is \u2014\u00a0you don\u2019t know what you got till it\u2019s gone<\/a>. Twitter pre-Musk was no paradise, but Musk\u2019s rampage allows us to see both the good and bad in social media as it currently exists. And, as a result, to consider what we want (and need) social media to be.
\n\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, recently published a piece in\u00a0The Conversation about the future of Twitter following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6,38],"tags":[3445,522,42,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82021"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82028,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82021\/revisions\/82028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}