Curing the Ills of Social Media

Spoiler: Maybe Musk did us a favor by disrupting Twitter and forcing us to consider better social media alternatives.

Warning: This may get gossipy with some of my personal social media anecdotes.

I: Social Media Encourages Demagoguery

Democracy Needs a Functioning Public Sphere

Definition: The public sphere is composed of voluntary associations that promote social cohesion while enhancing democracy. It’s where citizens come together to exchange ideas regarding public affairs and eventually form public opinion. It can be a specific place where citizens gather (like a town hall meeting) or a communication infrastructure where citizens send and receive information and opinions.

Social Media Can (and Often Does) Serve a Public Good

Social media allows communities to form. Twitter has become (among other things) a place to discuss current events. It’s a place where writers can find an audience. Important voices that we might never hear can be amplified. We can talk to experts and make new acquaintances. Citizens can talk directly to elected officials. We can get news reporting in real-time from journalists on the ground and in the courthouses. People’s lives have been saved because of information posted on social media. Perpetrators have been brought to justice because of information posted to social media.

But unfortunately, social media and the Internet are not all good.

Social Media In Its Current Form Amplifies and Enables Demagoguery

The advent of the Internet has been compared to the invention of the printing press. The printing press gave more people access to information—which is good—but a sudden change in how people get information can be destabilizing. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder points out that the Protestant Reformation was enabled by the printing press, and the resulting wars devastated Europe.

Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein, in his 2017 book, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, argues that the Internet and social media are threatening democracy by driving political fragmentation, polarization, and even extremism.

It takes time to readjust after a major disruption. We’re currently in a period of adjustment.

Example #1: The Internet Research Agency

Americans learned about the Internet Research Agency (IRA) from an indictment filed by Robert Mueller and a Senate Report.

The IRA was founded in 2014 in St. Petersburg to spread disinformation and sow discord in democracies. During the 2016 American presidential election cycle, IRA agents operated thousands of social media accounts, created social media pages, and organized groups designed to attract US audiences. During the election cycle, tens of millions of Americans interacted with Russian-operated accounts, not knowing that the accounts were operated in St. Petersburg.

The IRA even staged real events in the US. Using a Facebook page called “Heart of Texas” which had attracted over 250,000 followers, IRA agents organized a “Stop Islamization of Texas” event in 2016 in front of the Islamic Da’wah Center in Houston. At the same time, IRA operatives used their “United Muslims for America” Facebook page with 325,000 followers to promote a second event, to be held at the same time in the same place called “Save Islamic Knowledge.” Protesters from both sides showed up and, as was the intention of the Russians, violence broke out. The competing events were covered live by local news agencies. They didn’t know both protests had been organized by Russian operators.

The Trust Building Technique: IRA agents, posing as Americans, built trust in their American audience, then deployed payload content. Here’s an example of how it works: IRA agents posted Biblical verses on a page designed to attract White Evangelicals. White Evangelicals who were attracted to the site believed they were interacting with like-minded Americans. After building their trust, the IRA agents posted lies about Hillary Clinton.

To take another example, IRA agents carried on conversations that other users could see, pretending to be Americans discussing politics. In the lead-up to the 2016 elections, IRA agents pretended to be Black Americans explaining to each other why Black Americans should stay home and not vote.

Example #2: Cambridge Analytica

In a 60 Minutes interview, Haugen said that content producers and political parties are aware that the best way to generate engagement is to deploy angry and divisive content.

This is why people who are monetizing their social media feeds are often the ones writing content that arouses your emotions. Rage-inducing content helps the content provider by attracting a large audience. It also helps the social media platform by increasing overall engagement. Rage-generators and for-profit social media platforms thus have a common goal: Keep people riled and angry, thus driving polarization and extremism.

Trust-Building, American Style (true stories, names omitted) 

Person #1 gained a huge following on Twitter in 2015 as a staunch Democrat tweeting things like “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” After Trump was elected, his following increased when he declared himself a leader of the Democratic “resistance” on Twitter: A large loosely-organized group that opposed Trump. Person #1 was a compelling Tweeter and effectively dunked on Trump. As a result, his following grew to more than 350,000. He began monetizing his feed with podcasts and a Patreon account.

