How Twitter Broke My Mind

With assists from 2020’s all-stars: Biden, Trump, and King Covid

Twitter’s failed censorship attempt ironically led to more free speech.

This arose from the network’s main benefit: the most open discussion on the web.

Twitter gives us key insights into the profound social changes of 2020.

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791

Digitosis

Twitter and Facebook placed themselves smack dab in the middle of the US election with their sorry attempt to censor the Hunter Biden emails article published by the New York Post.

Twitter’s decision was based on terms of service that forbid posting personal, hacked, or unauthorized information on the site.

The controversy later expanded to temporarily locking the accounts of the President’s press secretary, the official Trump campaign, and the New York Post itself.

Whether seen as a proper or self-serving enforcement of Twitter rules, there is no denying that the decision was fundamentally political, and could only be construed as such given that the article implicates Joe Biden in a corruption scheme with his son only weeks before voting day.

Now, how did I and millions of other people become aware of this double scandal?

Why, from reading Twitter, of course!

In one of the continuing ironies of social media, the very act of attempting to censor information led to a flood of posts that drew the attention of every sentient user of the site.

I follow almost 170 people there (about half the number of the typical user) and I would bet that a good portion of them put out tweets within an hour of the censorship decision — and they continued to do so for the next several days.

Much of the outrage was directed against the company for its effrontery in blocking and filtering the Post’s content. By these actions, Twitter behaved as a publisher, rather than as a platform, thus risking intrusive federal regulation that could hamper their commercial operations in the future.

On the other side of the debate, many commentators on Twitter saw a misinformation campaign at work and lauded the company for its quick and uncompromising action against the Post article.

Unsurprisingly, given today’s highly partisan environment, these opposing views were neatly parsed by the authors’ political affiliations, Republican or Democrat.

But either way, the corporate censor failed miserably at the assigned task of stopping information from flowing.

The attempt led directly to an explosion of discussion and dispute which raised the profile of the original reporting by several orders of magnitude. Tweeted feedback also caused the company to (marginally) change its policies and led to next week’s required appearance before a US Senate committee.

At the end of the day, we can see that Twitter is so rambunctious that it cannot effectively impose censorship on itself.

Hooray for the power of free and bountiful speech!

Flip Sides

And hooray for Twitter, even with this stumble, for being such an effective mechanism for sharing ideas across our society.

I truly value this aspect of the site, which is normally a place for unimpeded and freewheeling debate of important issues.

It is the only major social media site that offers instant reaction to any idea, whether pro or con, and the spectrum of contributors is so vast that virtually every angle on every important idea is considered. It is the rare day that I do not learn something consequential from at least one of the contributors.

Now, this positive review is not what you will typically hear from most people.

For instance, the hugely successful Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma is perhaps a better reflection of popular opinion.

A number of industry experts in the documentary argue that Twitter and other social media companies create addictive behaviors, waste our time, manipulate users, warp our values, present a false sense of reality, and, ultimately, contribute to the downfall of our society.

This probably overstates the negatives, since we all have agency and there is nothing wrong with strong and vigorous debate. Assuming that everyone is a pliable victim or a sucker is not an accurate view of reality.

However, there is certainly some truth to these critiques, since all of humanity’s accumulated knowledge is now at our fingertips, but we only have the same limited ability to process and apply it to our lives. Our tech tools like social media have raced ahead at light speed but we are mere biology, mentally evolving at nature’s glacial speed limits.

It is no wonder that these processing limits sometimes lead us to false beliefs and a sense of faux affiliation with some people and a scorning disapproval of others.

I can also see the worry some have about the extraordinary number of hours spent on-line each day and concerns about social divisions, though they will only be resolved with more thought and more speech, not less.

At the same time, but on the positive side of the ledger, we are experiencing an unprecedented expansion of learning, personal expression, and social involvement through social media.

This is no longer a world of network television, traditional media, and political establishment consensus on many issues. It is a time of enhanced freedom and the ability to speak out on any topic that we each determine is important to us.

