26th April 2022
There is a standing joke among social historians that the middle class is always rising, and the gentry always declining, in whatever period of history you are looking at.
Similarly, social media seems always to have been in decline – even though it is, historically speaking, a recent innovation.
There will be people reading and commenting on this blogpost who were adults before Facebook and other social media platforms were even heard of – or even before the invention of the WWW in 1989.
(The WWW appears to have been first proposed just before my eighteenth birthday – so ahem: never such innocence again.)
Perhaps some parts of social media are improving, and some parts declining, and some parts are just the same.
But there is a moment where things do seem to reach a turning-point, even if only for individuals.
The recent news about the intended purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk seems like a good turning-point – although it is not yet completed.
Before this news, you could kid yourself that you were on a social platform that was still maintained by those who created it.
That made it seem different – at least to me.
But the prospect of providing free content for the benefit of reportedly the world’s richest person seems an odd thing to do.
I will keep my Twitter account, with its following of just under 250,000 – as it would be foolish to abandon it as I continue to develop my career as a writer.
But I suspect I will only now use it as a ‘broadcast’ medium, to promote my stuff here and elsewhere (and reply to other tweets when apt).
And it must be said Twitter can be a vile and annoying place – and it is difficult to see how that can ever end.
Just as our species was always violent – it just gained the capacity through technology to be lethal on an industrial scale not available to other animals – our species is also not very pleasant in its use of communications and media.
It is just that we now can all be unpleasant to strangers on a massive scale.
Some think regulation is the answer – but it is hard to see how regulation can change or buck human nature, and pre-moderation and verification for all is not likely or credible for any large platform.
Social media cannot be uninvented.
But people’s habits can change, and it may be that Twitter and other social media will be left to those either broadcasting or bickering, or hiding in private walled gardens.
So thank you for following me here on this blog, where I will post every week day.
I am also going to start doing a podcast from time-to-time.
We can keep up a polite and constructive conversation about law and policy here, even if nowhere else.
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Realistically I don’t think much will change. Twitter will be owned by one rich person instead of a group of slightly less rich people, and in terms of content not much will change because the current (de iure and de facto) content moderation policies are already the result of many outside constraints, including notably various countries’ content moderation laws. As in other areas, we will quickly realise that Elon Musk is better at marketing than at actually accomplishing real change. (And that assumes that his desire for a real change in Twitter is genuine rather than marketing.)
Podcast?
Where? When?
You missed when David mentioned it on Twitter :) ?
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, too. For the most part, I value Twitter – It’s great if you want to keep abreast of news developments, a good source of humour, and a great way to broadcast important things, by which I don’t mean how I’m feeling on any particular day, but rather to help trace missing people, etc. My life has been enriched by it, not least through ‘discovering’ people like David A-G, and others, whose viewpoints, writings, or visual content have opened my eyes and my mind.
So, when Musk started sniffing round the site, I was apprehensive. I remain apprehensive because we don’t yet know how this will pan out. I’m not sure I need, or am ready for, a new pair of shoes.
I hope he won’t change much, but I have decided on a strategy that I hope will help me to keep with it. It will involve only following users that I value – especially news sites – and being even more cautious than I already am about who I follow. And I’ll probably be using the mute button more frequently.
In other words, I suspect that each Twitter user will learn to curate their timelines more effectively than many of us already do.
[Incidentally, I joined mid 2007, and still only follow around 400 people and am followed by just over 800. That’s fine. Quality has always beat quantity for me!]
David,
You could move to Mastodon. Many who follow you on Twitter will follow you, literally. Doesn’t need to be a clean break.
Steve Peers and many other followers have moved already. It’s federated, like email, and will never be controlled by any billionaire.
https://twitter.com/SamuelJohnsnon/status/1518724166953938945?t=W6CyQwdEmypwN14BesKsZw&s=19
I can see why you would want to retain Twitter with your 250,000 followers and a writing career to promote. I have managed to maintain a fulfilled life without either Twitter or Facebook and see no reason to change. I subscribe to this and to the FT (and the print edition of Private Eye). I am not sure about the “freedom of speech” thing: it seems to be for some the freedom to spout right wing conspiracy theories with impunity, or for the “woke” an opportunity to go out of their way to be offended.
