Twitter On, Twitter On
By Craig Johnson (@CraigJPolitics) and Alan Rosenblatt (@DrDigiPol), Unfiltered.Media
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has dominated the social media conversation since he leapfrogged over Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to become its top shareholder on April 6. Throughout this process, people were asking Unfiltered.Media what we thought the impact of it all would be and now that the deal is done, these questions are growing louder.
Our answer will be unsatisfactory to many - we don’t know. Really, no one knows. Not even Musk. Large purchases like this are frankly complex and have a history of falling apart in the first place. Consider the collapse of Nvidia’s recent blockbuster acquisition of AMD as an example. That said, there is simply one thing we know for sure: liberals leaving Twitter will allow it to become an ecosphere for the right. We think that could be the worst action we could take.
Capitulation is the definition of surrender and that is what we would be doing if the left leaves Twitter. Abandoning the fight is not what the organizers who came before us did when they were faced with water hoses, attack dogs, and physical and sexual violence. No, they stayed, they kept talking, they kept fighting, and they kept making their presence known.
Based on the brief description of the changes Musk has already proposed, there will likely be significant implications for how organizations and candidates approach Twitter and our ability to organize both digitally and on the ground. Our ethos at Unfiltered.Media is that digital practitioners do not simply master a set of skills and tactics limited to a specific platform or even a set of platforms. Our approach focuseson the principles and methodologies for organizing common across all digital media, allowing us to invent and adapt to changes “on the fly” so that no matter how the outside environment changes we know how to use the available tools to succeed.
In that spirit we thought it would be useful to go through Elon’s changes to Twitter and think about the potential impact on our own campaigns and on the national discourse.
Edit Button
The edit button is certainly an idea that many on this platform wish they could have. Be it typo’s in quickly tapped out tweets to tweets that are no longer factually correct to tweets that are on second glance offensive.
The problem with the edit button for every public forum since the beginning of the internet and even before is that it allows people to distort conversation after the fact, manipulating conversations to appear as something they weren’t to begin with contributing to the already high levels of mis/disinformation.
Free Speech
There are countless treaties on what constitutes free speech, how far it should go, and on which communications platforms must provide it. The practice and impact of free speech is different depending on the context of each platform (compare free speech on phone calls to free speech in a crowded theater). The one thing we know is that as a communications platform privately owned by one person, free speech will be whatever Elon Musk decides it is at that moment in time. There is no check against his changing whim.
The danger, of course, is that if Musk decides that pro-union organizing tweets targeted at SpaceX or Tesla employees is not “appropriate” for the platform, there is no one to overrule him. That kind of problem must be handled in real time, which means we will need to act quickly, coining phrases like “let’s go Brandon” to circumvent roadblocks Musk may throw in our way. We have incredibly creative people fighting for our causes, we should use them to dominate the social zeitgeist in inventive and culturally compelling ways. Censoring what is popular is often impossible, so the more popular the content we make, the better.
Algorithmic Transparency
Despite Musk saying algorithmic transparency was one of his goals, we have no grounds to believe he would follow through– which is good.. The reason is that if you know the rules of the game (the algorithm) people will do their best to break them; to game the rules to their own benefit. This will throw off the “market balance” that an effective free speech zone should have. We have a long history of big-money interests circumventing rules in ways that people without financial resources cannot match.
While we believe that algorithmic transparency likely will not happen, if for some reason it does, organizations and campaigns should devote significant resources to evaluating, examining, and exploiting any public algorithm information.
Eradicate scams by cracking down on bots and inauthentic accounts
Eliminating bots and inauthentic accounts could be great for Twitter, if it could and would be achieved. The core of the problem with mis- and disinformation–especially on Twitter–is driven by automated and semi-automated bots (cyborgs). As a company who has extensive knowledge building our own custom organizing tools for Twitter, we recognize that using bots with an open API is as useful for doing amazing peer-to-peer organizing as it is for promoting and disseminating mis- and disinformation.
But, without addressing the bot problem on Twitter, there will truly never be free speech. Free speech is an individual right, even under the distortion of Citizens United, free speech is the act of a singular agent. But bots do not have free speech. They are an artificial multiplication of a voice, none of which have the agency to warrant free speech rights. As long as they exist on Twitter, there is no free speech, no free market of ideas. Just a “conversation” dominated by fake voices.
Elimination of Ads in exchange for subscriptions
If this happens we can all feel free to get off the platform, as we think this is the one option that has the potential for Twitter to lose its current status as THE platform for news. Hiding breaking news from reporters and news junkies will just lead to them finding an alternative just like the millions of Netflix subscribers are finding an alternative for rising prices and diminished content quality.
What makes Twitter so effective as a public square is that it is open to everyone. As soon as you gate it with a fee, it cannot ever be a place for free speech. By definition, speech on Twitter would be available ONLY if you pay for it. That is the opposite of free.
To make a long story short, rather than abandoning Twitter, the real solution to what is happening with the platform is to be adaptable. If your organization or campaign does not take a methodological and principle based approach to ALL social media platforms, inevitable shocks, like the one we are feeling with Twitter, will leave you with a program that is inefficient; subject to interruption by changes to platforms and the rules that govern them. As a result, organizations and campaigns that cannot adapt will be generally weaker than programs that are nimble and willing to change to fit the moment. Constantly exploring how to exploit platforms and content strategies as those platforms change will make your programs stronger and more resilient. If you can be adaptable, the next “Elon Musk buying the next Twitter” will be far less stress inducing than this one, if our Twitter timelines filled with responses to this shock are any indication.
Lastly, we should really stop moralizing about Twitter and where Elon Musk does his business. This is capitalism, there is no such thing as ethics. For all those now upset that Musk does business with China, consider that the largest Twitter shareholder before Musk bought his stake was the Saudi Arabia foriegn wealth fund. It is not like Twitter was clean of any connection to human rights abuses before Musk.