When the age of the blog ended, the age of social media began
[NOTE: I see that Twitterfiles #6 is now up [hat tip: commenter “Griffin]. I plan to deal with it in a post tomorrow.]
John Hayward writes:
The corruption Musk is exposing at Twitter makes it seem more obvious in retrospect that the Internet would become an instrument of totalitarianism, much more than it would be a bold new frontier for free speech…
The idealistic vision of Internet freedom came closest to reality during the golden age of the blog, which only lasted a decade or so. Bloggers built their own networks and found their own audiences. It was difficult to silence them. They made history a few times.
Blogging was supplanted by social media, which allowed totalitarian ideologies and political corruption to flourish because they created choke points that could be controlled by a few massive corporations and their politicized staffers.
Instead of bloggers setting up their own websites, linking to each other, and building their own traffic networks, now we had a handful of platforms that provided the ILLUSION of free speech, and it seemed to be easier than blogging – but as Musk is showing us, it was a lie.
Centralization of information was too big a temptation for those who yearn for power, and for those who already have power. That became apparent even before the Twitter files were released, but now it’s completely obvious.
For whatever reasons, I loved blogs from the start and hated social media from the start. But I don’t think that was because I looked into a crystal ball and immediately saw what the future held. What did I see in social media? I saw huge rewards for the cruel quick jab and a way to amplify the nastiness across the country and even the world. I saw wokeness destroy people early on – Justine Sacco, for example, whom I wrote about here, who learned how very costly a joke on social media could be if it offended the woke.
Here are some Twitter banning decisions I wrote about that disturbed me in various ways: this and this. And here’s an interesting post from 2017, about the power of Twitter. It ends with this thought:
Prior to Twitter, presidents and other government officials communicated with the public through government channels, sometimes filtered through the MSM. Social media such as Twitter allows a president to reach the public more directly. But there’s still a middleman—Twitter itself. The president and the public rely on the integrity of the Twitter system, but is there any real reason to trust it?
That last question was always merely rhetorical.
And hey, I even wrote about Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council and called it “Orwellian” in early 2016, which is when it first was instituted:
Apparently the social justice warriors have come to police twitter, via something with the quasi-Orwellian title of the Trust and Safety Council. I suggest you follow the link to learn more about it, but it seems to be some sort of attempt to “ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter.”
But I thought the whole point of Twitter was verbal combat in an unsafe place…
Oh, did I mention that conservative blogger and author Stacy McCain was recently banned, and several conservative bloggers have also quit in protest?
Apparently Yoel Roth had not yet come onboard as the head of Trust and Safety. His predecessor was mentioned here:
Only a few weeks earlier, Twitter had announced the creation of a “Trust and Safety Council,” to which it appointed Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist known for denouncing “sexism” in video games, a prominent figure in the Gamergate controversy—and oh yes, a frequent target of criticism from McCain. So it sure looks like the moment Twitter gave Sarkeesian the power to do so, she started blackballing her critics.
Is this what has come from the Internet’s promise of open and unfettered speech, liberated from the gatekeepers of the “legacy media”? Or did we make the old gatekeepers obsolete, only so we could impose new ones?
The whole thing reminds me of the book Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after Democracy in America. In The Old Regime and the French Revolution, he examined the failed promise of France’s rebellion against monarchy. What concerned him was not just the Terror and the beheadings, but the fact that the French toppled all of their institutions and tried to remake their politics, only to see all the old institutions re-assert themselves. They ended up with the same system, just under new rulers. The main similarity between the new system and the Ancien Régime was its administrative centralization, the way everything was controlled out of Paris, sapping all power and initiative from local institutions.
But I think social media became a worse system than what it replaced. A centralized platform such as Twitter facilitates a more extreme reach for the censor.
[NOTE II: Yesterday Elon Musk banned some Twitter users on the left, several of them journalists, and the left was outraged. They’re used to being the ones to control things and they believe they have an absolute right to do so. Musk’s bannings don’t seem arbitrary or political, because they have to do with violating rules about doxxing by location tracking in real time. Please read this.]
Substack sites are basically blogs…the only substantive difference, as far a I can tell, is that it’s easy to charge for the content, if one wants–and they seem to be growing nicely.
