How Twitter Broke My Mind: Summary

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.

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.

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 censorship attempt led directly to an explosion of discussion and dispute which raised the profile of the original reporting by several orders of magnitude.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So, 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.

And in that light, here are my key Twitter-influenced takeaway thoughts for 2020, all discussed in more detail here:

· Donald Trump is flawed and is socially disruptive.

· Donald Trump lives in everyone’s head.

· Joe Biden represents the pre-Trump past.

· No one will win the US election.

· Populism is here to stay.

· Fake news is a thing.

· Conspiracies are not a thing.

· People panic and misconstrue risk.

· Covid is the new normal.

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!

The full article can be found here.