Twitter: What is it and how to make it better
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has made many people ask, do we really need this? On my feed there has been a slow but steady attrition of users who are either leaving the platform or threatening to leave the platform. That’s no small move considering Twitter’s utility in growing an audience, a business and awareness for social causes. The whole thing has made me wonder, what is Twitter, really?
The Hive Mind
Twitter has often been referred to as a hive mind. A large superintelligence composed of smaller parts all unaware or only partly aware of the larger whole. In other words, multiple discrete parts working somewhat in tandem without awareness of doing so, much like a beehive.
There are other examples of this in humanity. The most famous is probably just market capitalism. Clearly, not a force for good nor exclusively for bad but a force that works in the service of growing capital. The hive mind cannot see the consequences of its actions because it sees only the microconsequences of individual actions. Maybe a super structure, or an outside observer may be able to predict the consequences, but by the time a participant does, it’s too late.
Is that what Twitter is though?
Unlike a beehive, Twitter has no formal purpose, no coherence. It is a room in which people scream out their thoughts and hope that other people notice them and respond. At the very best, it’s a low IQ hive mind bumbling about trying to find its purpose in life. That hit a little too close to home. It might be a bastion of free speech, many (?most) people would disagree with that. At one point Dorsey wanted it to be a force for positive change in the world, many people would disagree with that. Is its purpose simply to be a place for people to communicate? Maybe, but that’s what they do not what they achieve. In my view, there is no overt overarching goal….yet.
Considering the purpose of a hive mind is a good way to think about the most important aspect of Twitter, at least for its owners.
The Value of Twitter
There are three levels of value to Twitter: the micro, the meso and the macro.
The micro level is the value to the individual user. An individual can use Twitter to grow their audience, disseminate their ideas, and advance their career. For the most part, this confers little value to the whole but in exceptional circumstance could meaningfully affect overall opinion if the person has an extremely large following.
The meso level is interesting. This is the level at which disinformation, social mobilization, trending occurs. A certain group of people, somewhat consequential to the whole, act in tandem either knowingly or not, posting in the same vector. For example, a nucleus of people starts posting that the election was rigged and suddenly that message gains momentum and reaches a critical mass — goes viral. Suddenly a sizeable group is being influenced, contributing, responding to the same message. At this level, the message can have real world effects and spill out into the wider public consciousness. The meso level is the level at which countries operate, bot farms operate, advertising money is spent, where any movement that wants to be of consequence has to operate. For the general public, it is the most valuable and consequential level.
The macro level is where the highest value is — but no one has figured out how to extract that value, at least not publicly. On the macro level, I would imagine Twitter has massive value in its data pool. The aggregate of all that information may be used to predict trends, gauge opinions, even foresee the news. Like with any data analysis though, garbage in equals garbage out. There has to be a very large sample size, the more data available the better, and it needs to be measured and analyzed over time. The value of that is essentially priceless — and by all accounts Twitter, and Elon, are in need of cash.
The other value on the macro level comes from influence. Our lives, as everyone now understands, are largely influenced by Big Tech’s algorithms. It sounds potentially sinister but we should not ignore the fact that Twitter (and every other social media platform) has the power to shape world views on a very large, meaningful scale. People, and organizations, would pay huge sums to have that kind of power. Elon did.
How Important is It?
How much does Twitter positively impact the real world? That’s what counts when thinking about the necessity of Twitter, are we better off with it than without it?
That’s obviously hard to measure. Much like any form of communication, it’s neither good nor bad but just a reflection of us. There might be an argument to be made that tech algorithms make us worse people and play to our basest instincts.
On balance it’s hard to say how important Twitter is to our society and our future. Dissatisfaction with Twitter has pushed people to create other platforms that perform the same function but I would argue that that only bolsters the case for a digital public square. It shows that people find irreplaceable (for now) value in it.
That being said, Twitter’s different value streams detailed above run counter to one another. For Twitter to be a legitimate news source, what it provides needs to be trustworthy and delivered in good faith. For Twitter’s date to be valuable to a potential miner, it needs to be reliable and true. It’s no secret that people and countries are shitty and spread disinformation either intentionally or not and benefit from that model. Can a large hierarchical corporation that is teeming with a variety of good and bad actors subject to the vicissitudes of humanity truly have a straightforward value?
Necessary or not Twitter, or a Twitter-like platform, is likely here to stay. Strategies need to be adopted to make it ‘the most good’ or at the very least ‘the minimum bad’.
How to make it better
- The algorithms should be transparent.
There should be no doubt as to how the platform is parsing information and presenting it to you. We should be aware of the way in which we’re being manipulated. Manipulation is inevitable unless people want to wade through reams of data to find what they’re looking for. Transparent algorithms allow an individual to be aware of the bias and to counteract it by following accounts that don’t conform to what the algorithm perceives.
2. Decision making should serve the public interest
Fears of advertising bias or bias towards a certain political party are certainly well founded. At the very least, the Twitter files have exposed an uncomfortable coziness between Big Tech and the government. Twitter, and perhaps other social media companies, need an ethical charter that addresses its relationship with users, advertisers and society at large. That type of document could at least be standard against which the actions of the company, and its leadership, can be measured. Potentially a document that has legal weight would be useful.
3. Revenue Model
Twitter’s revenue model needs to be transparent. It’s difficult to advocate for radical unrestricted speech and also be beholden to advertisers who understandably don’t want their products to be associated with certain ideas. Twitter will need to get creative with the way it makes money if it’s going to do both and if it’s not, it needs to be transparent about how it is adjusting its algorithms (os suspensions) based on how it gets its money.
There might be an argument to be made about how Twitter should be a public utility but then one has to ask which public? In an age of multinational corporations and in a context where Twitter has played pivotal roles in a variety of countries on multiple continents , how will making Twitter an American public utility affect the rest? It would be much better for the company and for the public were Twitter to strive for better itself than to force it under the auspices of any one government.
I myself enjoy Twitter and the way it brings people closer together, it would be a shame for it to turn into a wholly compromised platform. These three suggestions certainly aren’t all it would take to improve a complex machine but I think they are a start.
