
How Twitter poisoned politics - thatguy_2016
https://prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-twitter-poisoned-politics
======
ordinaryperson
Was there a time when politics wasn't full of poison? By the end Thomas
Jefferson hated George Washington so much he refused to attend his funeral.

And that's just 242-year history of America, you can go back to Rome, Greece
or Ancient Egypt and see thousands of years of vitriol inside any large human
collective.

Modern tools could do a better job, sure. Twitter, FB, YouTube and the rest
could use some kind of reputation systems, which at least provide a gradient
of user interaction instead of just blacklisting.

But politics have never been pure, it's a myth. Don't blame communication
platforms (although again, they can do better), blame the humans that use
them.

~~~
slg
Politics may never have been pure and things today aren't as bad as they were
at certain points in human history, but I am honestly surprised that people
here aren't recognizing that there has been a pretty stark change in how
politics have been progressing in the last decade versus the several previous
decades. The polarization has increased drastically and the civility of
political discourse and faith in institutions has dropped considerably.

A prime example is that the US is on the verge of confirming a man on to the
supposedly apolitical Supreme Court that says under oath that his political
opponents have created a vast conspiracy to bring him personally down. If that
man is telling the truth, that is an awful moment in political history. If
that man is lying, that is an awful moment in political history. It doesn't
matter which side of that issue you are on, but something is happening here
that would be unthinkable a couple decades ago.

~~~
bliblah
I think this is the issue; at least in the U.S. EVERYTHING is becoming more
politicized no matter how inane.

You are also EXPECTED to have a binary opinion on all these issues with no
room for differing opinions.

Look at the NFL protests during the anthem. Kneel and you are a bleeding heart
liberal that hates the cops. Stand and you are a red hat conservative
promoting police brutality and the Private Prison Complex.

Every day there's a new outrage that somehow splits up the community down
party lines.

~~~
refurb
I blame the media. They only ever cover the most extreme viewpoints. They
wouldn't get clicks otherwise if an article was titled "Voter aren't sure what
to make of the Supreme Court nominee".

I've overheard a few conversations of my coworkers (yes, anecdote) about the
whole Kavanaugh debate and pretty much every one of them was pretty common
sense (e.g. not sure if I believe her, but Kavanugh certainly sounds like he
isn't an angel).

~~~
debaserab2
You could take that a step further and blame media consumers then - the media
promotes the stories that bring in ad revenue more than others.

~~~
longerthoughts
Yes. Seems far more plausible that the media is a reflection of human nature
than that the media has reshaped the way people think.

~~~
simplify
Media is not merely a reflection, but a perpetuator of extremes. If everyone
stopped using media, there would still be extremist, but they would be so far
distant we wouldn't think of them or their ideas.

Here's a great interactive explanation of how this works:
[https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb](https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb)

~~~
longerthoughts
Absolutely, only meant to point out that the media brings out the worst that
is already in us rather than corrupting otherwise civil beings.

To speak even more generally, humans make tools that amplify our impact. Some
of those tools make us better at being terrible, some make us better at being
clever, some do both.

------
kibwen
Part of me wonders if it's possible that there's just something about the
nature of the internet that induces instability in otherwise-ordinary people.
I think about photosensitive epilepsy and how it was a more-or-less benign
feature of the human brain until technological progress caused flashing lights
to be absolutely everywhere. I worry that I can't discount the possibility
that some heretofore latent feature of human thinking is incompatible (in a
physiological sense, not just a psychological sense) with being perpetually
plugged into the internet. I know enough people that have gone from "totally
outwardly normal" to "detached-from-reality, Hillary Clinton is a lizard
person" (this isn't an exaggeration, yes, people I know in real life appear to
sincerely think this) and I'm struggling to think of what else could
contribute to such seeming mass psychosis. It's more than just propaganda,
it's people deliberately abandoning critical thinking.

~~~
burlesona
I'd just call it "road rage." There's some research into this and my high-
level understanding is that when people feel "safe inside their armor" \-
whether that's the metal of the car or the semi-anonymity of the internet,
their animal instincts come out.

