Twitter is Not the Real World. And the Real World is Not Twitter.
Is Twitter a societal disruptor, or is it simply an innocent bystander holding a mirror to the world and showcasing the latent incompetence and ugliness inherent in our society?
In the wake of the George Floyd murder in May 2020 and the numerous local protests and curfews that followed, I felt I needed to stay informed about the many real-time updates and alerts that I otherwise wouldn’t get through traditional news reports. And for that specific purpose, I found Twitter to be a platform that could be of great use to me.
When I created my Twitter account, I followed only a handful of people, mainly because I didn’t want to go down the endless Twitter rabbit hole. What I expected to be a simple way for me to keep up to date on immediate local affairs had spiraled into a first-hand account about the horror that is the Twittersphere.
From incessant cancel campaigns by anonymous arbiters of right and wrong; to misinformation, conspiracy theories, and outright lies about worldwide events; to endless debates and arguments born out of misunderstandings and guided by bitter one-upmanship, these never-ending battles somehow made their way into my Twitter feed. I felt like a kid watching his family from afar rapidly descending into a drunken Thanksgiving dinner massacre over petty differences.
Even though I steered clear of this nonsense, it always greeted me whenever I would log onto Twitter. Of course, I was partially to blame as I bit from now and then – how could anyone not? But I found my attempts to escape the negativity futile. What was worse – and rather worrisome to me – was when this relentless acrimony frequently trended as the main discussion topics on Twitter and appeared in my feed.
Keyboard warrior, troll, bot, NPC, sheep – these are just some of the many labels and insults users throw at each other when engaged in heated debates on Twitter. When quippy tweets take the place of cogent discourse, when rampant online bullying descends into personal and large-scale online wars, and when anonymous users converge into a collective beehive mentality engaged in digital intimidation, the world bears witness to grown adults acting like petulant children.
The nuance expected from any calm and coherent discussion becomes lost on Twitter. Unless you can clearly convey the point you’re trying to make in a tweet of 280 characters or less, you’re in for a treat when it comes to the visceral reaction you will get from fellow users. Considering a simple grammatical error, a perceived shift in tone, improper usage of prose, or the inability to account for the lack of reading comprehension skills of others, your reputation, livelihood, and, in some cases, future will hinge on how you respond with a tweet. The same fate awaits if you chose not to respond with a tweet. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
This was Twitter, the popular social network I always heard about. I couldn’t believe it. What a putrid mess.
After spending a few months on the platform, I came to the stark realization that Twitter was nothing more and nothing less than a digitized high school quad, complete with in-jokes, rampant rumors, relentless bullying, countless cliques, and “popular” people. And like high school, once you’re off-campus, you realize just how insulated and detached that quad truly is from the rest of the world.
For many people, especially those comforted by the veil of anonymity that social networks offer, Twitter is the only reality they feel comfortable being a part of and participating in. However, Twitter is not the real world. And the real world is not Twitter. Is Twitter a problem, or is it simply an innocent bystander holding a mirror to the world and showcasing the latent incompetence and ugliness inherent in our society?
With the prevalence of misinformation on Twitter, all nuance, context, and accuracy are lost and replaced with binary choices –to like, or not to like; to share, or not to share; to follow, or not to follow; to tweet, or not to tweet. What started as a promising social network has descended into a detriment to society. Or has it?
Twitter realizes its reputation is at stake and has become increasingly proactive in cleaning up the rampant pollution on the platform. Now, more than ever, it becomes crucial for Twitter users to understand that even though they are a part of a social network ripe with controversy, they too can combat that controversy without becoming victimized by it or aid in perpetuating it.
Launched in July 2006, Twitter is a microblogging social network that allows users to post real-time messages globally. From friends and family to celebrities and world leaders, everyone can play in Twitter’s sandbox as long as they abide by their rules. Unfortunately, however, many continually subvert these rules and exploit the popular social network for nefarious means, leading to bitter discord that overflows into the real world.
In her 2020 study, Mary Blankenship analyzed the dense fog of “information pollution” and how various forms of misinformation spread on social media, specifically Twitter. The spread of misinformation in the digital age has caused great concern for many who see it as one of the greatest existential threats afflicting the 21st century. For example, the spread of misinformation was one reason why President Donald J. Trump was suspended and later banned from Twitter – a platform the former president frequently used to engage with the public and peddle disinformation – following his alleged role in instigating the January 6th United States Capitol attack.
