Twitter’s twilight?

Twitter seems to be lurching from one public relations disaster to another, but growing tired of shooting itself in the foot, it now seems to be aiming squarely at its own head. The service may now be in terminal decline.

Twitter used to be my favourite social media service, something I frequently mentioned here on this blog. There used to be all sorts of interesting conversations, along with silliness and even useful information. It was, in other words, varied and even eclectic, but positive overall. Those days are over.

I don’t know when Twitter started turning into the toxic sewer it’s become, but I really noticed it in the run up to the 2016 US elections when there were so many people being so horrible—or, so it seemed. It turned out that the toxicity was coming from Russian government trolls and bots trying to sow hatred and division to make it easier to elect the Russian government’s chosen candidate, the Republican nominee who ended up becoming president.

Even after we learned about the extent of the Russian interference, Twitter didn’t change. Like a well that’s been poisoned, it was very difficult, even impossible, to make Twitter safe again. It’s never recovered, and the anger, bitterness, and aggression, from the Right and the Left alike—has continued apace.

To be sure, Twitter had problems long before 2016, and people were horrible to other people before then, too. In 2014, for example, Green Party supporters in that year’s New Zealand elections were horrible to Labour Party supporters, who all too often returned the favour. And Twitter constantly resisted any and all efforts to get them to take responsibility for harassment and bullying carried out on their platform, and, more recently, their slowness to deal with hate speech.

But now their downfall may be coming because of something that is both surprising and not at the same time: Twitter’s staunch refusal to ban the insane conspiracy freak who was booted off of Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and even Disqus (the commenting service I use for this blog). This is surprising because, to be blunt, that guy ain’t worth it. It’s not surprising, however, given Twitter’s laziness about dealing with hate speech and also harassment: The lunatic has been victimising the parents of the children murdered at Sandy Hook, but that’s apparently acceptable to Twitter.

The other reason that Twitter defends the lunatic is that they have been the constant target of rightwing activists who moan and complain, as the always do, and claim they’re “victims”, as they always do, because, as they always claim, they’re being “discriminated against” because they’re conservative. Yawn.

In response, particularly in the wake of the rightwing’s latest rage over imaginary demons, the fake “Twitter ban” controversy, Twitter is reportedly mounting a “charm offensive” to win over rightwing opinion leaders. They can’t woo rightwingers and ban the lunatic at the same time.

What is a good and decent person to do? Activist Shannon Coulter came up with a creative response: A mass blocking of all Fortune 500 corporations active on Twitter—in other words, reduce Twitter’s ad revenue:

Good morning! To encourage Twitter to drop Alex Jones, I just blocked the Twitter accounts of every Fortune 500 company w/ a Twitter presence. Ready to mass block Twitter's most lucrative advertisers with me? There are three quick & easy ways. Instructions are in this thread.

— Shannon Coulter (@shannoncoulter) August 12, 2018

The way it works is that Twitter users subscribe to Shannon’s list of accounts, all of which are blocked. Then, if Twitter bans the lunatic, all the account will be automatically unblocked. Simple. But I have a feeling this is the last stand before mainstream Twitter users start leaving the service.

The problem here is that if Twitter abruptly reverses itself and bans the lunatic, the Right will explode in fury, as they always do, and even those who despise the antics of the lunatic will nevertheless express outrage and declare that Twitter has “proven” their pet conspiracy theory, namely, that Twitter “hates” conservatives. Yawn.

On the other hand, if they don’t act, mainstream users—and especially anyone even slightly Left of Centre—will conclude that Twitter values rightwingers—even lunatic rightwingers—more than mainstream people. They’ll vote with their keyboarding fingers and leave the service.

So, no matter what they do, Twitter will lose users and the ad revenue those lost users represent. If they don’t ban the lunatic, they’ll be seen as having no integrity and/or courage. If they do, they’ll be accused of—well, lots of stuff, most of it unhinged, as always. This has the makings of a death spiral for Twitter.

Facebook, meanwhile, is facing its own share of harsh criticism. The main thing saving them is that they’re not AS bad as Twitter, but they’re also slow and reluctant about dealing with problems, so they could get themselves into similar problems—IF there is a replacement for Facebook. The lack of an alternative is probably the main thing that’s saving them at the moment.

For the first time since the social media age began, it’s possible to imagine it ending. People like the social interaction with friends, and if a service came along that figured out how to cater for that without repeating the mistakes of Twitter and Facebook, it could become the next king. Or, people might just move on. If that seems impossible, then just think back to the time before social media: We managed then, so we can manage again. Maybe.