It's fueled from both directions. In a tweet you don't really have context or
body language or any of the other signals to tell you how someone means their
message to be taken, so it's a lot easier to unintentionally offend. And then
because you don't have to face the consequences of digitally "throwing a
punch" a lot of people just fire off a nasty tweet without really caring.

I guess I see it as not surprising. Civilization is fragile, and the
institutions that hold it up take generations to build. All of it is basically
a thin veneer over our animal selves that helps us individually and
collectively function as a higher level creature than we really are.

The internet fundamentally changes most things about communication and
therefore human interaction and therefore the institutions of civilization
itself. And really, looking back at the original internet ethos, that was kind
of the point. So it shouldn't be surprising that something we use to "disrupt"
civilization is in fact disruptive to civilization.

~~~
WillPostForFood
It is what you are saying, and exacerbated by the huge gap in power and
control between elites/politicians and the average person. You have CEOs and
politicians making decisions that ruin people's lives. With Twitter, people
are suddenly put at the same level where they can speak back to power,
directly and angrily.

~~~
larsiusprime
Another equally valid frame is that you have a system designed by those same
CEO's that explicitly encourages people to be as pissed off as possible, all
the time, so their rage can be cynically farmed for clicks and ads.

~~~
burlesona
Absolutely this too. There's a lot of money to be made from making people
angry (see cable news). I don't know anyone who makes money calming the crowd
down. Is there such thing as a social media mob therapist? :)

------
brightball
From the moment that news outlets started reporting on things said on Twitter
years ago, I assumed this would happen.

With enough bots, you gain the ability to create any narrative you want.
Create story, then create the image that you want the supporters of one side
to have, followed by the image for the other side. Use bots and retweets to
amplify.

You gain the power to define what's happening culturally if the news reports
actually take Twitter trends as what's happening culturally. Create a villian,
politicize the villain, popularize / demonize websites, etc.

An entire Twitter event can be orchestrated to amplify the irrational into a
position believed to be popular/main stream.

The only recourse is to treat Twitter just like any other message board...and
ignore it.

~~~
dlivingston
The engagement of user responses seems to have no bearing on whether a news
article will embed them. I cannot count the times I have seen some CNN,
Business Insider, etc. article talking about the latest Twitter 'controversy',
and the tweets they link to have a handful (zero-to-five) of retweets and
stars.

~~~
CM30
Yep, so many mountains made out of molehills when the media reports on Twitter
(or any other social media site). Now one guy saying something is apparently
seen as a 'trend'.

------
mwfunk
Politics has always reflected poorly on humanity, but the existence of
Twitter, Facebook, etc. these days have basically brought Usenet to the
masses. Not good Usenet either- bad Usenet, after it was overrun by spammers
and trolls.

There’s a truism that the people who talk the most have the least to say. In
the 90s you could witness newsgroups slowly get taken over by such people.
They went from places where people interacted and communicated to places that
were no more than sources of disinformation and flamewars. Modern social media
is like post apocalyptic Usenet, except it’s occupied by the general
population, not just scammers and mentally ill CS majors. I think that’s
really messed up and can’t possibly be good for anyone.

~~~
jeffwass
It’s worse than the bad usenet because social media curated the content you
engage with into a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop.

Eg, my twitter feed shows me tweets of similar themes to those that I recently
engage with. The more I engage the more that theme dominates my feed.

So it’s easy to see that someone who engages with tweets of any partisan
political commentary can easily get pulled deeper and deeper into that murk
with an echo chamber that filters out the opposing viewpoints.

Besides politics the same can happen with conspiracy theories and religious
zealotry.

------
bobbygoodlatte
I'm glad the article mentioned Twitter's engagement algorithm — I don't think
enough attention is being paid to it.

With a different algorithm Twitter could be a remarkably different experience.
The current one has a strong bias toward engagement & velocity. It amplifies
anger, outrage, and bad faith arguments over less "engaging" content.