When misinformation – the sharing of false information without the intent to harm – and malinformation – the sharing of legitimate information with the intent to harm – converge, disinformation – the sharing of false information with the intent to harm – is created. These three types of information disorder can circulate via multiple methods like audio, textual, or visual means, all of which are privy to social media networks and a key component of millions of daily tweets.
As outlined in an analysis by the Council of Europe, information disorder can be further contextualized. Researcher Claire Wardle broke down the seven types of misinformation and disinformation that dominate and spread through social networks. Ranging from harmless satire to deceitful manipulation, the gamut of Wardle’s seven types of mis- and disinformation is revelatory of who creates the content and for what purposes the content is spread.
By hoping to capitalize on an apathetic audience, the presentation and dissemination of block-letter memes, edited video clips and documents, along with other forms of manipulative media often without context or source, have become the norm on social media. Such deliberate mis- and disinformation campaigns have used Twitter, exploited its users, and have led to real-world consequences.
The legitimacy of Twitter and its perceived societal impact has come under increased scrutiny as many have grown weary of the platform’s insular environment. Twitter use in the U.S. has plateaued since 2016, with the latest figures showing no significant change. Only 46% of Twitter’s users visit the site daily, spending an average of 3 minutes and 36 seconds on the platform. Despite this lack of engagement, Twitter is expected to grow worldwide from a current estimate of 322.4 million users to 340.2 million by 2024. But these numbers are hardly anything significant.
It will be interesting to see how many of these new Twitter accounts will be bots that manage to make their way past Twitter’s safeguards. An extensive 2017 study of English-language tweets found that two-thirds of links to popular websites didn’t come from humans on Twitter but came from automated bots. The following year, Twitter found that 21% of their 336 million active users were associated with bots. As a result, Twitter took the drastic step and deleted all 70 million bot accounts and continues to be vigilant against the infiltration of bots onto the platform.
Recent findings from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland show that many Twitter trends were the direct result of bots. Known as Astroturfing, these bots exploit a flaw in Twitter’s algorithm and create fake trends associated with many information disorder campaigns and other schemes.
But rather than using bots as an excuse for allowing many to become the victim of information pollution, Twitter users must realize that they too are a vital component of the disorder on the platform.
Twitter has become a megaphone for the loudest voices in the room that often guide the discourse. It’s this loud minority that drowns out the disengaged and silent majority. The latest research on Twitter use in the U.S. exposes this subterfuge and reveals that only 10% of Twitter users are responsible for 92% of all tweets. Whereas the average Twitter user posts only twice a month, those in the top 10% tweet 4-5 times a day, amounting to 138 tweets a month.
Twitter might be popular, but it is hardly a representation of the broader population. The majority of Twitter users are millennials, left-leaning, highly educated, and have higher incomes than the overall population. The never-ending 24/7 news cycle makes Twitter the go-to platform for instant updates for news and is the main reason why many use Twitter; I should know because this was why I opened a Twitter account in the first place.
But one only needs to scroll down to the comments of their newsfeed to find themselves instantly transported into the pit of Twitter Hell. Civility becomes an afterthought thanks to the digital divide that allows anonymous users to become more forthright and polemic than they usually would when face to face with a real person.
Everyone has a point to make and has something to say, right or wrong, no matter how glib, the discord becoming never-ending. No matter how innocent or despicable the tweet, a narcissistic mentality pervades those who often co-opt the discussion for their own purposes. On Twitter, the “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality is often at the root of bitter online disputes, a mentality that has seeped into the mainstream.
Written as part of his “London Letters” featured in the literary magazine Partisan Review in 1945, George Orwell opined: “The most intelligent people seem capable of holding schizophrenic beliefs, or disregarding plain facts, of evading serious questions with debating-society repartees, or swallowing baseless rumours and of looking on indifferently while history is falsified. [ . . . ] I believe that it is possible to be more objective than most of us are, but that it involves a moral effort. One cannot get away from one’s own subjective feelings, but at least one can know what they are and make allowance for them.”
Leave it to Orwell to deliver a prescient sermon on political thought delusions that serve as a parable for the modern digital age. This is what has made Twitter, and social media as a whole, a breeding ground for information pollution. The responsibility of defeating information pollution was put wholly in the hands of the individual user by many tech companies.
