The social media cesspool

After much agonising, early this week I deactivated my Twitter (X) account. It was a decision long in coming. I joined Facebook in 2008, Twitter in 2009. Over the last 15 years I have been an active user of both, even as I successfully steered clear of WhatsApp! Social media is a powerful tool for the good, but it is also a dangerous force.

When Jack Dorsey and his co-founders started Twitter, it is unlikely they envisaged the powerful platform it became. It was really a group messaging platform, which quickly grew into a source of news, and for many years has been the world’s largest ‘newspaper’ aggregating news reports and information sources across the globe into one space. This was phenomenal and progressive. It revolutionised the information sphere, democratised news flow, made possible instant communication and keeping abreast with events. Yet, in this lies precisely the ugly side and double-edged nature of Twitter, to which I return shortly.Until a few years ago, in my view Twitter was a platform of thoughtful opinions and constructive exchanges. I vigorously participated in many arguments with colleagues and strangers. I immensely benefited from ideas I hadn’t encountered before, and learnt a great deal from better minds.In my academic profession, Twitter was a go-to for tips and insights on a range of issues, from teaching and literature to conferences and publications. But then the deterioration became apparent, driven in part by the platform’s design and features.Getting likes and ‘followers’ fuelled attention-seeking and incendiary posts that drive traffic and engagement. In order to rally more engagement, which in turn swells the quantitative metrics out of which Twitter (and other social media platforms) derive advertising revenue, the platform’s algorithms promote precisely those posts that are salacious even if false, what’s not true trends.While a platform for free discourse and information flow is laudable, without institutionalised regulation and guardrails, we end up with flouring of misinformation and disinformation, unfettered circulation of falsehoods and fakes. Pettiness and petulance triumphs over principled arguments and thoughtful conversations. Toxic drivel trumps fair-minded discourse. This is where Twitter stands today – a cesspool. The situation became worse following takeover of the company by a billionaire with the financial wherewithal to procure a gigantic platform, the leading global digital square, and use it for whatever social and political goals he chooses.Today, Twitter algorithms forcefully bombard any user with political campaign advertising that is so skewed and over which one can do precious little to avoid. The sole owner has all the powers to instruct Twitter engineers to reset things as he pleases.To be sure, he paid a staggering $44 billion, so it is his company; he can run it the way he wants. The only recourse for users like your columnist, who feel things have gone terribly wrong, is to quit or find alternatives.But because the social media model is pretty much the same, designed to maximise user-engagement out of which to harvest huge advertising revenues, most if not all platforms are afflicted by the same malady.Sensationalism, rather than serious thought, generates engagement and drives traffic, meaning that wild posts that easily capture the attention of users become the focus even when totally false, baseless or misleading. By the time a baseless claim or an outright falsehood is debunked, the damage to, if not total destruction of, one’s reputation or a company/organisation’s image may very well be irreparable.At the individual level, Twitter grew into a place for massaging egos and building echo-chambers rather than a space for reasoned disagreement and thoughtful deliberation. For those overtly seeking attention, it is common to attach a person’s picture to every Twitter-post, arguably in the anticipation that facial appearance attracts interest and drives traffic.What’s more, Twitter’s ‘block’ feature, which effectively shuts off the blocked user from one’s page, provides a kind of badge of honour and a good-feeling. Often, the blocking is triggered by a comment one doesn’t like or when challenged instead of being cheered.It tends to be all well with ‘likes’, when cheered on in the echo-chamber until a contrarian appears with a view even only remotely challenging someone’s assertions – the block button is activated.Rather than a platform for robust discussion and rigorous discourse, then, Twitter has become site for cheap pandering, clout-chasing, attention-seeking, sensationalism and sheer misinformation.I’m neither a seer nor prophet of doom, but as I have argued here before, I believe that the Internet with its unlimited capabilities and never-ending possibilities holds the potential for ending the current world.The ‘bomb’ that will destroy this planet will most likely come from the Internet through social media!