Tag Archives: twitter

I have always been a pretty strong advocate for free speech. To me it’s the underpinning of a robust democratic society. We don’t have to like what someone says, but they have a right to say it as long as it isn’t hate speech or harmful to someone. We shouldn’t allow racism, threats, and doxing, but we should allow differences of opinions and even angry rants when they are not threatening to a person or group of people.

But I’m struggling with the lack of good faith that I’m seeing. In our country, I see a lot of protests and anger towards our Prime Minister. I believe people should be allowed to protest and share their concerns, but when I see articles like, ‘Attack on Trudeau unsurprising, experts say, warning of future violence against politicians‘ stating that he was “pelted with gravel while at a campaign stop in London, Ont.” Or I read that he was heckled so loudly that he couldn’t continue a speech… Then that is going way too far. This isn’t protest, it’s fascist, it is intolerant and oppressive.

There is a difference between voicing concerns and harassment. There is a difference between protesting and threatening, there is a difference between peaceful, civil behavior and what seems to be happening today.

If I was to describe my politics, I’m definitely left of center. And while I fundamentally disagree with many things Ben Shapiro thinks and says, I get upset when I read articles that he can’t even speak at a university because of safety concerns… And that was 6 years ago! Things are even worse now. Much worse.

When I recently read, “The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after being accused of evading questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.” I am deeply concerned. Should students be allowed to protest? Absolutely! Should they be allowed to promote genocide of any person or people as part of their protest? Absolutely not.

It’s an easy line to draw. Absolutely not. That’s acting in bad faith. That’s undermining our democracy and our freedoms.

We need to differentiate how we handle protests and free speech by people who are acting in good faith from those acting in bad faith. The very rights and freedoms we are given in a free and democratic society depend on us doing so. When we give those freedoms to people that abuse them, we subvert our own liberty. We diminish our freedoms and allow others, with harmful words and actions, to impose less civil values on us.

When free speech is misused, it harms us all. When violence is advocated or permitted; when protests prevent civil conversation and debate; when harassment is permitted; we all suffer. We can’t let people acting in bad faith weaken our civil liberties. We can’t just expect people to act in good faith, the minority who don’t will be too disruptive. We need to squash the bad faith actors. The trick is that we need to do so with legal actions. We need to have zero tolerance for intolerance, and we need to create laws that clearly restrict and penalize threats, hate crimes, and malice.

This is known as the paradox of tolerance, “The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.”

Instead, what I am seeing is things like this happening:

People who have caused over a decade of harm to others do not deserve a social media platform. That’s not censorship, that’s prevention of further malice, pain, and suffering to innocent people. As I contemplate leaving Twitter, news like this makes me lean towards shutting down my account. But I don’t pretend that will have any meaningful impact beyond my own peace of mind.

The acceptance of bad faith actors has been building over the past decade, and we are deep into the consequences now. Free speech should only be a right for people who act in good faith. There can be disagreement, there can be discourse, there can even be civil arguments and protests. What there can’t be are bad faith actors and activists using free speech as a mechanism to promote harmful ideas, hate, violence, and disruptions to public discourse. For this we need zero tolerance.

Related: Ideas on a Spectrum

Communities and Conversations of the Past

I’ve shared quite a bit of nostalgia about the old days of Twitter, and what a wonderful community it was. I was reminded of this a couple times on LinkedIn today. First was a post by Dean Shareski, shared fully here:

Are online communities still a thing? When I think about the last 2 decades I would argue that Twitter in the early 2010s was the height of educator community engagement. And yet I’d argue that was more network than community. Various mom and pop spaces have come and gone with the intent of creating safe and robust ways for educators to connect. During my tenure at Discovery we tried unsuccessfully to create such a space.
I still see attempts to make this work but I’m not seeing it. This platform currently seems to be the best option but still lacks safety and intimacy to take conversation and learning to the next level.
Maybe online communities are a white whale. What is the best we can hope for in terms of online engagement and community for educators?