Twitter and its kin empower people with a lasting commodity: the ability to seek truth by tapping the collective wisdom (and dissenting views) of others.

It is the age of the enabled individual in a land of virtually unlimited discussion. It’s all there for the taking, as much as you could possibly consume. Seek and ye shall find.

2020

So, in the context of the most recent example of failed speech control, I can declare that Twitter continues to break my mind, in a positive way that offers fresh perspectives on what I thought were settled issues and with provocative points of view on the news of the day.

This year, in particular, has been a time when a great deal of learning has been possible, given the upending of almost every aspect of our society.

Here are my key takeaway thoughts for 2020, all informed by reading Twitter on the glowing screen of my smart phone:

· Donald Trump is a flawed human being (like all of us) and is socially disruptive. He is the source of all evil for some people and a savior of the nation to others. Every issue is political in 2020 and his combative style has exposed previously hidden social fractures. For good or for bad, according to the observer, he is a force for change.

· Donald Trump lives in everyone’s head. His name has been uttered more than any other in the history of humanity. He is the most famous person ever. Given this, we can garner far more insight into the human condition by studying the reaction of others to him, than by picking apart his every tweet. The views of seven billion people, especially in the collective, are far more interesting than those of one person. Twitter provides those views.

· Joe Biden is a career politician who represents continuity with the pre-Trump past. He is the leader of the anti-Trump movement and so Trump lives in his head as well. When everyone and everything is gauged against Trump, it is hard to believe that a Biden political victory will auger in a new age. The social changes underpinning Trump are too powerful for a reversion to the past.

· No one will win the US election. There will be no lopsided and conclusive victory and neither side will fully accept defeat. Perma-politics will continue at the present loud volume and partisanship will further spread its tentacles into all areas of society. US politics will continue to be judged negatively by the rest of the world and the prejudice against Americans (one of the few still socially allowed) will be unabated.

· Populism is here to stay. Nationalism is here to stay. State power is here to stay. Covert warfare is here to stay. Disruptive technology is here to stay. Volatile economics is here to stay. The virtual world is here to stay. Culture clashes are here to stay. Social division is here to stay. Partisanship is here to stay. Protest is here to stay. Anarchism is here to stay. Our social crisis is here to stay.

· Fake news is a thing. One part is propaganda, deliberate disinformation that shades the truth. Another part is that people have strong beliefs and they cater their arguments to support those views. Yelling “fake news” is an accusation, an often biased way to say that you disagree with someone and here is the proof. People sometimes argue over facts or logic, but underneath that they are really battling over values and beliefs. Twitter debates never resolve these disagreements — they only expose the arguments of all sides. Fake news is everywhere.

· Conspiracies are not a thing. Incompetence, ignorance, and ill-informed policies better explain the unmitigated spread of Covid and the catastrophic impact of the WHO and governments on public health, the economy, and civil society. Hubris is a constant of the human condition and is the single best word to sum up our Covid response in 2020 (and the climate change debate before it). We think that we can control nature — but we cannot.

· People panic. They misconstrue risk. They are suspicious of strangers and outsiders. They take sides. They condemn heretics and dissidents. They select evidence to match their beliefs. They want politicians to do something. They are attracted to simple slogans. They put their faith in man-made solutions. They blame politicians for bad outcomes. Thus, the story of our individual and collective reactions to the pandemic this year.

· Covid is the new normal. Even though the pandemic is over in most places, with only ever one exponential wave of excess illness and death anywhere, its spirit lives on in rules, regulations, and new seemingly permanent social habits. If the War on Terror was able to distort our economy and society for two decades, then the impacts of fearing a recurring virus will surely last longer. We are the authors of our fate and can only change this trajectory by convincing our fellow citizens and politicians to treat the viral threat in proportion to its true relatively minimal risk for most people.

We should all look forward to a 2021 that is as thought-provoking as this year, without the downsides of a history-warping social panic and the greatest public policy error ever.

There must be easier ways to learn about the human condition.

See you on Twitter!