The Great Twitter Freakout of 2022

 I do not have a Twitter account.  I do not use Twitter in any way.  I cannot contain myself to so few characters, pompous windbag that I am, nor do I care what non-windbags have to say in their attempts at pithiness.  Twitter makes even less sense to me than FaceBook.  Of course, as a general rule, my understanding and lack thereof run approximately 180 degrees from most other people, which probably explains the rise of social media, while I shout into the void on a platform that is as user un-friendly as possible, merely for the joy of writing while drinking my morning coffee.  Sumatra-blend this morning, in case the zero people reading this morning cared.  Point being, I don't get Twitter, never did, and never will.

Some social media platforms have distinct, measurable harms.  By now, you have perhaps seen the data showing the increases in anxiety and depression among teenage girls associated with Instagram.

Twitter?  Twitter is something else.

As a general, observable phenomenon, social media allow conspiracy theories and lies to spread faster than they could in the pre-internet days.  Whether Twitter, FaceBook or some burgeoning new thing would do that more insidiously is difficult to say.  There is, after all, 4Chan.  We can then debate whether or not social media should attempt content moderation for factuality, with the challenge being that a story may initially look like conspiracy theory/Russian disinformation and then turn out to be valid.

The current example is the "Hunter Biden laptop."  The story of the President's son's computer initially looked sketchy, and was declared Russian disinformation, banned from social media platforms and the press.  Then it turned out the thing was real.  Politically meaningless, in my opinion, as I do not give a rat's fucking ass about Hunter Biden.  But the laptop is real.

This is an example of a low-stakes story in which content moderation got it wrong, but imagine getting it wrong about something that mattered.  Something real.  Something important.

Yet the more contentious aspect of content moderation on Twitter has been the suspension/permanent banning of accounts for misgendering people and other related actions.  One may note that the Iranian government, the Taliban, the Chinese government, and some other pretty horrific groups have not had their Twitter accounts banned.  Genocide against the Uighurs?  No problem.  Misgender someone?  Perma-ban.

Lift the bans on the misgender-ers?  Freakout.  Do any of the out-freak-ers pay attention to the fact that those committing genocide against the Uighurs have been on Twitter all along?

Of course not.

Which is why those of my hook-nosed, banker persuasion should never fucking trust these people.  Genocide is kind of a big deal to me.

You wanna know what it actually looks like when someone erases your existence?  Ask the Uighurs.  While you still can.

This is not a justification for being an asshole to someone online or elsewhere.  General rule in life:  don't be an asshole.  I am merely pointing out why some of those banned by Twitter have found the policies to be, shall we say, inconsistent and out of balance.  Which, granted, sounds worse when coming from the assholes who went out of their way to violate terms of service by being assholes for the sake of assholery in the grand quest of humanity to seek newer and deeper levels of the digestive tract, but still.

Genocide kinda wins.  No, that's not "what about-ism."  It is pointing out policy inconsistency.

But if it were what-about, you'd lose, because genocide.

I do not use mind-altering substances.  Caffeine doesn't count, fuck you.

But Elon Musk does.  He smoked a metric fuckton of pot, and whatever crazy shit you bought on eBay while tripping balls, he bought something crazier and more expensive.

Twitter.  He bought a tech company.  An especially annoying one.

He tried to call backsies, but it didn't work, so now he's having fun with it.  Cue The Great Twitter Freakout of 2022.

He fired a bunch of people, let some reprehensible shitbags back onto the platform, and lefties are protesting by leaving for some fuckin' thing named after a heavy metal band.

So what?  People freak out about a lot of shit.  Sometimes, the freakouts are justified.  Many times, not.

Consider.

What is the most damaging aspect of Twitter?  It permits the spread of lies and conspiracy theories.  Well, yes, but were they doing anything before to stop that?  No.  In which case, will Musk's changes do anything?  Not that I can see.

He let the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie back onto the platform.  Yup, that'd be Donald Trump.  In various contexts, you may have encountered the claim that Twitter allowed him to become president.  This is a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc.  Trump used Twitter, mainly because he has never had a thought more complex than 140 characters, and then he won.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc, he won because he used Twitter.  Did you catch the fallacy?  I hope so.  Would he have won had his preferred method of communication been some other platform?  I think so.  After all, his primary appeal to those who worship him was the vitriol in his speeches and rallies, and he was losing until Comey, so... I call bullshit.  He did not win because of Twitter.

At the system level, we might see problems because of the rapidity with which lies and conspiracy theories spread across the platform, but it is difficult to attribute Trump or Greene or the other wackos to their use of Twitter.

Rather, Twitter is as much a symptom as a problem, and many of the trends we are observing are trends about which commentators bemoaned prior to social media.

Then there is the terms-of-service issue.  As a policy matter, Twitter would have been on firmer ground if they were consistent about this, but as a private company, they were legally allowed to deny service to those they wished.  (Notice my derisive italicization.)  Even in terms of assholery, they would be on firmer ground if they followed a consistent no-assholes rule, but that, too, would be difficult to enforce.

This creates a sort of n-word problem.  When you hear someone hurl the n-word in anger, that's an easy call.  Racism, bu-bye.  However, when you define a rule only around the easy calls, will you catch all racism?

No.

Much less will you catch all the douchebaggery.

Moreover, you can create a lot of asymmetries with only easy-call rules.

Is there any evidence that social media have increased various bigotries?  Zero.  There is zero evidence that racism is on the rise.  LGBTQ acceptance is on the rise, all of this is happening with the social media era... just... no.  Bullshit.

So as Musk lets everyone back on Twitter, what should anyone expect?

Those of us who have never used Twitter will occasionally be subjected to a few more of those, "OMG, can you believe what Trump tweeted now?!" freakouts, and the answer will be, yes, I can believe that he tweeted it because he's Trump.  The lies and conspiracy theories never went away.

And if you don't want to interact with douchebags, why are you on Twitter?

I missed jazz yesterday.  Charles Mingus, "Bird Calls," from Mingus Ah Um.  Don't ask me to pick Mingus's best album.  If I had to make a choice, though, it would be between this one and Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.