Your blogs and the FT commentariat minimise me guanoing my time with these types.
I too don’t use either Twitter or Facebook. I found them too time-consuming. Principally I follow DAG and the Good Law Project and anyone else sensible who crops up via researching topics.
Thank you David.
The rise of Musk begs many questions and personal responses, as you rightly explore. I was involved in computer programming and software development from the late 60s and have used IT through to the present day – it is a boon for my generation. However, experience has taught me to avoid Twitter, Facebook and other such social media. I simply don’t need it and can really do without their destructive aspects. So, I hope you and others who endeavour to keep us informed through debate will continue to recognise my cohort via blogs and direct emails. Much appreciated, David.
I agree with this comment completely.
It would probably boost my productivity if I were to quit Twitter, but I’m not going to go just yet. Firstly, as you point out, any relaxation of moderation rules will only be minor, due to the constraints of UK legislation. Perhaps Donald Trump will be allowed back, but there are parts of the Left in the US who miss their daily ritual of assembling to make snarky replies to Trump’s tweets so it’s not all bad. Secondly, though, there are currently a lot of obnoxious people celebrating the imminent return of their “right” to call members of particular political parties names or to bully members of minorities. These people are eventually going to find out that this won’t happen, and I want to be there to see their faces when they realise.
Musk is calling for freedom of speech on Twitter. What freedom of speech is currently missing? Surely he doesn’t want the freedom to be racist, sexist, use hate speech, etc, without consequences? Twitter was slowly coming to act against abusive accounts. Now that Musk is about to become the sole owner of the platform it would seem it may revert to the wild west that it had become.
I mainly use Twitter for amusement and informed opinion. Musk’s ownership probably won’t change things much for me unless the accounts I follow withdraw from it. But I don’t see how it can possibly end well.
I suspect musk buying Twitter is a sort of ( admittedly quite strange!) form of philanthropic act. More like Carnegie building libraries than trying to corner the oil market.
But you should of course do what you think is best for you and your readership! I will still use Twitter to follow your updates.
Like analogy with Carnegie libraries. There’s a beautiful small building in Derby UK, sadly neglected and allowed to become retail. Council austerity-strapped.
Much of the reaction to this announcement seems premature. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, posted that ‘Free speech cannot mean a free pass for hatred’. Martin Daubney of the Reclaim Party responded, ‘Anybody else getting drunk on liberal tears?’. Together, they illustrate an assumption that Musk will allow racists, misogynists and homophobes to express themselves fully. But we don’t know what’s really in the mind of the notoriously thin-skinned billionaire. I suspect that Musk will find himself on a steep learning curve and will struggle to shirk responsibility for the ugliness this is likely to unleash.
As we might expect from someone from his background, his most radical ideas are around technology. Making Twitter algorithms open-source may ensure the most technically literate can see how a particular Tweet ends up in their timeline, but nobody’s done this before because we expect spammers, scammers and disinformation campaigners to ruthlessly game the system. Yet, he promises Twitter will be free of spam and bots.
Whatever happens, it will make interesting viewing, and if Musk breaks Twitter—so what?
Very many people seem to think that if certain views are suppressed they will be defeated. This is like sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “la la la”. A particularly extreme example of this is illustrated in the recent article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/24/maureen-lewisham-queer-parents-mayoral-election-vote-lost where the author wants an election candidate to be prevented from stating an opinion. This is hopelessly stupid. It is important that we hear people’s views because they will still hold them and act on them even if they are silenced. The author explicitly states that the candidate’s views lost her her vote. Would she prefer to have voted for this candidate in ignorance?
Far from being suppressed, the racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc should be greatly encouraged to betray themselves by openly and frequently stating their views.
