Twitter — a risk not worth taking
I left Twitter over a year ago. I tried lots of different options before settling on BlueSky as my new social home. But, as a teacher, there was one question outstanding…
For many years now, I have been using Twitter as a teaching aid. When you are teaching people how to use social networks, Twitter was (note the tense) a pretty good tool. The algorithm was relatively light, you could see what was going on, you got some useful analytics, you could show the value of different interactions… It ticked many boxes that some, like the walled-garden that is Facebook, couldn’t tick.
But then came The Change.
I tried hard not to worry about The Change. I had been on Twitter for something like 15 years, built a decent audience, knew that I could interact with them and ignore the noise…
…but things changed.
Badly.
All of a sudden, and it was sudden, it was like that scene out of Ghostbusters when the inspector for the Environmental Protection Agency, Walter Peck, who knew best despite being told that going down to the basement and turning off the electricity that powered the ghost storage facility was a Bad Idea but did it anyway and unleashed hell on the city.
(345) Ghostbusters Containment Unit Shutdown: Putts Law in Action — YouTube
Let’s pause there for a moment. I’m not going to lie, I’m really pleased with that analogy. No point trying to gloss over it. All those ghouls flying out of their prison and infecting the city is pretty much exactly what happened on Twitter and, in the midst of it all, looking pleased with himself and trying to blame anyone but himself was Twitter’s own Walter Peck — Elon Musk.
This is a great example of Putt’s Law — “Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand”.
Since The Change, users have been furnished with a new algorithm, giving plenty of opportunity to view unrequested porn, violence, and illegal content (from beheadings to child sexual exploitation images) along with a smorgasbord of racism, misogyny, bigotry and assorted hatred.
We know that a lot of advertisers have taken the view that they don’t want their brands to be shown next to this wretched hive of scum and villainy (different film) and, from my point of view, I don’t really want to be part of a platform that is making money off the back of the sexual exploitation of kids.
Because that is what is happening. If Twitter is serving ads next to content and that content is images of children getting abused, Twitter’s still getting money. The only way to stop that is to stop using Twitter. Anything else is enabling it.
Anyway, this all leads me to another issue. In a teaching environment, I have a duty of care to my students. My students for the past 15 years have all been adults but that does not remove the duty of care. And if I am faced with the possibility of a student coming across unrequested illegal content, what am I supposed to do? What choice do I have?
Everyone will need to take their own risk-based decision. I am not talking on behalf of anyone else or any organisation, nor would I dream of doing so, but, for me, I have made the decision to ban Twitter inside the classroom. It is not the only network in town and it is not worth the risk of coming across something that is harmful.
The best thing (there’s always a positive) is that, not only are there other networks in town, there are now other networks that are better suited to teaching and learning techniques of organic social networking. To give Musk his due, he has actually managed to supercharge the development of some of these networks as people actively search for escape routes.
So, there we are. 15 years and 10,000 followers, my work in many ways, dumped in the interests of safety. And we start again.
Indeed, that’s a key learning from all of this, for all of us. People like Musk will come and go (although, in my experience, they never go quickly enough). They will buy their plaything and destroy businesses and livelihoods through collateral damage that they neither know nor care about. What is important is the ability to adapt and find new outlets and, frankly, to always be ready to move away from toxicity, not be bound to it by a sense of inertia.
So, the next step of my adventure will take place on BlueSky. I’d love to see you there — @jamesmb.bsky.social — don’t forget to say hi and if you could find me 10,000 followers…
The author would like to make it clear that this article represents his personal views and not (necessarily) the views of any of his employers or clients, past or present. And nobody has asked him to say that!
