Notes on the Great Twitterpation
Nilay Patel↱, for The Verge:
As many users verge into panic over the implications of the Twittish Muskovization of 2022, a.k.a., the Great Twitterpation, certain realities dominate more realistic expectations. Patel's critique opens confidently, "because the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems". It's one thing to say the problems are "political", but there are also basic realities shaping what that means. "Twitter … makes very little interesting technology", he explains, "the tech stack is not the valuable asset".
If we abide the context that "the asset is the user base", we quickly encounter the difference between various political complaints about censorship, silencing, and cancellation, to the one, and the realities of business decisions, to the other, in this case writ large to the tune of forty-four billion dollars.
And it's worth reiterating a point, "that most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces full of shitty racists and not-all-men fedora bullies". It is not so much that the free speech of cacophony somehow overlooks the fact of imposed dysfunction, but, rather, the whole principle seems intended to encourage such outcomes. And a lesson easily observed, over and over and over again, is that the free speech of cacophony is dysfunctional. Consider our own community: While the Administration worries that basic standards of discourse or expectations of good faith will silence some unenumerated political views, the people such notions expect to bear the burdens of abusive behavior will simply stop participating. And, yes, we ought to wonder about the conscience that describes that as freedom.
In our community, such turns feel dramatic because at one point we pretended rational discourse was of some value, and even made silly pronouncements about how the overriding feature of our site is that it has respect for the scientific method, and values evidence over conjecture. If, as it seems, none of that was ever true, what remains true is that the signs were already there; even in pronouncing our respect for scientific method and evidence, the range was limited: If the evidence and result treads into the realm of politics, the site as an entity should avoid looking like it has any official stance. You could always sail an armada through that gap; that's what it was for.
Consider the idea that some arguments are hard to justify rationally. There is a reason this idea is significant; imagine a competition in which one side is bound by certain rules, while the other can do whatever it wants, and everyone in the audience is expected to pretend these are equal circumstance, indeed, the same contiguous circumstance. Eight years ago, the example was abortion, and there isn't really any mystery what it would say if, upon filtering out all the make-believe, misrepresentation, and insupportable presuppositions, there was nothing left for anti-abortion advocates to say. The site wouldn't be taking an official stand on abortion as an issue; but look at the counterpoint, the idea of silencing a political view: There isn't really any mystery about the implication that an issue is invalid if it is falsely founded. Does that mean anti-abortion is somehow verboten? No, it just means a certain range of anti-abortion arguments is no more valid than phrenology or young-Earth creationism, or any other such superstition and fantasy.
Think about the idea of letting people you know are wrong tell you what the discussion is about, that you let them set the terms of discourse. In the specific example of anti-abortion advocacy, the issue is tied into a lot of other stuff similarly based on make-believe and prejudice, so an actual course that appears to reduce the number of abortions taking place in society is unacceptable to those advocates and voters, because it violates other, related prejudicial expectations. The political discussion about abortion does not change, at Sciforums or in society at large, because one faction is allowed to repeat make-believe nonsense and everyone else is supposed to pretend and play along. It's not that a proverbial nobody challenges the make-believe, but that bodies social hold it inappropriate to challenge the make-believe in certain ways. In our own community, rational discourse is one thing, but we don't wish to silence certain political voices by maintaining any expectation of truth, evidence, rational discourse, honesty, or good faith.
And then think about the idea that the result of this, sustaining a vicious politic, is how we avoid looking like we take any official stance. That is, if we don't allow certain political groups to lie, if we don't validate their dishonesty, we're apparently being too political, but aiding and abetting antisocial, deceptive behavior presented in bad faith says nothing about the site's politics. No, really, think it through: If we do not aid and abet certain unethical and supremacist politics, we are being too political; the only way, in that outlook, to not be too political is to deliberately aid and abet particular politics. In the end, the site has taken an official stand by pretending not to. You could always sail an armada through that gap; that's what it was for.
