Our abusive relationship with Social Media. Ep 1.

The gang wants to buy Twitter.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Hello friends,

If you’ve read my other posts on Substack, you may have noticed that I tend to view Social Media as a necessary evil at best.

Today I’m going to talk about something that will probably become a recurring segment on this letter: humanity’s abusive relationship with Social Media.

Today’s episode is about the guy that wants to spend 43 Billion dollars to buy Twitter and how much that barely matters in the grand scheme of things.

I made a few quips about this (as you do) where else, but on Twitter, but I decided to write this entry after I saw that this little adventure made it’s way on the evening news in my country.

I spend my time reading and consuming all sorts of Tech related news, but when the newsrooms in my country decided it’s a big enough story to tell my mom about it, I had to wonder “why?”.

So let’s break it down.

Will Elon actually buy Twitter ?

Looks like a ‘no’. There were quite a few opinions out there about Elon’s grand plan, but ultimately Twitter’s board of directors’ opinion matters a little more. They decided to enact a “poison pill”.

Shortest version ever: they made it so it would be extremely expensive for a single shareholder to buy a majority stake in the company.

Elon could buy the shares from willing investors, but it would probably cost him way too much to do so.

So the rational thing to do would be for him to move on and find some other product to get involved with, buy the right to call himself the founder of, overhype and ultimately underdeliver. “Is Elon rational?” is a question I do not have an answer to, so let’s leave it at that.

I believe, ultimately, who owns Twitter will mean something, but not much.

The Free Speech thing.

Elon’s whole thing about buying Twitter seems to be about free speech. He’s tweeted and said so on several occasions. Most famously in recent memory was this poll he conducted.

So … let’s unpack this. And please keep in mind, I hate everything about this debate because of how dumb everything about it is.

First.

Free Speech is essential to a functioning democracy.

True. 10/10. No Notes.

Second.

Is Twitter rigorously adhering to this principle ?

That’s also an easy one. The answer is no. Twitter has a content policy that’s more restrictive than the US Constitution (that’s what he means by Free Speech, btw). They will crack down on posts that break it. 70% of people got it right - woohoo !

So far, so good. HOWEVER.

Did you notice what happened there in that Twitter poll ? Did you notice the question that was not asked, but is heavily implied ? Here, let me help.

Is Twitter essential to a functioning democracy ?

This one sounds a bit more important than the one Elon actually asked. See, if we determine that Twitter is essential to a functioning democracy, then we can conclude that having Free Speech on Twitter is essential to a functioning democracy.

But if Twitter is not essential to a functioning democracy, then Twitter’s Terms of Service is nobody’s business but their own. Twitter could have more Free Speech and it would be fine. Twitter could have less Free Speech and it would also be fine. It’s up to Twitter to decide what’s best for them and their users and it’s up to users to adjust accordingly.

This is why I hate this debate. This part never seems to be discussed, everybody just yada-yadas over it.

Let’s interrogate that a bit. Here’s something you might hear:

Twitter is the new ‘public square’

Whenever folks point out that Free Speech (as a legal right) protects people from government censorship, not Silicon Valley content moderators, the only retort in earshot is “Twitter is the public square”.

Not even close.

If it please the court, I’d like to explore Exhibit A. Pew research poll from 2019 that compares Twitter users to American adults. Suffice to say, there are quite a few discrepancies, and keep in mind that the US is one of the better cases. Most other countries will have even bigger discrepancies between Twitter users and general population from those countries.

First, how about representation ?

Not great.

Age brackets are actually even worse than they look considering that younger people tend to be less politically engaged than older folks. So older folks seem to be doing more of the whole democracy thing with much less of the Twitter thing.

Same goes for Education and Income.

Not looking good for the “Public Square” crowd.

How public is your public square if not everyone participates ?

How about political leaning ? Do we have political views accurately represented ?

Of course not. One side of the political spectrum is overrepresented. Another point for “not public square”.

But maybe you like to think it’s a matter of personal choice. Twitter has a large number of users and they should get a chance to participate, even if some folks are sitting out the online debates. Well …

Most tweets are produced by a very small minority of users. Most engagement goes to them as well.

As it turns out, most people don’t get a word in edge-wise. A square where 90% of the participants barely get any attention is hardly ‘public’.

On that note, let’s go very quickly through Exhibit B.

For US adults, the average daily time spent on Twitter in 2021 is 6 minutes.

Turns out. Your average person is not terminally online.

391 million Twitter accounts have no followers at all.

Lots of folks would get close to no engagement even if they were to tweet.

Here’s one last piece of evidence, Exhibit C. Number of active users and expected growth over the next few years.

Barely inching over the population of the United States (reminder : these numbers are World Wide).

So, to sum up the prosecution’s evidence, your honor, we have the following:

Twitter overrepresents younger, more educated, cosmopolitan urban types. The average user spends very little time on the platform. And even when they do, it’s usually to consume the content created by the very few top accounts.

