I don’t trust Twitter. And neither should you.
I don’t trust Twitter. And neither should you, despite its reach and popularity.
A staggering one-fourth of Americans use Twitter, according to new in-depth survey from Pew Research Center, finding that users get a mix of highly positive and highly negative experiences. For my nearly 3,000 Twitter followers, it’s the opposite. My sad, lonely account screams in the social media desert without many users ever hearing me. Apparently, Twitter doesn’t trust me, either.
I’m not sure where I went wrong since I joined the social media giant in 2008. Maybe it was profile bio: “I ask unpopular questions, provoke unwanted discussions, and share people’s back stories.” If I only had more than 140 characters to sum up myself. As readers of this column space know, I struggle to write short.
Maybe my problem with Twitter is my profile photo, a meme that reflects my life’s mission: “Ask a bunch of questions.” Obviously I should stop asking lofty questions and instead make more declarative statements with divisive opinions. This kind of attitude repeatedly receives the most feedback on my Twitter account.
“Nice job! Your Tweet is getting noticed and has been viewed 219 times,” a recent notification told me about this tweet: “Rittenhouse arrived in Kenosha as a 17-year-old hero in his eyes. He will leave as an 18-year-old martyr, regardless of the jury’s verdict, inspiring a cadre of wannabe militia cadets who also want to find their purpose in life.”
Unfortunately, many of those views from Twitter users prompted responses such as this one: “Jerry is garbage. He’s one of those people who calls anybody who he disagrees with ‘racist’ & ‘bigots.’ ” But hey, he read my post and commented, didn’t he? This is the conundrum of Twitter and of other social media. We want to engage other people, but at what cost? What is our end game? To connect? To enrage? To educate? To get the clicks?
There I go again, asking more questions. If I learned anything since 2008, it should be to tell my followers what to think whether they agree or not. Or purposely get a rise out of them. Some social media readers (and newspaper readers) think I already do this intentionally. I don’t. Angering people these days is like shooting fish in a barrel. Look around our country. It’s drowning in rage. No effort necessary on my part to push their head underwater.
Twitter not only reflects our divisiveness, it generates it. And we welcome it, venomous tweet after tweet, even if it’s generated from bots in other countries to weaken our democracy. We saw this during the 2020 presidential election, and we see it with every hot-button issue that polarizes us, including the Black Lives Matter protests and the recent trial for Kyle Rittenhouse.
“Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi tweeted about an analysis of the tweets from the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse came largely from outside of the United States,” states a story on RawStory.com.
A sampling of 32,315 pro-Rittenhouse hashtag tweets on Nov 19-20 showed 29,609 of them came from Twitter accounts with disabled geolocations. Of those, 17,701 were listed as “foreign,” with most coming from Russia, China, and the EU, the story states. Those tweets were not from fellow Americans who you think you hate because they don’t share your politics. This “divide and conquer” attack on us is working, isn’t it?
According to that Pew study, 46% of users say the site has increased their understanding of current events in the last year, and 30% say it has made them feel more politically engaged. I have to ask, engaged or enraged? Nearly one in five users say they have personally experienced “harassing or abusive behavior” on Twitter. Yet they’re still entertained, which is why they keep returning.
“When asked about several specific reasons for using Twitter — as well as the one that was most important if they listed several reasons — the largest share of users (42%) report entertainment as the most important,” the Pew analysis states.
This is about twice as high who say “staying informed” is the most important reason, followed by staying connected to other people, seeing different points of view, expressing opinions, or because the site is useful for work or school. Again, at what cost?
A majority of Twitter users, even those who wrongly believe they have private profiles, have a public profile that is visible to anyone. It’s just another way to extract data points on our social media accounts, allowing bots and bad actors to collect data on us.
The Pew analysis revealed something that also confirmed my suspicion about the platform: a relatively small share of highly active users produce the vast majority of content. An analysis of tweets by U.S. adults found that the most active 25% of users, by tweet volume, produced 97% of all tweets from these users. “On the other hand, 33% of users report seeing a lot of misleading or inaccurate information there, and 53% say inaccurate or misleading information is a major problem on the site.”
So yes, as we presume, Twitter is an echo chamber for most users. But is it echoing who we really are or who we think we are? Like I said, I don’t trust Twitter and it doesn’t trust me. In that sense, maybe Twitter does reflect who we are.