{"id":6491,"date":"2024-05-26T08:01:43","date_gmt":"2024-05-26T07:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/?p=6491"},"modified":"2024-05-12T08:07:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T07:07:05","slug":"6491","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2024\/05\/26\/6491\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter is now the bad friend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Originally published 2022-12-23 at <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@tomstafford\/twitter-is-now-the-bad-friend-679a0e1d92df\">https:\/\/medium.com\/@tomstafford\/twitter-is-now-the-bad-friend-679a0e1d92d<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@tomstafford\/twitter-is-now-the-bad-friend-679a0e1d92df\">f<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"4dcb\">I joined in 2009, I\u2019ve tweeted 30,200 times, I loved the good times I spent on twitter, but those days are gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"d0b4\">Yes, <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.online\/@tomstafford\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">I joined mastodon<\/a>. I was inspired by Brian Nosek\u2019s collective action experiment from the end of October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrianNosek\/status\/1587078444252274688\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"580\" height=\"600\" data-attachment-id=\"6492\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2024\/05\/26\/6491\/image-5\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?fit=793%2C821&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"793,821\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?fit=290%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?fit=580%2C600&amp;ssl=1\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?resize=580%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6492\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?w=793&amp;ssl=1 793w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?resize=290%2C300&amp;ssl=1 290w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/image.png?resize=768%2C795&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"2484\">Enough of the people posting content I like moved to mastodon that I don\u2019t need to read twitter any more. Yes, I\u2019ll post there, and check replies, but it\u2019s faded into the background of my attention, like facebook before it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"bf6b\">Yes, Elon Musk\u2019s attitude to twitter employees, unbanning accounts, and ridiculous new features (blocking links to mastodon, wft?) didn\u2019t help, but for a long time it was obvious that twitter was a bad friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"ace0\">Social media plugs into our natural instinct to relate to information in a social context. Not what was said, but who said it, and what everyone else thinks of it. Elon said (and was ridiculed) that <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1588081971221053440\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">twitter was a cybernetic device for collective intelligence<\/a>. There\u2019s lots to be said about this, but <a href=\"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2018\/04\/04\/collective-intelligence-in-twitter-discussions\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">I don\u2019t think he\u2019s wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"93a1\">If social networks support a kind of collective intelligence \u2014 and in the weak form of a kind of collective sense-making, this is undoubtedly true \u2014 we can ask what the design features of a platform are that support or hinder collective intelligence. Do the affordances built into the software encourage collective intelligence or stupidity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"121b\">Some features of twitter<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Quote tweets: i.e. a context removal device, promoting reacting without understanding.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Surfacing tweets you\u2019ve liked or replied to in other people\u2019s timelines: the social media equivalent of sidling up to a friend as whispering \u201cHave you heard what Tom thinks about X? What do you think about that?!\u201d. Offline we\u2019d call that shit-stirring, in social media it is called optimising engagement.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Prominent counts of likes, replies and RTs: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Social_proof\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">social proof<\/a> on steroids, collapsing it into a unidimensional metric of How Important this is, deprioritising information on <em>why<\/em> it is important.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"5dc6\">And now, logging onto twitter today, I\u2019ve seen that they put the number of views marked on each tweet. Why? So we can all feel bad about how few people read our posts? I suspect it is a desperate bit of growth hacking from twitter, prompted by what must now be obvious \u2014millions, like me, are turning the attention away from twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"10f5\">You won\u2019t see this in the headline figures. I still have an account, still follow thousand of people. But I\u2019m not reading their tweets, and I\u2019m not logging on every 5 minutes like I was, and I\u2019m not replying (and people aren\u2019t replying to me \u2014 for a couple of years now I have noticed less and less substantive engagement on twitter. Maybe I\u2019m more boring, or have minimised my attack surface for replies, or something, but I suspect that we\u2019re all collectively waking up from the fever-dream of twitter). The people inside twitter must have the stats to confirm this, must be able to see what is happening to the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"4ae8\">Mastodon isn\u2019t a perfect substitute for twitter, but many of the differences are features, not bugs. As Clive Thompson wrote, <a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/mastodon-is-antiviral-design-42f090ab8d51\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mastodon is anti-viral design<\/a>. It\u2019s not trying to maximise engagement by provoking controversy, it hides how many other people have boosted or replied to a post, encouraging you to think for yourself whether you want to engage, rather that take social proof. And, more importantly, it isn\u2019t a platform which is selling your attention to advertisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"31c2\">The outcome is a platform which isn\u2019t as slick, but on which I can discover interesting information and have sincere engagement with many different people. That\u2019s enough for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"273a\">The thing mastodon doesn\u2019t yet have, and which twitter is losing, is that sense of being a public space, a town square, where people of all types, and all institutions, were represented and could take part in discussion. For years twitter seems to escape the contradiction between looking like a public space, but being a private company with a mission to make a profit out of people. Musk\u2019s takeover may have just made that latent contradiction manifest. Twitter was remarkable because of its elite capture of journalists, politicians and institutions. Maybe there was a path to building it out from there to a sustainable service which contributed to the public good <em>and<\/em> made a profit. Rather, it looks like \u2014 in the manner of a Greek tragedy \u2014 twitter will make itself irrelevant by working it\u2019s dark magic on its new owner. Musk-on-twitter will become a hollow caricature: endlessly chasing of engagement, subservient to audience capture, holding onto the rising balloon of shrinking attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"f295\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.online\/@tomstafford\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@tomstafford@mastodon.online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published 2022-12-23 at https:\/\/medium.com\/@tomstafford\/twitter-is-now-the-bad-friend-679a0e1d92df I joined in 2009, I\u2019ve tweeted 30,200 times, I loved the good times I spent on twitter, but those days are gone. Yes, I joined mastodon. I was inspired by Brian Nosek\u2019s collective action experiment from the end of October. Enough of the people posting content I like moved to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-self-defence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5KQtW-6491","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6495,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491\/revisions\/6495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}