You make excellent points but there is a dividing line, admittedly difficult to ascertain. It is something like the difference between demonstration and riot, between insulting someone and inciting violence against them, between expressing an opinion and manipulative rhetoric.
The dividing line is between words and actions. So a riot can be suppressed, but “inciting violence” should be resisted by a combination of laws regulating violence and advocacy.
If you think that “inciting violence” is must be banned, do you condemn those who advocate arming and assisting Ukraine against Russia? Because such advocacy is inciting a lot more violence than people usually think of when talking about incitement.
I wouldn’t put advocating arming and assisting Ukraine against Russia under the heading of “inciting violence”. Reacting to aggression or aggression in war are defences against the charge of murder. Dividing lines arise again between reaction and overreaction or between legitimate and illegimate war. The fact that a riot can, generally, be suppressed (but often only after bloodshed) doesn’t exonerate anyone inciting the riot.
The WWW appears to have been first proposed just before my eighteenth birthday
Youngster! I was 28 by then. (Although I didn’t get online till seven years after that, and even then spent most of my time on Usenet and mailing lists – we tend to forget now, but the Web itself was a bit of a curiosity until broadband displaced dialup access in the early 00s.)
As for Musk, Kevin Hall’s comment goes for me too – “Musk’s ownership probably won’t change things much for me … But I don’t see how it can possibly end well.” But I’ve been thinking for a while i should revive my blog, so maybe some good(?) will come from the inevitable demise of Twitter.
Oops – HTML fail.
Twitter can be a good thing – there are many good and useful sources of information, that would not otherwise be readily available or accessible, including of course the estimable Mr Green. It can also be, and too often is, a disaster, am arena for bigots, bullies, misogynists and know-nothings. And that’s just the former President of the USA. The current owners could clean Twitter up in very short order, eliminating the bots, identifying and blocking inappropriate tweets, but have chosen not to do so. Mr Musk might do so. If he doesn’t he and the other social media platforms should be regulated. Including the Mail On Sunday.
Oh yes, 33 in 1989, but age does not necessarily impart wisdom. The web has given us so much, and created much wealth (disbursement of the same is another question!) but we are still in thrall to the Tech God, just as we were once to radio & TV. We do have to learn how to be sceptical, selective and to remind ourselves that we invented these tools – and not the other way round. But then we shall to get used to whatever the next new invention will be. I’m not sure I hold with the new emphasis on “being nice to folk” will make all our troubles go away, but maybe learning to voluntarily climb off the hamster wheel from time to time will be a big help.
A podcast would be a delightful addition to your portfolio.
I would be particularly interested to listen to a long form conversation podcast as your blogs and tweets are so carefully and precisely crafted, we never have any casual or sloppy thoughts offered. Much more difficult in an hour’s ‘chat’ on the topic of the moment.
How exciting to get the inside view on the workings of Twitter’s most celebrated legal mind!
I gave up Twitter over Lent and found that a difficult habit to break at first but ultimately enjoy using the scroll free time I have got back – if you could add a widget on here with your tweets, we all need never login to Twitter again.
I’ll continue to read your posts and think about your arguments because I learn from them. In that vein, I would point out that Musk became the world’s richest man by creating new technologies; he didn’t steal or coerce his way to wealth. Others believe that his creations solve some of their problems and he is wealthy as a result. I am optimistic that his idea of the Enlightenment is not that we can ever arrive at a problem free Utopia, but that we can make continuing progress in all fields providing we allow for all ideas to be criticised and improved. Your contribution to that process will not be damaged because he is the world’s richest man, however you use Twitter in future.
He also has come from a wealthy family. He didn’t ‘pull himself up by his own bootstraps’, as it were.
Social media cannot be uninvented.
This is very true but some of us choose not to use it.
I feel ,personally , that it may be a security risk for the unwary. It can be the only source of communication for some families to keep in touch bug should be treated with caution.
