Twitter, basically, is bla-bla. Or, at least, that’s one of the meanings of the English word that gave the now famous social network its name.
Founded in 2006, Twitter has long remained a place for light-hearted, inconsequential chatter for ordinary users with no particular public profile. Things changed around the turn of the 2010s, when activists took over the platform. In their hands, the immediacy of the publications and their concise nature have become powerful tools of popular mobilization against autocratic and censorious regimes. It had even become almost cliché, at one time, to “discuss” the role of social media in the “Arab Spring” in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and elsewhere.
In North America, Twitter has become an essential protest space for minority groups and human rights defenders. Organic communities were created and amplified voices and perspectives that were (and remain) often excluded from mainstream media.
In the mid-2010s, young people, women, people of color and LGBTQ communities, in particular, were among the most active users of the platform. Twitter had become a workshop where people to whom journalists had never given the microphone could create one themselves. It is in this context that #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo emerged. Both impactful social movements and must-have hashtags, they’re both hard to imagine without Twitter.
It is activists a priori unknown to the general public, therefore, who have made the social network of bla-bla a space for political discourse. In times of crisis, Twitter has also proven to be a valuable tool for quickly communicating the latest news, minute by minute. When journalists took over the platform, continuous information took on a new rhythm. Naturally, celebrities and politicians have followed in the footsteps of all these beautiful people, a question of being “where things are happening”.
With hindsight, we can see that it is surely from there that things got tough. During the Arab Spring, Twitter (and Facebook) were tools for contesting power. Over the years, the site has become a place where power – including the President of the United States himself – came to manipulate the masses, spread conspiracy theories and sow discord.
In the same way, the more Twitter became a promising space for African-American mobilization, the more far-right groups began to invest in it. Fake accounts that sow discord and mistrust in activist communities, trolls and their harassment, fake news, and campaigns by reactionary public figures are all tactics that have been put in place to curb change. social media promoted by the groups that gave Twitter its value.
In order not to lose too many advertisers sensitive to the reputation of their trademarks, the company wanted — very, very timidly — to put a limit on the misinformation and hatred circulating on its site, and to ban certain users. Part of the American right did not digest it. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and Space X, revolted. And now, last Friday, he made the social network his personal property. “The bird is freed,” he chirped triumphantly.
Could a revolutionary movement against a dictatorship or a popular uprising against police violence still flourish on a platform now controlled by the richest man on the planet? Nobody has a crystal ball, of course, but we can seriously doubt it.
Make no mistake: Twitter has always been a private company, built for the pursuit of profit for its shareholders, very far from the community space itself. But in transforming the platform into Elon Musk’s personal playground, there’s something about Twitter’s very ethos that just changed — no matter how far-reaching changes the unpredictable billionaire will ultimately perform.
Musk is already causing great unease in the journalism community, including by suggesting making the Twitter profile certification badge available to anyone willing to pay a monthly fee. The fear, of course, is that the new policy will make it even more difficult to identify credible sources of information on the site. Musk, on the other hand, seems to want to diversify the company’s revenue, rather than relying primarily on advertiser interest in the site.
The misunderstanding seems fundamental. If the site is free for users, it is because we are not its customers, but rather the product. It’s our attention, our time, our personal data, in short, we who are sold to the real customers of Twitter, the private companies who place ads there for us to consume their products.
In order for the attention paid to the platform to increase, and therefore its market value with it, all means are good. This is why our curiosity, our creativity, our passions, but also our anger, our conflicts, our division or our confusion are also part of what is cultivated and then sold by Twitter.
The neologism rage farming — here we suggest “ragiculture” — describes a manipulative tactic that aims to stir up outrage in an effort to increase online traffic and engagement. It depicts particularly well what has become, too often, the business model of Twitter in recent years. There have always been major problems, even a paradox, in allowing a private company to play the role of agora, of pillar of democratic life. We feel it this week perhaps more than ever.