I commented:

While I’ve missed the edutwitter era dearly since that time when I engaged in a wonderful community, I also know that even if that era came back, I wouldn’t engage as much now. The engagement then was more raw, more honest… dialogue was sincere and challenges to ideas were met with discourse not anger or defensiveness. Now, as you mention, the safety and intimacy seem to be lacking.
Yet, I saw the shift in community use that was a turning point. It was pretty quick, and it was about our own community engagement. For example, I can remember seeing the move from someone reading a blog post and responding in the comments or on Twitter, to suddenly getting instant retweets that came out faster than it was possible to read the whole blog post. There were people auto posting, and there seemed to be a race to share something first, to be first to engage, but with shallow engagement.
I no longer go to a blog feed reader anymore. I don’t see social media feeds that keep my attention. I see a lot of useless advice: https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/advice-for-everyone-and-no-one/ … and these kinds of ‘self-help’ posts are why LinkedIn can not be the tool I’m looking for, and yet like you I think it’s the best tool of the lot right now.

I didn’t answer his question, but that’s mostly because I don’t have an answer. I can’t see anything replacing the community I had on Twitter, and yes, I use the term community and not network. We didn’t stick to Twitter, we were on blogs, and other networks like Ning, and connecting on UStream, sharing videos on Blip TV, sharing links on del.icio.us, reading on Google Reader, and tracking our comments on CoComment… all defunct now. It was truly a different time. There was also a different tone to the exchanges as I hinted above. Discourse was rich and now it seems to be shallow… Mostly accolades and praise or very cautious.

Shortly after seeing Dean’s post, I saw William (Bill) M. Ferriter’s post about leaving Twitter, also on LinkedIn:

After close to 20 years on Twitter, I deactivated my account yesterday. It’s an incredibly toxic space where you are just as likely to end up in an argument as you are to think together.
Planning on moving my social interactions around education to LinkedIn.
Hoping to build consistent routines in both posting new ideas and resources here — as well as learning alongside all y’all.
Thanks for having me.

Bill is/was one of those community members that made Twitter great. We conversed many times on Twitter and on our blogs, for at least a couple years before meeting face to face. When we met, I connected with a digital colleague, one of many digital neighbours who I often engaged with more than I did the educators across the hall from my in my school. The friendship was already fully built. I also met Dean face-to-face years after I started learning from him. I’ve read so many of Bill and Dean’s blog posts, tweets, and comments that I think I actually do know more about them than I do some close friends.

Now Bill is off of Twitter and I may leave the site too before the end of the year. I’m left wondering the same things as Dean, “Maybe online communities are a white whale. What is the best we can hope for in terms of online engagement and community for educators?“

All a Twitter

I love what Twitter did to open the digital world for me. I even wrote a small ebook about how to get started on Twitter. But it has been a decade since I really spent time on this app. I used to have both public and private conversations, and I used to engage in Twitter chats, but now I mostly just transmit these daily posts to Twitter, and only engage there if someone replies to one of my posts.

Essentially, Twitter has become a sharing tool and not a social tool. So, when I see Elon Musk hitting the self-destruct button on Twitter/X, I just question whether I’ll leave before or after that happens?

It has been an amazing ride, and I’m thankful to Twitter for all the wonderful connections I’ve made. I have met so many people on Twitter that I consider friends. I have met these friends at conferences and felt like I’ve known them for years, because I had rich conversations with them on Twitter before we met face-to-face. But I don’t remember the last time I had one of those Twitter conversations. I think it has been years since I engaged meaningfully on Twitter with someone, (although this recent post was inspired by a Twitter reply).

I’m not boycotting Twitter. For now I’ll still transmit my blog there. But it hasn’t been what it used to be for me since before Elon took it over. The difference now is that I find it has a bias like the old YouTube algorithm that leads you down negative rabbit holes. It plays up the rage, and doesn’t curate topics I’m interested in. My timeline doesn’t feel like my timeline, it feels like a newscast, and I hate watching news because it focuses on the negative.

