Bye-bye Twitter
Are you using social media, or is it using you?
I deleted my Twitter accounts yesterday. In theory, Twitter was going to be a great way to connect with people, have engaging conversations, build a network of like-minded people, and fuel activism. In my reality, it was a total time suck. Twitter doom-scrolling became my procrastination go-to. I didn’t make a single connection with any meaning. I spouted my opinion into a void, and received the same in return. Every year it became less meaningful.
I’ve known this for a while, but bought into the myth that social media is the answer, that I had to be ‘in’ or I’d be completely ‘out’. Human nature being what it is, I feared that the day I left Twitter would be the day that something stupendous happened. I’d miss the connection that would change the course of my life. I’d miss breaking news and would be unable to…well, not sure what I thought I’d be unable to do and why I couldn’t get the news from the many other sources available, but the fear kept me on the platform.
Change is a slippery concept. Always changing. Duh. Of course change means always changing. That’s literally what ‘change’ means. We like to think we have full control over change, that we can change when it is convenient to us, when the time is right, when all our ducks are in a row, when we’re ready, if we are just in the right place, on the right platform.
Our ability to fully control change is an illusion, but our ability to direct and encourage change is well within our power. However, we lose our some of our power when we give up control of the tools which support change.
Change doesn’t happen just when it’s convenient to us or the tools are ‘perfect’. Change has a long lead time. Weeks, months, years, decades of activism and challenging the status quo are necessary before a tipping point is reached and suddenly, apparently instantaneously, change happens. Abigail Adams famously said, “Remember the ladies” at the time the Declaration of Independence was being drafted in 1776. Women finally got the right to vote in 1920. We still don’t have equality in practice, or the eyes of the law, since the Equal Rights Amendment is not the law. Women’s rights aren’t evolving just because we wish it were so and have a cool app. Change is happening because we are directing and encouraging change, word by word, action by action, consistently and relentlessly. Witness the brave women in Iran right now.
Social media has changed the world in ways that we couldn’t imagine. It has brought us together, but it has also encouraged division, hatred, and violence. There are little real restrictions on social media, and what restrictions exist are defined by socially-obtuse tech bros and a McKinsey disciple (Sheryl Sandberg). Politicians have only begun to discuss laws and regulations, and when they do ask questions of tech execs, the depth of their ignorance is cringeworthy.
It’s up to us to control and channel the power of social media.
It’s hard to believe that Facebook launched only 18 years ago. Twitter - 16 years. Instagram - 12 years. It makes LinkedIn positively ancient at 20 years old. So young, yet holding such power over our time, attention, and thoughts.
I have shoes older than every social media platform.
So why drop Twitter now? Elon Musk. Before, I could delude myself that participating on Twitter meant I had some power to shift the conversation. With Mr. Musk’s takeover on October 27, Twitter became a private company, exempt from even rudimentary regulations. Sure, lots of companies are privately owned and contribute to the public good, abiding by both laws and social norms. But as Maya Angelou said on Twitter in 2015, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Mr. Musk has not been shy in sharing his worldview, and it is not one I share. More, it is a worldview which I find to be narrow, egotistical, arrogant, uninformed, intolerant, damaging, and exhibiting little understanding of human nature. I acknowledge his intelligence and creativity, but the good he has done to improve the human condition with his innovations is being cancelled out by the damage he is beginning to inflict. A common occurrence among the unimaginably wealthy - they begin to believe their own press. The wealthier and more powerful Mr. Musk becomes, the more erratic and dangerous his ideas. I decided that by supporting his $44 billion personal megaphone, I was actively damaging the social change initiatives which I support, so I cancelled my account.
Well, I’m trying to cancel my account. I can ‘deactivate’ my account and supposedly it will be deleted in 30 days, but I have no right to delete my accounts myself. If I go in to check if the ‘deactivation’ is working, it reactivates, leaving me strapped to an eternal wheel of tech hell. I knew the algorithms controlled what I saw. I knew my opinions were being tracked and analyzed. I didn’t understand how clearly the platform denies autonomy to users. If I had any lingering doubts about exiting the platform, they disappeared.
To move forward, you have to embrace change, experiment with what’s new, see what tools are effective. I’ve been on all the major social media platforms. LinkedIn has definitely been an effective tool for connecting, Facebook’s algorithms have weakened it’s usefulness for connecting, and now I’m experimenting with Instagram, ever hopeful, but overall, as a new technology still in the wild West unregulated and unrestrained stage of evolution, social media has been directing and controlling us, not the other way around. We have to learn how to direct and control social media, to make it work for us, not for the programmers and investors. It is possible. As much destruction as social media has wrought, imagine if we could harness that for positive change.
To start, we need more platform options. Competition. Real competition and a more even playing field. Social media is notoriously unfriendly to women. Hatred, abuse, threats, exploitation, and misogyny all limit women’s voices. Not surprising given that only 2.4% of venture capital funding goes to female entrepreneurs, so most tech start-ups are male-centric. Overall, only 10.9% of leaders in tech are female, compared to the already pathetic 23% of corporate leaders globally. If there were female-backed platforms that addresses the problems with current social media, particularly the problems which silence women’s voices, I’d be first on board. Happy to pay a subscription fee, too, because I would like the community, the conversation that was the promise of social media. I can’t imagine I’m the only person who feels that way. My belief in market forces is severely eroded, meaning I don’t think the demand will lead to a supply given all the barriers to entry which explicitly support the status quo, but maybe if we all vote by ‘deactivating’ and shutting accounts on platforms which don’t deliver, change will occur. Maybe we’ll end up with platforms which will be effective tools for us to create intentional social change, which are worth our time, not algorithms which are changing us.