Then, about halfway through Trump’s term, he turned on Pelosi. He called Democrats “corporatists” and accused them of corruption. He encouraged his followers to abandon the Democratic Party. Because he had a large, influential account and was now Tweeting rage-inducing material, his account drew even more attention, thus driving the algorithms and increasing his reach.

Whether he deliberately built trust in his target audience with the goal of turning them against the Democratic Party, or whether he entirely changed his political views after building his audience, we’ll never know.

He continues monetizing his feed, now milking former Democrats who he has turned into angry, disaffected Democrats.

Person #2 did the same. She has a Ph.D. in anthropology (she is not a professor) and positioned herself as the single person who predicted Trump’s rise as an authoritarian. She amassed a large following on social media. (There were actual professors at major universities who had been predicting the rise of Trump as an authoritarian, but they were not on social media so she took all the credit.) Because she so effectively attacked Trump, Democrats loved her. She was invited onto TV shows.

Then she turned against the Democrats.

Personal encounter: When she turned on Nancy Pelosi in 2018 and accused Pelosi of taking Russian money, people on Twitter kept telling her she should read my feed because I had a different view of Pelosi. (I never talked to her or about her.) She responded by telling her hundreds of thousands of followers that I was a “faux expert” and a racist (she posted a screenshot of a tweet of mine out of context) and said I was in league with Stephen Miller.

She now tells her almost 600,000 followers that Merrick Garland is corrupt and compromised and is a “mafia state enabler.” She keeps her followers terrified, monetizes her feed, and turns on anyone who questions her. (I always felt there was an irony in the fact that she positions herself as an expert on authoritarianism.)

Person #3:  About a year ago, a well-known fiction writer without any background in law or government began tweeting furiously that Merrick Garland was “refusing” to indict Trump. He now has more than 800,000 followers who repeat his assertions as if they are facts. (One time I tried to point out a factual error in one of his tweets. He responded by blocking me.)

Twitter Algorithms Help Large Accounts Grow Larger, Further Incentivizing Rage-Inducing Material 

After a Twitter account reaches a certain size and generates a certain level of engagement, Twitter algorithms further amplify the account by suggesting it to others.

Twitter also offers an “analytics” button telling users which of their Tweets got the most engagement, thus encouraging people to Tweet content likely to generate more engagement.

Main Stream / Cable News Affected

The Internet and the rise in social media have also spurred changes in mainstream news sources because mainstream sources now have to compete for clicks and viewers. In the old days, people got their news from the same sources: An evening news program (I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite) and a newspaper delivered to the house. With more competition, and a public demand to be entertained, mainstream news often presents “experts” who simply reflect back the fears and beliefs of the audience. Peter Arenella, a law professor emeritus (UCLA Law) whose specialty is criminal law and criminal procedure, was also one of the first TV legal pundits for ABC news, which gives him a unique perspective on TV Legal Punditry. He says that “today’s pundits often act as appeasers instead of educators. They reflect back and reinforce the views of the audience, thereby entertaining their audiences instead of educating them, and thereby misleading them.”

Rage-Inducing Simplifications

Yale professor Timothy Snyder talks about what he calls Internet Memes, which he defines as something a person sees on the Internet, feels triggered by, and then repeats. People see these triggers because they are directed at them through algorithms. They are then transformed into repeaters of targeted memes.

The problem with Internet Memes, according to Snyder, is that they prevent us from thinking complex thoughts. Snyder finds this terrifying because democracy depends on us having “some sense of time beyond our immediate outrage.” In Orwell’s 1984, the fictionalized totalitarian government worked on reducing the number of words in the language. Snyder points out that Internet Memes do the same thing by reducing our ability to have complex thoughts.

My First “Viral” Twitter Thread

The thread is here. The story is this: In 2018, a double jeopardy (criminal law) case was heading to the Supreme Court. A reputable and ordinarily excellent journalist misunderstood something fundamental about the case. The headline writers gave her piece a misleading headline. People got the (wrong) idea that the case, Gamble v. US, would allow Trump to pardon himself and his associates for state crimes as well as federal crimes.