However, facts are not objective but are inherent. This is a fundamental aspect of civil society that many refuse to acknowledge when lost in the tenacious and combative atmosphere of Twitter. It might require a declaration of stubbornness that many are not willing to make, but the key to solving the human issues afflicting Twitter just might lie in simple disengagement from the unsavory elements that perpetuate the platform. Twitter already provides many personalized methods users can implement to lessen the unpleasantries of the Twittersphere. The responsibility is on the user if they choose to use these freely available tools.
Recent years have seen Twitter crackdown on false and misleading content. Twitter started putting advisories on content and deleted millions of accounts associated with bots. Despite the purge of bot accounts, bots continue to infiltrate the platform and are the primary driver of misinformation on Twitter and a key component in the rampant online hostility that has come to define Twitter.
After the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, Twitter made efforts to save face and prevent their platform from turning into a cesspool of information pollution that gives rise to such atrocities. As a result, the social network is in the midst of creating new rules of conduct regarding the spread of false information.
Will any of this make Twitter a more hospitable environment? Possibly. Even though Twitter is doing its part to combat information pollution and make the platform less polemic, many feel their actions are too little, too late. In some cases, many feel Twitter’s actions are a severe overreach.
Alternatives to Twitter, like Parler, have been created as a pushback to these policies. But like Twitter, Parler is an echo chamber unto itself and is prone to the same issues that have derailed Twitter’s reputation over the years. The lax rules regulating content on Parler caused many to distance themselves from the social network after it was deplatformed following possible links to users who took part in the Capitol attack. Parler has since been reinstated on Apple’s App Store but is still banned from the Google Play Store.
Despite competitors, Twitter remains the most popular and influential micro-blogging social network in the world and shows no signs of being supplanted by competitors.
Given the glut of unnecessary drama that has come to be associated with the platform, it might be tempting just to cancel one’s Twitter account altogether and allow the platform to wither away into a relic of the digital age. However, Twitter is not beyond saving, and the motivations for using the social network are just as diverse as its user base.
Twitter has given users a digital commons to engage in direct conversations with one another. Twitter has allowed businesses both big and small to promote their endeavors and have immediate relations with consumers. Twitter has given another avenue for policymakers to engage with their constituents. And although the spread of “fake news” has become pervasive on Twitter, thanks to bots and bad actors, the platform has allowed the public to be engaged in current events and has played a significant role in academia by allowing cross-disciplinary discovery of knowledge in real-time.
Historically, Twitter has been a platform that has accomplished a lot of good. By liking and sharing tweets to trending hashtags, Twitter has been used to spread awareness and mobilize local and global support for various issues, causes, and movements. The platform was instrumental in the Arab Spring of 2011 in what many have dubbed the “Twitter Revolution.” Recent campaigns like #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and #StopAsianHate have raised awareness about many pressing societal concerns and have led to actual reforms. Hashtags have now become a key driver of trending topics not just on Twitter, but all social media. Despite its contradictions, Twitter remains a powerful tool for galvanizing support for worthwhile causes.
Despite its contradictions, Twitter has historically been a platform that has accomplished a lot of good by spreading awareness and mobilizing local and global support for various issues, causes, and movements. Photos by Viktoria Slowikowska from Pexels, Thomas de LUZE on Unsplash, Jason Leung on Unsplash.
The crux of a debate is not to change a person’s mind but make them understand yours. In doing so, that person just might consider things differently and empathize with your point of view and, just maybe, adjust their views as a result. This intrinsic undercurrent in a debate is missing when locked into a faceless battle with those online. It doesn’t help when an overload of information disorder pollutes these debates and the overall online experience. Twitter doesn’t always have to be combative, despite the platform becoming synonymous with the vitriol that defines our current social media age.
Twitter has become a two-way street. To keep the platform a hospitable social network, a concerted effort must be made between Twitter understanding its societal impact and influence and its users understanding that the fluctuating pulse of the zeitgeist Twitter measures is oftentimes segregated from the real world. If successful, this mutual relationship can not only restore Twitter’s legitimacy as a social network but ease the societal fractioning that has resulted because of it. Twitter is starting to do its part. What remains to be seen is if users will do theirs and graduate from the isolated comforts of the high school quad that Twitter currently is.
Oh, and if you haven’t already, please follow @willbetold on Twitter! No fake news or bots there. I promise.