If Twitter let off the engagement pedal a bit and re-factored the algorithm,
our political climate might be less hostile overnight.

These companies have long claimed their algorithms are politically unbiased.
That's not true. While I don't believe they lean left or right, they certainly
have a strong bias towards extremism. Extremism keeps you engaged, which
maximizes the time you spend in their apps.

Imagine if Twitter instead decided to bias their algorithm towards positivity

~~~
amanaplanacanal
But engagement is what makes them the money! The profit for them is in never
seeing that this is a problem. There may be no way to fix this.

------
rrggrr
Media criticism of Twitter is suspect. If the Weinstein case in the US has
demonstrated anything, it is that news is itself a currency that can be
traded, hoarded and deployed to accumulate and wield power. Twitter is one of
several welcome checks and balances against that practice, with hopefully more
to follow.

~~~
moorhosj
==news is itself a currency that can be traded, hoarded and deployed to
accumulate and wield power. Twitter is one of several welcome checks and
balances against that practice, with hopefully more to follow.==

Except Twitter can be used to accumulate and wield power just the same. There
are clearly bots on the platform trying to push certain narratives and bury
others.

==Twitter has admitted that more than 50,000 Russia-linked accounts used its
service to post automated material about the 2016 US election== [1]

How is that better?

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-
admits-far-more-russian-bots-posted-on-election-than-it-had-disclosed)

------
ola
It's not only Twitter or politics. I've been playing some Heroes of the Storm
as team building with my company and when we are not a full team the toxicity
can get intense, with some people going far beyond just in match flaming to
harassing with death and rape threats in direct messages long after the match
is over.

Mind you this in a no-stakes free to play game and the phenomenon seems
common. Sometimes I think our culture is not ready for a substantial part of
our communication not to be face to face.

~~~
iak8god
> some people going far beyond just in match flaming to harassing with death
> and rape threats in direct messages long after the match is over.

It sounds like your company needs to fire these toxic individuals ASAP before
the company gets taken to the cleaners in a lawsuit for allowing this to go
on.

~~~
ola
I phrased that badly, these aren't individuals inside the company but people
we play against or play with if we don't have enough for full teams.

------
gaius
I can’t remember who originally said this, but the problem with Twitter is
that you think you’re engaging in jokey banter with your mates but random
strangers are reading each tweet without context in absolute seriousness and
judging you

~~~
CM30
Makes sense. Then again, I think the more general explanation here is that
social media removes the 'multiple faces' people put on for different
situations. In real life, no one acts the same way towards their family, their
friends, their colleagues, their boss, the police/government, random people on
the street, etc. They say different things to different people based on whats
socially acceptable in that situation.

Social media sites are like if everyone in the world could hear everything you
said, without the necessary context to understand why you said it. They've
unintentionally exposed the fact everyone has skeletons in the closet and that
all kinds of disturbing things are said/done outside of the public view.

------
petermcneeley
Noam Chomsky doesnt like twitter either. [https://youtu.be/UOX5ghu-
h-k?t=35](https://youtu.be/UOX5ghu-h-k?t=35)

------
dc2
Twitter is like trying to watch a football game where all 40,000 members of
the audience have a microphone and each think they should be the announcer.

You turn the TV volume off, but members of the media have been perusing the
seats for a interesting cherry-picked "announcer". Finding one, they parrot it
to the rest of the world and that guy's opinion shows up on your phone anyway.

~~~
pjc50
But when this works well, it's actually one of the things I most enjoy about
Twitter: kibitzing live events.

------
pso
[http://archive.is/7gle4](http://archive.is/7gle4)

Cached version, no login required

------
cafard
I doubt that Twitter has improved politics, but I can remember them being
pretty poisonous well before that. I also found a couple of sentences in the
article a little bit apart:

"A majority of UK voters still do not have a Twitter account."

"By 2012, the number of Brits with (more or less active) Twitter accounts had
overtaken the number of people who regularly bought a newspaper."

Hard times for the newspapers, I guess.