So, I’ll use it as a transmission tool for a while longer, but if Elon decides to blow it up, either intentionally or not, I won’t shed a tear. It will be sad, but so is watching its slow demise. Nothing lasts forever, and maybe Twitter needs to die before a new platform can blossom. I think we might find out sooner rather than later.

High versus low trust societies

I love when someone adds to my perspective on social media. That’s exactly what happened after I posted Basic assumptions a couple days ago. The post reflected that, “people no longer give each other the benefit of the doubt that intentions are good. This used to be a basic assumption we operated on, the premise that we can start with the belief that everyone is acting in good faith.”

I shared the post on Twitter and Chris Kalaboukis and I had the following conversation thread:

Chris: Reading your post: could we be transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society?

Dave: Yes, that seems like an appropriate conclusion. Is there an author that speaks of this idea?

Chris: Not that I can recall, however, if you look at the attributes of low-trust societies you see a lot of what is happening now.

Dave: So true! The circle of high trust seems to be shrinking and it really seems like a step backwards… tribalism trumps the collective of a greater community.

Chris: It is. It seems that even our institutions are driving us towards more tribalism and division.

Dave: And how do you suppose we correct this course? I honestly don’t have a clue, and see things getting worse before they get better.

Chris: I think that in reality, most people prefer to live in a high-trust society. We need leaders and media who support that vision.

Dave: I think the biggest problem right now is that most leaders do not want to step into a limelight where both social media and news outlets are only interested in focussing on the dirt. It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.

Chris: If it bleeds it leads. we’ve never been able to communicate with more people at the same time but the only communication which seems to get through is negative. It’s all about keeping your attention to sell more ads.

Dave: I sound like quite the pessimist, that’s not usually my stance on things, but I do struggle to see a way forward from here.

—–

The idea Chris shared that we could be ‘transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society’ seems insightful and really intrigues me. It isn’t happening at just one level, but many!

• Scam phone calls and emails are perfect examples. We used to operate from a position of trust, but now unknown calls and unsolicited emails are all necessarily met with skepticism.

• Sensationalized news leads with misleading headlines that are more about getting attention and clicks than about providing truthful news. And if the news slant doesn’t match your beliefs, it’s ‘fake news’.

• Sales pitches and advertising promises almost everything under the sun, you aren’t buying a product with a basic function, you are buying a product that is going to change your life or transform how you do ‘X’, or use ‘Y’… your results will surprise you and you’ll be amazed!

• If you are even slightly left wing you are ‘woke’ or ‘Antifa’ in the most derogatory way you can use these words. If you are even slightly right wing you are ‘Alt-right’ and racist. No one gets to sit on a spectrum, you are either viewed as an extreme on one or the other side. And even agreeing on one topic on the other side makes you less trustworthy on your side.

These are but a few ways we’ve become a lower-trust society. Ad hominem and straw man attacks get more attention than sound arguments. A well said lie is easily shared while complex truths are not. Saying a situation is complex and sharing nuance does not make for catchy sound bites, and aren’t going to go viral on TikTok, or Instagram Reels. No, but the snarky personal attack will, as will a one-sided, extreme view that packs a powerful punch.

What’s worse is that moderate voices get shut out. And in general many people feel silenced or would rather not share a view that is even slightly controversial. So the extreme voices get even more airtime and attention.

I feel this often. Writing every day, and sometimes picking controversial topics to discuss, I find myself tiptoeing and treading very carefully. I said in my Twitter conversation with Chris above, “It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.” I sometimes wonder what one thing I’m going to say is going to get blown out of proportion? If I write one single inappropriate or strongly biased phrase, will it define me? Will it undermine the 1,500+ posts that I’ve written, and make me out to be something or someone I’m not?