To top it all off. Most people aren’t even interested in Twitter to begin with. To put it in context: Taylor Swift has 207 Million Instagram followers (queen!). That’s 66% of Twitter’s entire population.

So to the overwhelming majority of people Twitter is not even close to being a “public forum” or “political debate platform”.

Twitter is not designed to be a public forum.

Look, I’m a small-time poster. I barely get engagement on my Twitter posts, and when I do it’s usually when I tweet about something that’s in the zeitgeist, like a big war in Europe or the occasional Taylor Swift meme.

Elon isn’t like me. Odds are he’s not like you either. He gets a lot of attention from his fans, his detractors and the press whenever he tweets anything remotely out of the ordinary. So I get why HE feels that Twitter is about public debate - it mostly is for him.

For everyone else ? It’s more like Netflix. You tune into your favorite social media bubble. Hit a like here and there and touch the proverbial grass when you’ve had enough.

The experience that Twitter is ultimately designed for is mine and yours, not Elon’s.

All Social Media platforms have an Algorithm, Twitter is no different. The Algorithm is a faceless machine that makes educated guesses about which type of content to deliver to each user.

Why not just deliver posts as people write them ? Because it’s less engaging for the users to do so. Twitter sells your attention to advertisers, so Twitter wants you to spend as much time as possible on their app. It is, therefore, in Twitter’s best interest to keep you scrolling. That’s what the machine is designed to do, to keep you scrolling, not to make you engage in debates, not to challenge your assumptions, not to change your life. Just. Keep. Scrolling.

This is why I said that for most people, Twitter is like Netflix. You will keep watching the show while it’s just entertaining enough. If it gets boring you log off and look for something else.

“Hold on” I hear you say. “Elon’s problem is that Twitter sucks as a public square and wants to make it better by doing X”

Well, the problem with that is that …

Mess with the Machine at your own risk.

The problem Elon or any other idealistic would-be Twitter investor faces is that people aren’t that interested in the product they want to make.

The hottest “Social Media” app at the time of writing is Tik Tok. Which, isn’t really social media at all if you think about it. It’s just a content-delivery mechanism.

Point is, the Social Media app Elon wants to make is not something people seem interested in, which makes the case for “Twitter as public square” even less convincing.

An Elon-run Twitter might make some changes like, for instance, it may choose to relax the platform’s content moderation policy. Some users will like that since it gives them more “free speech”. Some users will dislike that since it may result in people attacking them (this is, among other things, less “free speech” for these users. Funny how that works !)

So what do you think these users who will see their experience on Twitter become more toxic, or at the very least, less enjoyable ?

What do you think you would do if the people you enjoy following start leaving the app or posting less often ?

Making changes to the algorithm and how it’s perceived risks putting Twitter in a downward spiral.

Where are these users going to go? Will somebody make their own New-Twitter that ultimately fails like the more “conservative” Gab, Parlor, Truth Social, etc. ?

Speaking of Twitter alternatives, let’s talk for a second about those conservative alternatives.

First, they don’t consider themselves conservative platforms, but rather ‘free speech’ platforms. That claim is laughable considering they are banning all sorts of “US Constitution approved” speech.

Second of all, the creation of these platforms did not lead to a Twitter downward spiral. How can I be sure that the Elon-Twitter will be the death of Twitter, when the death of Twitter has been announced before and failed to materialize ?

I don’t know for sure, but neither does Elon. As mentioned before, Twitter trends more liberal and younger than the US as a whole. So it should be no surprise that Twitter users will be more - for instance - LGBT friendly than the population as a whole. If Elon-Twitter becomes less protective of LGBT users, it is very plausible that users (and, more importantly for Twitter) advertisers will react negatively.

Maybe some misguided soul will try to make a new Twitter to absorb the users Elon-Twitter risks bleeding in this scenario, but the most likely outcome is that more and more people just tune out of Twitter and spend more time on any of the other established Social Media apps they already have and use. Advertisers will be happy to follow.

If Elon decides to f*ck with the Machine, he risks burning Twitter down and 43 Billion dollars of his wealth along with it and all that because he is - unlike most of Twitter’s userbase - terminally online and thinks most of us are the same way.

Basically, today’s episode was about Elon’s particular abusive relationship with his favorite social media app.

Before I end - let me go back to where it all started.

Why did some guy deciding to spend a lot of his money on an app that most people don’t use to make changes that he probably can’t make without torpedoing the entire enterprise make national news outside of tech circles?

Easy answer : Exhibit D

Journalists make up 24.6% of verified Twitter accounts.

Most journalists are on Twitter. A lot of what they do and report on is on Twitter. To them, the fate of Twitter is important (just like with Elon), which leads them to think it’s Important™.

That’s how my mom found out Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter.

Because Elon is forever-online and thinks it’s important and the forever online journalists also thought it was important.

I submit to you, dear reader, that it really really is not.

Stay safe out there,

CCS.