A major problem with social media is that it violates the pricipal of subsidiarity–instead of a number of independent forums, it is one big intertwined ball of string. Whereas individual bloggers can maintain whatever standards of civility they want to–and civility is to some degree self-creating when a community has mostly the same members over time and reputations manner. Whereas social media is a form of Mass Man.
It is certainly *possible* to create distinct communities on Facebook…and I think it’s possible on Twitter…but most people aren’t going to do it or to become members of such communities.
Back in ’98, I had a handicrafts-oriented blog … it didn’t last long because i had little children to herd those days … but does anyone remember the “web ring?” You had to communicate with other bloggers (technically it wasn’t blogging yet, it was still called website) and they had to hard-code you into their circle … then you could stroll around the circle, looking at many different websites … each little group was different and … diverse! Now we have blogrolls, which are not nearly as diverse or charming.
I was on Facebook about a week, never could figure Twitter out. The Social Media I do is here on Blogs and some news sites. I read a number every day, comment here and Instapundit. I am happy with what I have.
This short thread goes into the background of the guy that was tracking Musk’s (and others) private plane which the banned journalists were spreading to varying degrees.
https://twitter.com/FearTheFloof/status/1603892068912402434
Not sure how I feel about Musk banning them honestly.
Facebook and Twitter are both considered Social Media.
Yet I find them light years apart.
I still blog, but then post on FB to a larger audience.
I’m older school than blogging.
I broadcast on radio. 🙂 with callers.
Other than telephone party lines, that’s the original social media.
Except maybe newspapers.
And I owned one of those, too. 🙂
Reporting on how many trips people take on private planes is one thing; reporting on their locations in real time is another, because this invites harassment and possibly violence. Musk’s new rule is no location information in real time; delayed reporting on where people went will still be okay.
I have a Twitter account, and I use the site as a blog. I go to my browser to search for Twitter feeds for people whose opinions and news links I want to read. Twitter could ban someone I want to read, but otherwise, visibility filtering has no effect, since I don’t use their search engine.
Kate,
That is exactly how I use twitter. I have never tweeted but I have an account and I follow a mix of like 25-30 political and sports figures that interest me. The algorithm shows me plenty of others that I don’t follow and sometimes I block them and sometimes I’m introduced to somebody new I was not aware of. Happened big time during Covid.
It really is the best place for breaking news of any kind.
Really good piece by Abigail Shrier on the doxxing of Musk and others and his banning them from twitter.
https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/real-time-doxxing-and-the-littlest
Quillette has a collection of three essays on the future of Twitter…here’s an excerpt from the one by Jim Rutt:
“A collective-intelligence platform would be much more than a “town square” in which people can yell at each other. It would be a place in which people can self-organize into communities of interest, and where they can individually and collectively discover and curate quality information sources and reach conclusions. In such an ecosystem, quality thinkers could find their respective audiences, and teams of people could coalesce and collaborate on addressing the questions that might improve our lives. I’m not just talking about “big problems” like climate change or the risk of nuclear war—a good collective-intelligence platform can help us better address questions and problems at any scale: Should I quit my job? How do I fix the chronic water leak in my basement? What’s a good design for a 10-square-meter vegetable garden? Getting the right information and connecting to the right people at the right time will be vital. ”
https://quillette.com/2022/12/14/can-elon-musk-improve-twitter-a-roundtable/
Are blogs really dead, or did they just move to Substack? I don’t really see that social media replaced blogging. They are so very different.
If it hasn’t already been done, Substack or someone else could set up an aggregator site that links to what’s happening in blogging on a a daily basis. It would do a lot to revive the blogoverse, if it needs reviving. DrudgeReport, aldaily, scitechdaily already do that for different sectors of the internet, but the blogosphere is a larger than what they’ve presented.
Jordan Peterson explains how female psychopathy and general Machiavellianism is unleashed by such free tools as anonymity and speed of digital social media provide, after explaining that conservatives are at genuine disadvantage, in political strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb6XUDCebQ8
He also shares insights about Musk’s talents and tasks taking on the Twitterverse.
Yeah, but why did people jump into social media in the first place?
It’s a lot bigger than social media. In the days of blogging, most Internet content was generated by “nerds”, people who care enough about something to work on it and share it for free.