Eight years ago was also a benchmark in our community's erosion of our own basic principles, in this case to attack an argument and not a person; we'd done it before, for anti-"Mexican" bigotry. This time around it had to do with a woman hurting a man's feelings, so naturally the only thing to do was scold the woman according to what were, technically speaking, false pretenses. We had much less to say about the man's conduct, but, like the Mexican-invasion rhetoric, there are downstream iterations of both, the child-corruption accusation and the Mexican invasion rhetoric, writ large in society. Our experience, here, is both exemplary and mundane; it is an example of how easily people might facilitate dangerous false justifications by simply refusing to challenge them. In the one, we eroded the difference between attacking the argument and attacking the person, i.e., to explain why an argument is racist is to accuse the advocate of racism, which in turn is an attack ad hominem that ought to be prohibited. In the other, she attacked the behavior, as such, and functionally speaking, we managed to illustrate the difference between two Spanish-language verbs that both mean, "to be".
Patel suggests "most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces" rife with racism and bullying, and one point that stands out in our virtual experience is that the people who benefit most from our low standards are often the ones who complain about low site traffic.
The internet is rife with examples showing what the free speech of cacophony brings; even the Twitter knockoffs observably make the point. Multiple platforms scrubbed to sanitize against opposition simply failed to satisfy; the rightists who wanted Parler, Gettr, Gab, and Truth Social needed Twitter, as the professor put it, several months ago↗, because they wanted "access to … people they can harass", or, as the attorney turned journalist explained, the racism and harassment "is what makes social media 'fun' for them".
Meanwhile, the first week did not go well for Elon Musk; revenues are plunging and his publicly-announced plans are ridiculous and ridiculously insufficient; the company is hemorrhaging talent, and insiders describe something akin to the Trump administration, often learning of policy changes via Twitter.
It shouldn't cost forty-four billion dollars to learn this lesson, or, worse yet, fail to learn.
____________________
Notes:
Patel, Nilay. "Welcome to hell, Elon". The Verge. 28 October 2022. TheVerge.com. 4 November 2022. https://bit.ly/3DdQPoi
Nilay Patel↱, for The Verge:
You fucked up real good, kiddo.
Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.
Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.
As many users verge into panic over the implications of the Twittish Muskovization of 2022, a.k.a., the Great Twitterpation, certain realities dominate more realistic expectations. Patel's critique opens confidently, "because the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems". It's one thing to say the problems are "political", but there are also basic realities shaping what that means. "Twitter … makes very little interesting technology", he explains, "the tech stack is not the valuable asset".
If we abide the context that "the asset is the user base", we quickly encounter the difference between various political complaints about censorship, silencing, and cancellation, to the one, and the realities of business decisions, to the other, in this case writ large to the tune of forty-four billion dollars.
Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.
Actually, there’s a step before trying to get the ad money: it turns out that most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces full of shitty racists and not-all-men fedora bullies. (This is why Twitter is so small compared to its peers!) What most people want from social media is to have nice experiences and to feel validated all the time. They want to live at Disney World. So if you want more people to join Twitter and actually post tweets, you have to make the experience much, much more pleasant. Which means: moderating more aggressively! Again, every “alternative” social network has learned this lesson the hard way. Like, over and over and over again.
Actually, there’s a step before trying to get the ad money: it turns out that most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces full of shitty racists and not-all-men fedora bullies. (This is why Twitter is so small compared to its peers!) What most people want from social media is to have nice experiences and to feel validated all the time. They want to live at Disney World. So if you want more people to join Twitter and actually post tweets, you have to make the experience much, much more pleasant. Which means: moderating more aggressively! Again, every “alternative” social network has learned this lesson the hard way. Like, over and over and over again.
And it's worth reiterating a point, "that most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces full of shitty racists and not-all-men fedora bullies". It is not so much that the free speech of cacophony somehow overlooks the fact of imposed dysfunction, but, rather, the whole principle seems intended to encourage such outcomes. And a lesson easily observed, over and over and over again, is that the free speech of cacophony is dysfunctional. Consider our own community: While the Administration worries that basic standards of discourse or expectations of good faith will silence some unenumerated political views, the people such notions expect to bear the burdens of abusive behavior will simply stop participating. And, yes, we ought to wonder about the conscience that describes that as freedom.
In our community, such turns feel dramatic because at one point we pretended rational discourse was of some value, and even made silly pronouncements about how the overriding feature of our site is that it has respect for the scientific method, and values evidence over conjecture. If, as it seems, none of that was ever true, what remains true is that the signs were already there; even in pronouncing our respect for scientific method and evidence, the range was limited: If the evidence and result treads into the realm of politics, the site as an entity should avoid looking like it has any official stance. You could always sail an armada through that gap; that's what it was for.
