The good and the bad of hitting Twitter’s buttons
As someone who turned 40 only a few months ago, I have become deeply selfconscious about both false nostalgia and coming across as a Luddite when thinking and writing about the march of technology and its many discontents.
For I am also a cusp-millennial; a digital native who is (supposed to be) unfazed by technological advancements, and who recognises that successive innovations in the way we live, work and communicate with one another do not themselves alter human nature, but rather merely enhance what traits and tendencies were already there.
But I don’t believe it is too hysterical to lament the fact that persuasion plays less and less of a role in 21st-century political discourse than it used to. Political thought and debate used to be about the ability to convince people — both voters and leaders — to alter their position on key issues; the ability to move the needle over time.
Today it is more about turning out your political base and suppressing that of your opponents than convincing people to chPaRnge their minds; about the manipulation of the zero-sum game. And advancements in communications technology have played an outsized role in this transformation.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have walked a long road since the torrid dramas of Russian government interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the multiple misinformation campaigns which very likely led to the UK’s exit from the European Union.
In the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election in November — and in the wake of last month’s US congressional antitrust hearings into Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon’s market power — the bigger platforms will be eager to demonstrate good governance and social responsibility in their engagements with the political candidates, parties and prospective voters for whom their networks are a vital meeting point.
I was one of the people who cheered when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in October last year that Twitter would be banning all political advertising based on the principle that “political message reach should be earned, not bought”. I likewise air-punched when, in May 2020, the platform finally began enforcing its own content policy with respect to US President Donald
Trump’s tweets — both fact-checking the obvious falsehoods and flagging incitements to violence that the president posted on his personal feed.
For as long as the social media echo chambers of misinformation, junk news and political pandering enable people to consume media that is entirely targeted towards their existing sociopolitical and economic world view, the culture of changing minds and convincing each other to consider new positions on old issues will remain imperilled. Highly segregated, deeply partisan political markets are also ripe for manipulation — using technology — by any number of bad actors around the world.
SA has not been immune to the ructions caused by co-ordinated efforts to use social media for divisive purposes and wilfully to spread false information.
One of the most important weapons in the digital interference arsenal is first micro-targeting and then funnelling highly polarising content to specifically identified niche echo chambers in the social media landscape. Who can forget the sordid attempts by UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger to sow racial tension throughout South African social media in support of the rapacious Gupta family and their state capture co-conspirators?
More recently, the co-ordinated xenophobia, anti-immigrant propaganda and weaponised discourse of “@uLerato Pillay” and the #PutSouthAfricansFirst brigade on Twitter are the latest example of how easy it is to manipulate uncritical and unthinking bubbles of uniform engagement on social media.
The social media echo chamber is also a limitation on the spread of complex but progressive ideas which may start out as unpopular but have to find some way of gaining mainstream traction amongst diverse groups of people. How else are we to reform societies, roll back injustices, and consistently work to do better rather than simply upholding the status quo?
Indeed, the march of technology means that those who seek out critical engagement and new ideas are now equally at risk of curating themselves into a world of homogeneous thought.
I recently confessed to a friend over a drink that, since leaving party politics in 2014, I have become liberal — even reckless — with the “unfollow” and “mute” buttons on Twitter. From rape threats and misogyny, to alt-right conspiracy theorists and outright racists, my capacity to tolerate the seedier consequences of being an opinionated woman on the internet has worn out over time.
On the one hand, this has done wonders for my mental health. On the other, I too now risk never having to suffer the discomfort of having my world view radically disrupted, and I am left wondering which is the lesser evil.