------
enraged_camel
Twitter should start placing a visual marker on Tweets that have been posted
via their API. Maybe a yellow exclamation mark around the same location as the
blue check mark (which is for verified accounts).

------
samstave
How many people/resources does twitter have on staff specifically dedicated to
coddling the POTUS?

Given that twitter has achieved a defacto ligitimized status as a mouthpiece
of US policy - how should it be viewed/regulated/handled differently, if any?

Also - what efforts is twitter taking to use the fact that POTUS has
compulsive tweeting issues to sell the service to less sophisticated power
systems in the world.

Are people in other countries, namely more developing countries, encouraged by
twitter to use twitter as an official messaging system for their political
machinations?

I mean, the philippines is one of the most connected-via-mobile developing
nations, with a large population in the US and a very western society -- is
twitter attempting to be an official platform in the philippines? I would
expect so.

What about other nations?

Then, when they are a defacto standard medium for power structures
communicating to their populations, then what standards is twitter held to?
What implications does/will this have?

------
mhneu
When new methods of communication arise, they will eventually be exploited by
the powerful and the wealthy to achieve their ends.

------
nbeleski
I am of the opinion that in a couple of decades we will look back at all these
social networks and find that they caused a lot of problems, in social and
personal levels.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, even Linkedin, do they really bring more
benefits than detriments? I personally don't think so.

------
thundershine
Normal people got access to the internet. It all went downhill from there.

~~~
throwaway5250
It was like the September burst of freshmen that never ended? LOL. (Not that
I'm disagreeing, exactly.)

And before #MeToo, there was "Me too!" :-)

Maybe the world is just a better place when almost all of us keep our mouths
shut almost all of the time.

------
simplecomplex
The medium is the message.

~~~
gdubs
I'd love to re-read McCluhan with Twitter and Facebook in mind – but I'll be
honest: I've struggled every time I've tried to get through his writings.

~~~
smacktoward
I took a stab at a more readable McLuhanite interpretation of Facebook a few
years ago: [https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-
twitter/](https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/)

~~~
gdubs
Thanks - interesting read. I always took “the medium is the message” a little
differently than that author does. To me, I felt like McCluhan was saying that
it almost doesn’t matter what the message is — the medium itself is the
message, and it’s a message that is consistent regardless of the information
being conveyed through it. It’s why Trump is so effective at Twitter — it’s
not what he says so much as he is tapped into the medium better than almost
anyone else.

------
fullshark
I only see three paragraphs here and I can't make sense of them

------
komali2
I just wish it wasn't full of bots... facebook is my only actual way to put a
thumb on political opinions across the spectrum I have access to (friends in
SF, Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and then internationally).

Despite subscribing to one of those bot blocklists, it's still incessant.
There's just _so many bots_. It's become a mild hobby of mine to hop on the
latest "Twitter Moment" about politics just to refresh my public blocklist.

~~~
justtopost
> facebook is my only actual way to put a thumb on political opinions across
> the spectrum

I... uhh... think that is arguably just about as biased as twitter.

Maybe go talk to people, you know, outside? A dark bar if outsides not your
thing? If you feel someones online statements are the truth in their heart, I
am afraid we are at an impasse.

~~~
komali2
The only people I talk to on Facebook are my real life friends. Why wouldn't
their posts be the truth in their heart?

Why are you presuming I don't talk to people at bars? Just last night I had
the opportunity to talk to some of the flood of young conservatives shipped
into the city for fleet week, at a bar.

------
protomyth
How about we take a look at the relationship of the size of an original tweet
and click-bait headlines? Twitter wasn't the beginning, it was just a massive
next step on click-bait to get eyeballs on ads. It has evolved to the point of
punditry and playing to "your" audience and being actually false. Hey, at
least "Headless Body found in Topless Bar" was accurate.

------
paulsutter
Whatever is broken is an opportunity to create something better. Problems wont
cause a retreat to three TV networks. It wasn't long ago that we had Myspace,
Friendster, and Geocities.

