Former MoJo colleague Ben Dreyfuss writes about Twitter:
The proliferation of super large accounts is quietly the biggest problem on this site. Everyone is one retweet away from being seen out of context by millions of people with a completely different timeline.
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) February 8, 2021
Are super large accounts the biggest problem with Twitter? I don't know that I'd go that far. But Ben is right that it's a big problem.
Here's why. All of us on Twitter follow a different set of accounts. That means each of us is responding to a different version of reality when we tweet something. I read my timeline and may feel that it represents "what Twitter is thinking," but all it really represents is what the people I follow are thinking. Anything I tweet has to be understood in that context.
But if my post is retweeted by a big account to a couple million people with an entirely different view of reality, then I can be in big trouble. The real issue might be that Mr. Big and I just have a slightly different view of what's really happening out in the world, which is fairly trivial. But this won't even occur to Big's followers. They'll just immediately pile on, with consequences that are hard to predict.
In a sense, this is nothing more than another example of the fact that we're all increasingly trapped in little news bubbles of our own making. We have such different views of the world that it's all but impossible to agree on even a basic set of facts to start from. And often we don't even really know it.
If you don't want to be trapped in a little news bubble of your own making probably you should rely on real news outlets who hire professional journalists who are at least supposed to be objective and fact-based, rather than a bunch of idiots spouting on Twitter.
I exclude Fox and other wingnut channels from real news, and also some of the programs in the other networks which are more punditry than news.
I solve that problem by not using Twitter. I mean really. Can you imagine a system better designed for enforced superficiality?
First time I remember hearing about twitter was the denizens of a music webboard I frequented c. 2007 using it as an alternative to foursquare schedule rendezvous at SXSW's that year.
That was when twitter was still a miceiblogger.
As it became the successor to blogspot & livejournal & xanga, & proved less susceptible to rightwing agitation (it helps that dorsey, while authoritarian, is much more chill in his fascism than zuckerberg) than facebook, though, twitter became as much a longish form outpost as zuck's place.
The first time I heard about Twitter I said “Why would anyone want that, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.” I even remember where I was at the time. To be honest, I still don’t get it.
In my defense, during the early 70’s I thought it would be a good idea to ditch the speaker on transistor radios, put in a tape player so you could only listen with headphones and give it good sound.
But that doesn't really solve the problem. Because this is a problem that exists and Twitter is only a part of it.
The precipitating event could be something you post on Facebook or Instagram or any number of social media outlets. It could be a video you post on YouTube or a post you make on your blog.
Heck, it doesn't even have to be something you do online. It could be something that happened to you out in the big blue room that someone happens to catch part of on their phone.
Any one of us could be unexpectedly touched by the fickle hand of virality and find our lives turned upside down before we knew it.
Or even something, say, said on the street or broadcast on a tv show.
I use Twitter to keep up with certain interests - all of which are nonpolitical. And I hardly ever engage or retweet. Used like that, its an excellent service. But it can still get ugly fast in unexpected ways if you read replies (e.g. crazy vitriol over recipes and episodes of The Office).
@UltraWeedHater did nothing wrong.
Twitter for me is where I go to keep up with medieval history, mathematics, economics, fantasy novels and so forth. It's a much nicer place than the one I see described by those who follow politics and celebrities.
Yeah, it works well when it works.
We shouldn't worry about tweetstorms. They are meaningless. They have the power we give them. In fact, I think that I remember some blogger saying that 10k tweets (or some other large number) are the equivalent of one letter to the editor of medium cized city newspaper.