Twitter had a meltdown. A well-known actress with about 500,000 followers Tweeted something like “The Supreme Court is about to give Trump and his friends Get Out Of Jail Free cards.” (She has since deleted that Tweet.)

About a dozen people came to me, in a rage-filled panic. I asked for a few hours to read about the case. I came back and wrote this thread. There was some backstage drama when I found myself in a private conversation with several members of the “resistance” and the actress. I tried to correct the misunderstanding of the case. The actress told me that a lawyer on the US Senate staff told her that the case was about Trump being able to pardon his associates for state crimes. I asked for the name of the lawyer because I didn’t believe her. She refused to give me the name. People on the call sided with her. You get the idea. The conversation didn’t go well.

It took about 10 months for the Supreme Court to reach a decision in Gamble v. US. When it turned out I was right, I went back to look at the actress’s feed. She had deleted her alarmist Tweets about the case.

I’ve thus become a person on Twitter who explains the complex legalities to counter the latest rage-inducing simplification. I wrote my FAQ page to address this year’s rage-inducing simplifications about the DOJ investigation.

I put a lot of work into these. I have often joked that my task on social media has been to try to put out forest fires with a squirt gun.

Don’t get me wrong: There are real things to worry about. Democracy is in danger from right-wing extremism. But keeping people in a state of panic by means of rage-inducing simplifications is not productive, particularly when based on fundamental misunderstandings about the law and how our government works. Constant panic and rage lead to fatigue and burnout, and eventually cynicism and apathy. If people are burned out and apathetic, how will they have the energy or will to do the work to save democracy? How can people organize or think rationally with their hair on fire?

Plato argued that democracy is fragile because it is vulnerable to demagoguery. He warned that democracy is destined to fail because most people don’t have the ability to analyze or understand the complex business of government. Social media is making this worse.

Then along came Elon Musk with an agenda to turn Twitter into a right-wing propaganda network. While looking for alternatives, it occurred to me that it might be possible for social media to stop being a hotbed for conspiracy theories, disinformation, and panic-mongering.

Wouldn’t it be better if nobody set the fires in the first place?

II. An update on Twitter, Elon Musk Style

The above makes little sense other than to assert that content Musk deems “negative” will be “deboosted” (whatever that means). At the same time, Musk allowed Donald Trump back onto Twitter and said he will reinstate accounts that were banned for violent threats, harassment, racism, and the spread of disinformation. Accounts he wants to bring back include the Babylon Bee, which was banned for targeting transgender people.

Josh Marshall has been tracking Musk’s growing attachment to right-wing extremists. You can read more here.

People who don’t want to be associated with right-wing radicalization are leaving Twitter, along with 50 of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers. Meanwhile, right-wing radicals are signing up.

Note: I am staying on Twitter for now. I feel an obligation to the people there who look to me for analysis. But I am establishing myself elsewhere because it appears that Twitter will soon be a place we don’t want to be. But there are still important voices there and I am not ready to entirely cede the territory.

III. Alternatives to Twitter

Google, Amazon, and other companies that would have the infrastructure to create a Twitter alternative have no desire to mire themselves in a political hotbed with little prospect of becoming profitable.

At this point, the two alternatives to Twitter getting the most attention: Mastodon and Post.news.

About Post.news

You can read about Post.news here.

Disadvantage: Post.news is a place to discuss current events. Twitter is much broader. On Twitter there are communities of writers, gardeners, etc. While there is some overlap–for example, a community of political activists might be at home on a news site–it’s not clear that there is a place on Post.news for a large segment of Twitter users who are there for reasons other than news, but don’t want to be pummelled with right-wing messaging or support a site that gives a voice to racists.

Advantage: No ads. Post.news was founded by the former CEO of Waze Noam Bardin, and thus a person with prior success with tech products. Waze monetizes with ads. Post.news, however, sees the danger of ads on social media. This is from the Post.news information page:

Many of today’s ad-based platforms rely on capturing attention at any cost — sowing chaos in our society, amplifying the extremes, and muting the moderates. Post is designed to give the voice back to the sidelined majority; there are enough platforms for extremists, and we cannot relinquish the town square to them.