Consider the idea that some arguments are hard to justify rationally. There is a reason this idea is significant; imagine a competition in which one side is bound by certain rules, while the other can do whatever it wants, and everyone in the audience is expected to pretend these are equal circumstance, indeed, the same contiguous circumstance. Eight years ago, the example was abortion, and there isn't really any mystery what it would say if, upon filtering out all the make-believe, misrepresentation, and insupportable presuppositions, there was nothing left for anti-abortion advocates to say. The site wouldn't be taking an official stand on abortion as an issue; but look at the counterpoint, the idea of silencing a political view: There isn't really any mystery about the implication that an issue is invalid if it is falsely founded. Does that mean anti-abortion is somehow verboten? No, it just means a certain range of anti-abortion arguments is no more valid than phrenology or young-Earth creationism, or any other such superstition and fantasy.
Think about the idea of letting people you know are wrong tell you what the discussion is about, that you let them set the terms of discourse. In the specific example of anti-abortion advocacy, the issue is tied into a lot of other stuff similarly based on make-believe and prejudice, so an actual course that appears to reduce the number of abortions taking place in society is unacceptable to those advocates and voters, because it violates other, related prejudicial expectations. The political discussion about abortion does not change, at Sciforums or in society at large, because one faction is allowed to repeat make-believe nonsense and everyone else is supposed to pretend and play along. It's not that a proverbial nobody challenges the make-believe, but that bodies social hold it inappropriate to challenge the make-believe in certain ways. In our own community, rational discourse is one thing, but we don't wish to silence certain political voices by maintaining any expectation of truth, evidence, rational discourse, honesty, or good faith.
And then think about the idea that the result of this, sustaining a vicious politic, is how we avoid looking like we take any official stance. That is, if we don't allow certain political groups to lie, if we don't validate their dishonesty, we're apparently being too political, but aiding and abetting antisocial, deceptive behavior presented in bad faith says nothing about the site's politics. No, really, think it through: If we do not aid and abet certain unethical and supremacist politics, we are being too political; the only way, in that outlook, to not be too political is to deliberately aid and abet particular politics. In the end, the site has taken an official stand by pretending not to. You could always sail an armada through that gap; that's what it was for.
Eight years ago was also a benchmark in our community's erosion of our own basic principles, in this case to attack an argument and not a person; we'd done it before, for anti-"Mexican" bigotry. This time around it had to do with a woman hurting a man's feelings, so naturally the only thing to do was scold the woman according to what were, technically speaking, false pretenses. We had much less to say about the man's conduct, but, like the Mexican-invasion rhetoric, there are downstream iterations of both, the child-corruption accusation and the Mexican invasion rhetoric, writ large in society. Our experience, here, is both exemplary and mundane; it is an example of how easily people might facilitate dangerous false justifications by simply refusing to challenge them. In the one, we eroded the difference between attacking the argument and attacking the person, i.e., to explain why an argument is racist is to accuse the advocate of racism, which in turn is an attack ad hominem that ought to be prohibited. In the other, she attacked the behavior, as such, and functionally speaking, we managed to illustrate the difference between two Spanish-language verbs that both mean, "to be".
Patel suggests "most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces" rife with racism and bullying, and one point that stands out in our virtual experience is that the people who benefit most from our low standards are often the ones who complain about low site traffic.
The internet is rife with examples showing what the free speech of cacophony brings; even the Twitter knockoffs observably make the point. Multiple platforms scrubbed to sanitize against opposition simply failed to satisfy; the rightists who wanted Parler, Gettr, Gab, and Truth Social needed Twitter, as the professor put it, several months ago↗, because they wanted "access to … people they can harass", or, as the attorney turned journalist explained, the racism and harassment "is what makes social media 'fun' for them".
Meanwhile, the first week did not go well for Elon Musk; revenues are plunging and his publicly-announced plans are ridiculous and ridiculously insufficient; the company is hemorrhaging talent, and insiders describe something akin to the Trump administration, often learning of policy changes via Twitter.
It shouldn't cost forty-four billion dollars to learn this lesson, or, worse yet, fail to learn.
____________________
Notes:
Patel, Nilay. "Welcome to hell, Elon". The Verge. 28 October 2022. TheVerge.com. 4 November 2022. https://bit.ly/3DdQPoi