Nowadays most Internet content is generated by or in the service of marketing. And unless a webpage is entirely homebrewed, there is code attached that is aggregating information on you which is being sold and otherwise monetized, mostly through targeted advertising. They watch not just what you click on but what you don’t, and what you hover your cursor over but don’t click, and how long it takes you to make up your mind…
This data is available at a cost even small businesses can afford. Not too long ago I went to work for one of these small businesses and I found out that I was in their purchased data (along with everyone else naturally)–the information there wasn’t up to date or completely accurate but I was startled, and I shouldn’t have been. (I hadn’t anticipated the emotional impact of seeing your own name in there.)
And that’s why the centralization of social media. It was hand-in-hand with monetizing the Internet.
The strategy is nearly always to give something away for free to people that lets you target them with advertising. Some tiny percentage of the targets buy what you’re selling. What you sell them pays for all the marketing you already did, and so you make a profit by targeting them further as well as selling your targets to other entities who wish to target them.
The data is more valuable the more comprehensive it is, and the giant social media companies are uniquely placed to capture that data, hence their profitable and close collaboration with marketers.
Legacy media has been nearly entirely captured by marketing, which is why the NYT and WaPo and their ilk increasingly skew their content to the people who already read them. Anything “fact” you see in legacy media should be approached with the same skepticism you apply to any other advertising–it may be true, but they are telling it to you because they want you to buy something, not because it has information value.
Abraxas…”If it hasn’t already been done, Substack or someone else could set up an aggregator site that links to what’s happening in blogging on a a daily basis”
Any Twitter user could do it. Probably wasn’t really feasible pre-Musk due to the unpredictable blocking, but easily do-able now. Question would be which blogs do you link and how much for each one–every post every day, or only ones you think are particularly significant?
I read a lot of blogs, because I know how censored and slanted the social media giants are, along with the main stream media. I even stopped reading daily newspapers which I grew up doing, including the wsj, after I noticed the leftist slant. When I visit my parents house and glance at the la times, it’s a bit upsetting to see the level of bs and politicalization, basically propaganda. I start asking why was this written? What is the goal?
It’s a lot of work to escape the bubble. Sometimes I fall for the propaganda, masking and the Covid Vax. I have become a lot more non trusting after so many lies have been exposed. So much credibility of the press has been squandered. And so much credibility of so called experts.
I prefer the trust, but verify way of thinking. I’m now in many areas, first ask the who, what, and why. Tom Luongo is making a lot more sense to me now days.
Talking to regular people on politics and current events is surreal. Most don’t even realize they are in their created media bubble / safe space.
TJ…I have an aversion to Internet videos that consist of talking heads, too time-inefficient compared with reading. Any chance you could summarize Peterson’s points/argument?
See also my related posts Freedom, the Village, and Social Media:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58551.html
and Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57600.html
Those are both excellent posts, David. I was especially struck by the dos Passos anecdote, as I had a similar moment of recognition at a protest in 1970. It wasn’t a big deal, just a hundred people or so demanding that the president of the university come out and talk to them. Or rather be yelled at by them, of course. People got more and more agitated, and I suddenly realized that they were right on the verge of becoming a mob, and that the mob would have been capable of violence. It didn’t cure me of my leftism but it had an effect.
And this: “For a lot of people, the ability to combine submission (to the group) with aggression (toward the designated targets of the group) is very attractive.” I’m very aware of this, and see it in operation among progressives all the time. And they absolutely do not or cannot see it themselves. It operates on the right, too, obviously, but seems to me somewhat different there, though I haven’t been able to pin down why. Could just be my own bias.
}}} Musk’s bannings don’t seem arbitrary or political, because they have to do with violating rules about doxxing by location tracking in real time.
More critically, it was personal. They doxxed his kids. They’re lucky he hasn’t hired hit men to go after them. 50-100k each is pocket lint for him.
😀
}}} Question would be which blogs do you link and how much for each one–every post every day, or only ones you think are particularly significant?
Swiftian Flappers…
This is where “Influencers” come in. They say, “hey, look at this!” and someone does. Neo is that, in many ways. She does it on a more small-scale level, but in general it’s the kind of way things ought to go — you learn to trust the influencers you choose, because they steer you consistently towards truth and utility, and maybe fun as well.
There are many of these already, I don’t think he has much truth or utility, but clearly George Takei is an example. Breitbart qualified when he was alive. Crowder and Rogan also qualify in many ways.
Some have gotten bigger than “influencers”, such as Ben Shapiro, who has become a brand outlet, pretty much.