Instead of monetizing through ads, the Post.news idea is for users to pay for access to “premium content.” I assume this means The Washington Post and not The Babylon Bee, which requires someone to decide what is or isn’t “premium.”

If the idea works, it will direct money where it should go: Good journalism.

It’s not clear what fees will be imposed later, but from this interview (the interview with Bardin starts about halfway), it sounds like Post.news is an alternative to subscribing to newspapers. It seems like there’s a “pay as you go” idea, which is not the same as the public sphere, although there can be overlap. You pay to read the news (not a public square) but then you can talk about what you read. Now, on Twitter, people often only read headlines, which can induce rage and misunderstandings. The Post.news premise is that people are willing to pay a small amount to read articles and get past the paywall. From this interview, it sounds like a few cents per article. Presumably, the site keeps some and the publisher gets some.

When I got off the Post.news waitlist and logged in, I learned I was starting with a bonus of 50 free “points,” which can be used to “tip” people or pay for articles.

The idea is for people to spend time on the platform and leave feeling smarter, not angrier. Specifically, Bardin said, “Enrichment, not enragement.”

Advantage: Because the platform will be owned by a single entity and run for profit, it is likely to be user-friendly and inviting because a platform run for profit needs lots of users.

Disadvantage: Because the platform will be owned by a single entity and run for profit, there is always the risk that a change in ownership or management will bring unwelcome changes. The danger increases on a site run for profit. The post.news of today may not be the post.news of tomorrow.

This was posted on Mastodon:

While the promise of a user-friendly platform is appealing, Post.news raises a fundamental question: Is it good for the public sphere to be privately owned and run for profit?

This brings us to Mastodon, which is essentially a bunch of independently operated servers that communicate with each other. It thus has the advantages and disadvantages of site not centrally-owned or run for profit.

About Mastodon

Mastodon launched in 2016 when German software developer Eugen Rochko (working for a nonprofit) didn’t like Twitter so he wrote the Mastodon code, and made it public. Yup, he gave it away. Anyone can use it. Anyone can improve it.

This means that anyone can operate their own Mastodon server. People can also join a server that is open to new users. If the server is on this list, you can join. These servers depend on community donations. Each server makes its own rules. If you open an account on one server, and you don’t like it, you can move to a different server and take all your followers with you.

There are no algorithms on Mastodon, which decreases the incentive to produce inflammatory, rage-inducing content.

To show you an example of how this can work, a group of journalists led by Adam Davidson of the The New Yorker established a server for journalists. They vet their members, so you know that anyone with “journa.host” after their names has been vetted by Davidson and his partners.

To follow Davidson and any of the other journalists on journa.host, you can create an account on any of the servers open to anyone. You then interact with them the same way you do on Twitter. You can follow them, comment on their posts, “like” their posts (it’s called “favorite” on Mastodon) or retweet (called “reboost” on Mastodon.)

Here are the advantages for Davidson and his journalist colleagues:

• He and his friends own their own data. Nobody can sell their personal information.
• They make their own rules. They can block anyone they want from their server. They can forbid the use of certain words. Their server, their rules.
• If their server runs well, anyone who follows them or comments on their posts will have a smooth experience.
• They don’t have to live in fear that a corporate overlord will suddenly wreak havoc on their professional lives.
• There is no “quote tweet” on Mastodon (I don’t know about Post.news).

For an interesting take on how the quote-tweet encourages dunking and drives polarization and extremism, see this article by Matt Tait.

Disadvantages:

• They have to monitor the content on their server. The more users they have, the harder this gets.
• They also have to pay the bill. For a sense of the cost of having your own server, click here. If you can do the technical work yourself, the cost is about the same as maintaining a word press website. It isn’t prohibitively expensive. It’s work intensive. (Like a functioning public sphere.)