The next 20 years will see a fascinating evolution in this space. Nobody
should think that competition is over, or that these platforms have won. These
issues should feel very exciting to folks in technology.

~~~
save_ferris
How does this mentality address the issue that Twitter and Facebook have
evolved into what they are based largely on the capital incentives to grow as
quickly as possible, be as opaque as possible, and gather as much consumer
data as possible?

Twitter still refuses to publicly state how many of its users are bots largely
because it knows the financial implications for doing so.

Facebook has released the bare minimum amount of information related to
Russian interference, despite reports that its still ongoing.

What does competition look like against these companies when the financial
incentives encourage more consumer data gathering, not less?

~~~
rayvy
While I agree generally with what you're saying "We're screwed indefinitely
until the incentives change", I like to remind myself that IBM was once one of
the most dominating companies in the world. Yea, IBM (and my parents were
children during this time). All companies come and go, literally all of them.
In a few decades we (i.e., our descendants) will be looking back thinking how
funny it is that we (i.e., us) ever got sucked into this so viciously.

I agree with the parent comment in that - Google and Facebook and the like
have exposed some _serious_ problems, that they can't fix (as they are
financially incentivized not to fix them), so someone, someday will come along
and eat their lunch? Who what when where and why? Your guess is as good as
mine.

------
afinlayson
Instead of crapping all over one platform or another, or thinking politics is
full of cheats and con men, what are we doing to promote ideas that aren't my
half will chant at your half.

We have a lot of power in tech to make things better, but we often pass it on,
and let those who want to exploit it take advantage of our passiveness.

------
tareqak
The cost of communication has fallen much faster (quantity of discourse) than
the cost of education (quality of discourse). I don't just mean monetary cost:
time, effort, and attention required to communicate is much less than the
amount of those three required to keep yourself informed.

------
kgin
Twitter is great for publishing information updates. It's terrible for having
a conversation or reasoned debate. Almost all of the built-in incentives are
the exact opposite of what you'd want if you were creating a place for
conversation and debate.

------
desireco42
I would say politics and people involved with it poisoned Twitter.

------
vmarshall23
Loudest voices to the dumbest people

------
jonesdc
This took incredibly long to load on Chrome mobile

~~~
burlesona
Looks like their page is down.

~~~
r3bl
As far as I can tell, it's only three paragraphs with no actual substance. I
wasn't able to get the cached version of it, so here's a dump:

> At 3.12pm on 20th November 2014, Emily Thornberry hit tweet. The Labour MP
> for Islington South and Finsbury, then serving as Shadow Attorney General,
> posted a photograph of a house in Kent, decked with three flags bearing the
> St George’s Cross. Her caption? “Image from #Rochester.” At 6.15pm she
> tweeted again, apologising for “any offence caused by the three flag
> picture,” adding that “people should fly the England flag with pride!” By
> 10.30pm she had resigned from the front bench.

> The political autopsy lasted days, focusing largely on the question of
> whether Thornberry had opened a window on to metropolitan Labour’s cultural
> alienation from—and perhaps even contempt for—working-class voters in small
> towns. But looking back, the significance of that episode is not as a
> snapshot of political turbulence, but as a development in the process that
> turns turbulence into news. What stands out is the medium, not the message.
> In autumn 2014, Twitter was already a recreational habit for Britain’s
> political class. But “Image from #Rochester” marked a watershed moment for
> the social media website. Without the super-accelerated online frenzy, there
> was no story.

> Four years later, the Twitterstorm is not only routine, it is the qualifying
> benchmark for newsworthy controversy. Anyone who doesn’t squander hours
> every day on the platform might be baffled as to why its name occurs with
> such frequency in news bulletins. A majority of UK voters still do not have
> a Twitter account. Yet the site’s impact in Westminster and on the way
> politics works is real and exceptional, not because of how many people use
> it, but because of who they are—politicians, their devotees and the
> journalists supposed to be holding them to account.

------
pteredactyl
How people poisoned politics.

