Twitter and its problems with human nature
Earlier this week I asked why Twitter was having such a hard time making money and finding a buyer. And during the week, it has become crystal clear that one of the reasons is undoubtedly that the social network has become associated in many people’s minds with bullying, trolling and hate speech, which is turning more and more users away, and preventing others from giving it a try.
Let’s be clear about the problem: this is something that has been happening on a daily basis for many years now, and to which the company has proved unwilling to take serious action to curb. Twitter cites freedom of expression, while forgetting that in the vast majority of cases it is a tiny minority who is actually silencing the majority’s right to express themselves.
Our societies have not developed rules of behavior for no reason. Rules and protocols, good manners and respect are there to make human coexistence possible. When a social network allows users to break these rules, it’s pretty obvious what is going to happen: human nature prevails, people enjoy playing the troll, to use an acceptable term, insulting and and harassing while others stand around and cheer them on. Twitter’s long-standing refusal to act against these people by expelling them or taking other action has led it to its current problems, whereby a company is prepared to pay many billions of dollars, but then pulls out because being associated with Twitter could damage its reputation.
After several years of hiding from its responsibility and doing nothing about it, the insulted, the publicly humiliated and harassed now number in the millions, from women subjected to mind-bogglingly sexist and savagely inhuman insults, as well as people attacked for the color of their skin, their religion or their beliefs, to bullfighters, artists of all kinds, and many, many anonymous people who simply had the misfortune to come into contact with somebody out to ruin their day.
The outcome is that if you want to use Twitter you need to keep a low profile and only follow people or media who might say something of specific interest to you, and making clear that your retweets do not imply support in case you annoy somebody, and share very few things in case some wise guy decides to have a go. And let’s not forget that it’s the wise guys who tend to attract followers. Sadly, Twitter is proof that nice guys come last.
I think by now we all know that human nature isn’t going to change any time soon, which means the only solution for Twitter is create rules and scrupulously enforce them: it’s called community management. Trolls and harassment are not Twitter’s only problems: there are useless bots (needless to say, not all bots are useless), spam and many others. But if Twitter is to have a future, alone or managed by a third party, it has two options: fix this problem or fix this problem. Enough said.
(En español, aquí)