To take another example, a startup company with 10 engineers and 3 marketing people can set up its own Mastodon server. This gives each member a social media platform. They don’t have to worry about anyone selling their data, blitzing their customers or followers with ads, or allowing Nazis and other creeps onto their comments.

Your neighborhood gardening club can have a server if you all want to chip in. If you (or someone in your group) can do the technical back-end work, the cost is minimal. You can get one for your extended family. Your political activist group can have one. (You are a member of a political activist group, right?)

Here’s an interesting take on why your organization should have its own server.

But what about the bad guys? What keeps them from forming their own server?

Nothing. But your server simply has to block their server and there is an impenetrable wall.

In fact, this is just what happened. A bunch of Nazis and white supremacists opened their own server called Gab. Every single server on this list has Gab blocked, and any new server is advised to immediately block Gab. So the Gab Nazis are completely isolated. You will never see anything they post and they will never see anything you post. The only way a Nazi can see your stuff is if they join a normal server and hide the fact that they are Nazis, but once their Nazi-ness shows, zap. The owner of your server, who doesn’t tolerate Nazis (that’s why you are there) blocks them and they’re gone.

In fact, did you know that Trump’s Truth Social uses Mastodon code? Trump, being Trump, tried to pretend that he created it, but the creators of Mastodon let everyone know that Trump basically used their free-to-the-public code. In other words, Trump is not a tech genius. He was doing the tech world equivalent of plagiarizing.

Mastodon is Messy

Different servers have different rules. It isn’t clear what a server’s rules are when you join. I see people on Twitter say, “Mastodon is confusing. The customer service is terrible. They need to get their acts together.” Here’s the thing: There is no “they.” There is no person in charge. Nobody is promising that the trains will run on time. It’s like democracy that way. It’s messy. We’re on our own, for better or for worse.

Mastodon is not a good place to Monetize

I suspected that Mastodon was not a good place to monetize, so I checked with Professor Google. When I used the search terms “Branding,” “monetizing,” and “Mastodon,” a few articles came up explaining that Mastodon isn’t good for branding, but when I tried to click on them, I hit a paywall, which told me what I needed to know.

The public sphere is not supposed to be a place to make money. It’s a place to exchange ideas.

Things I like About Both Post.news and Mastodon

• Twitter allows 270 characters per post. Mastodon’s default allows 500. Individual servers can change that. Post.news has no limits. Longer posts encourage thoughtful content and discourage EVERYONE NEEDS TO SET THEIR HAIR ON FIRE RIGHT NOW one-liners.
• Mastodon has an edit button. (I assume Post.news does, but I don’t know yet.) The Twitter rationale for not offering an edit is, “What if a bunch of people like it and then the original poster goes back and adds something creepy?” The answer is, “So what? We’re not a bunch of babies. We value good content, which occasionally requires correction.” If you edit on Mastodon, users can see previous versions, which prevents dishonest editing.
• When you look at someone’s Tweet, you instantly see how much engagement a Tweet has, which stimulates “lots of people liked this, I wonder why,” instead of “this content sounds interesting.” It seems to me this makes it easier to ignore the hair-on-fire oneliner rage inducers. This doesn’t happen on Mastodon. (I don’t know about Post.com.)

So, which is better?

Why not both?

If you’re on Post.news, you can follow me here.

You can find me on my new Mastodon server, here. (I‘m still in the process of transferring my data over, so it’s sort of threadbare now.)

There was a time when I posted on both Facebook and Twitter. I see no reason why I can’t post on Mastodon and Post.news. Why not hedge our bets?

My own server. 

As an experiment, I had my in-house technical support staff (my husband) set up a Mastodon server for me. I’ll have more information on that later.

Cool? Right now I’m the only user, which makes content moderation easy😉. It’s also super easy to get a consensus on which rules to adopt. My server, my rules.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend.

I am thankful for my readers, who give me a reason to write. JJ is thankful for seagulls to chase. (The seagulls are like, “Yeah, dude, keep barking,” and they fly away)

I am thankful for JJ’s 24/7 security protection. I have never been attacked by a seagull.

Best wishes from the central California coast.