Some people will argue that the internet is the “great leveler”, that somehow, by virtue of the fact that “anyone” [caveat: anyone in the west who can afford the connection costs] can connect and be active, it brings democracy to the masses because we all have equal opportunities in cyberspace.
I prefer a slightly different perspective: the internet is a massive amplifier – one that can take any small thing and scale it both massively and massively quickly. The only tricky bit is that the internet is a non-discriminatory amplifier at the best of times… it can give out-sized exposure to the bad as well as the good.
There are entertaining memes:-
https://twitter.com/bbcstrictly/status/1327704281445699585
There are inspiring memes:-
https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1486122503911219212
But there are darker ones, too. Perhaps the most significant thing that Musk has said to date regarding his plans for Twitter are his intentions to address what he’s described as censorship. Well, that could be a good thing.
But if that were to include, for example, reactivating Twitter accounts for people with lifetime bans (just ask your search engine of choice for a list of famous people banned by Twitter to get an idea of the sort of vitriol that could soon return to the platform), then scaling back censorship could have some disturbingly deleterious side effects.
And the most disturbing part of that is that we may not realise when the relaxation has gone too far until something tragic happens, such as the 2017 “Pizzagate” incident, when Edgar Maddison Welch fired an AR-15 assault rifle in a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., after believing conspiracy theories he found on-line about a satanic cult operating there. Extreme example? Yes. Would an un-controlled Twitter open the door to more of this? Yes again.
And that’s the challenge. We may only realise that Twitter has gone too far (assuming Musk carries out the changes he’s suggested) if something drastic happens. By which time it will be too late to do much about it.
Just to see what happens could you set up an account on eg Mastadon and see how many of us follow you there? (I’ve just set up myself to see what it is like). It feels more like my early days on the internet pre www (remember Gopher, anyone?). I think it has potential. And it cannot be dominated by one rich individual.
Some people use Twitter to disseminate and learn the news, which can be the truth or, very often, fake. Others use it to promote their products. I tried it for 6 months or so and found it a place of too much hatred and insulting language.
Freedom of speech is hugely important, but one should take responsibility for what one says rather than hide behind anonymity. If a way could be found to protect people whose exercise of freedom of speech would put them in danger then I think anonymity on Twitter should be banned.
Twitter is mostly an echo chamber of two silos. One on the left and one on the right. The same is true of most media. On social media there’s greater propensity for clashing than in conventional media. I doubt much will change with the changed ownership of Twitter. Why would it?
The new owner is a man who wants Twitter to have completely free speech. That implies measures taken by Twitter to reduce abusive and racist tweets may well be rowed back on. What could possibly go wrong?
The kid who must have the latest toy. Broken or flogged off in two years.
I look forward to seeing Mr Trump back on Twitter, that should liven a dull day.
“There is a standing joke among social historians that the middle class is always rising, and the gentry always declining, in whatever period of history you are looking at.”
That is only for the last 300 years or so. Economic historians understand that there was persistent downward social mobility of the entire better-off classes throughout the mediaeval period in Europe, barring some fluctuations due to plagues and wars. It is nicely demonstrated in Gregory Clark’s book “A farewell to alms” (a controversial book – but for other reasons). The short version is that the better off had higher reproductive success, while total population and income remained roughly constant over an extended period. So it was an arithmetical necessity.
I think you have taken that line more seriously than it deserves!
Ordinary men do not go out and buy 44bn dollar businesses in a matter of weeks.
Ordinary men are normally stuck in negotiations with bankers and brokers. Some may or may not do « due diligence ». Those who don’t do « due diligence » may « take a view » and have costed for unforeseen skeletons in their calculations.
We have had canals, railways, bubbles in the South Seas and tulips. More recently we have had mass privatisation of Building Societies and the computer and telecom bubbles prior to 2k.
Twitter is the latest in a long line.
Whatever Mr Musk is up to best to keep our hands in our pockets and wait for the day when we can all afford his driverless electric cars with our crypto savings.