Twitter and the hidden stench

Ideology is like bad breath: you never smell your own*.

This is especially true these days at Twitter. And boss Elon Musk doesn’t seem to have an adviser who can remind him of this unpleasant truth.

His crusade against the BBC, NPR, CBC/Radio-Canada and other publicly funded outlets is ironic. Because if there is a company that grinds information, it is his.

I’m just noting what extensive research has empirically demonstrated. Research in which Twitter employees participated, and which was published in 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1).

The debate – and more often the fight – does not take place in a democratic way. Some receive a megaphone while others soliloquize in a vacuum.

On the Twitter home page, you can read the posts of the people you follow, in chronological order. But for that, it is necessary to modify its parameters.

Otherwise, by default, Twitter sorts content.

The algorithm is based on the past interactions of a user. But that’s not all. The algorithm has biases. In particular, it prioritizes political content, especially right-wing content.

The research team examined the tweets of millions of users from seven countries (Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany and Japan). Among them were almost 3,000 deputies.

Their conclusion: Twitter gives increased visibility to the content of elected officials compared to that of other users. And even more for right-wing politicians.

For example, in Canada, Liberal publications were boosted by 43%. For conservatives, the effect was 167%.

The study also looked at the sharing of traditional media news policies.

Again, politics was favored over other content, and the amplification was greater for media associated with the right. This was true for all countries except Germany.

I recap: Twitter sorts information without the knowledge of its users, favoring the right. And that was before the arrival of Elon Musk at the head of the company.

To its credit, Twitter had collaborated on the study – some researchers came from its machine learning department. It had also published the results on its site (2).

It’s as if the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley suddenly had a bad conscience. If this remorse ever existed, it disappeared with the change of boss.

Mr Musk publicizes his political views – he tweeted his wish that Republican Ron DeSantis become president.

He also does not hide that decisions on content are solely his responsibility, without going through a committee like at Facebook. Like a modern-day emperor, he polled followers on Twitter about whether he should unlock the accounts of Donald Trump and far-right activists. After listening to the clamor, he gave a thumbs up. One click was enough to invite them back to crack down on it.

THE washington post has measured another effect since the arrival of Mr. Musk: Democratic accounts are losing subscribers while Republican accounts are gaining. What is the cause ? It’s hard to know for sure. But more than ever, on Twitter, it smells bad.

However, the impact on politics must be put into perspective.

According to pollster EKOS, only 22% of Canadians use Twitter. And among them, a minority is interested in the news.

English-speaking tweeters (26%) are more likely than the Canadian average (17%) to consider politicians to be on the left. Another way of saying that they are more on the right and that from this perspective, others appear to them to be more on the left. They are therefore receptive to the discourse of the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, who cries out for Canadian radio propaganda with his usual taste for nuance.

MM. Poilievre and Musk are not wrong, citizens today are more wary of mainstream media. In 2022, 42% of Canadians said they trusted “most news most of the time.” A drop of 13 points compared to 2016.

Confidence is lower among young people and people without a university degree. Right-wing Anglophones are also more suspicious. Among Francophones, there is no significant difference according to political affiliation.

This no doubt explains the position of Mr. Poilievre, who targets CBC more than Radio-Canada in his attacks.

But what MM. Musk and Poilievre forget to say is that distrust is even more acute in the place of sites like Twitter.

According to the Edelman Barometer, 57% of Canadians trust traditional media, compared to 22% for social networks (3).

When Mr. Musk responds to media questions by sending a poo emoji, when he compares Justin Trudeau to Hitler and when he brags about having a direct say in editorial decisions, he only compounds this problem.

It is this loss of credibility that Mr. Poilievre now associates himself with. If he doesn’t realize it, it’s because his self-determination is also broken.

* I paraphrase an expression of the late English economist Joan Robinson.