This sounds paranoid, but I wrote one post a few years ago that a friend private messaged me about, then called me and said I’d gone too far with my opinion on a specific point. I totally saw his point, went back and adjusted my post to tone it down… but I feel like that one issue, that one strong and overly biased opinion shared publicly put a rift in our friendship. And that’s someone I respect, not some stranger coming at me, not someone that doesn’t know my true character. My opinion in his eyes is now less trustworthy, and holds less value. That said, I appreciated the feedback, and respect that he took the time to share it privately. That’s rare these days.

The path forward is not easy. We aren’t just swaying slightly towards a less trustworthy society, we are on a full pendulum swing away from a more trustworthy society. Tribalism, nationalism, and extremism are pulling our world apart. Who do you trust? What institutions? Which governments? Who do you consider a neighbour? Who will you break bread with? Who do you believe?

The circles of trust are getting smaller, and the mechanisms to share bias and misinformation are growing. We are devolving into a less trusting society or rather societies, and it’s undermining our sense of community. We need messages of kindness, love, and peace to prevail. We need tolerance, acceptance, and more than anything trustworthy institutions and leaders. We need moderates and centrists to voice compromise and minimize extremist views. We need to rebuild a high trust society… together.

Follow the Thread

The first social media app that I fully engaged with was Twitter. Of course, back in 2007 it wasn’t an app, it was a website. And in the early days it would often crash. I was so enamoured that I wouldn’t miss a tweet in my timeline. I’d come home from work and scroll from my last read tweet forward until I was ‘caught up’. And along the way I’d click on links, and read blog posts my friends shared, and even go to their sites to comment. Sometimes I’d end up with 12-15 tabs open and the catching up would take me over an hour.

I’d go to conferences and meet people I only knew through Twitter and I’d feel like I was meeting old friends. My connections were down to earth and very real. I loved the richness of the conversation and learning that happened on Twitter.

Then it changed.

It went from friendships to engagement, from conversation to activity, from a tool I spent time on to a tool I transmit to.

Now Meta has come out with Threads. Maybe the conversation is coming back. Maybe. But my time investment won’t be there unless I’m pulled there by others. Sure, I created an account, and yes, I’m interested to see where it could go. But it would require others drawing me in to make it something I use regularly. I’m not investing the time to making it work for me.

I’m just that much more selfish with my time now. I don’t have time for angry posts and outrage. I don’t care about building a follow-ship. I am not interested in clicking a link to see an image or video on another platform… which ironically someone on social media needs to do to fully read my Daily-Ink. In short, I’m not willing to put the time and energy into yet another social media platform, unless I see an immediate and positive engagement… and that doesn’t happen until a spend time on the platform.

So, I’m more likely to watch the threads fray than I am to stitch together a profile that I’m willing to wear. Threads is probably headed to my laundry basket of apps I never put on.

Down the Social Media Rabbit Hole

I made a mistake last night. I was on Twitter and clicked on a video of a guy knocking down a surveillance camera on a street light in Australia. I then scrolled to the next video and went down a right wing rabbit hole. The first video was a voiceover of Tucker Carlson recently ‘dismissed’ from Fox News, and it was essentially trying to make humourous jokes about a transgender host taking over. Next was a Republican semi-automatic gun wearing black man praising the NRA and claiming the democrats are ‘coming for our guns’. Then came a Sean Hannity clip that I didn’t watch. Then came my first Canadian content with a clip bashing Justin Trudeau. And finally I called it quits after watching a geologist bashing climate change… in case you didn’t know, carbon dioxide is ‘plant food, not a pollutant’.

These crazy social media algorithms, and the deep fakes I spoke about a few days ago, are going to absolutely polarize us, paralyze us, and completely undermine us.

Don’t ignore opposing views, measure them. Don’t jump on the bandwagon, figure out if you want to travel the exact same route. Don’t criticize, question. Don’t SHOUT, disengage until cooler heads prevail.

Don’t pretend the algorithms aren’t already influencing you, be savvy and question why posts and videos are algorithmically chosen for you. You are either trying to be digitally literate or you are probably being manipulated and steered towards an extreme view.

Communication gap

A decade ago I had a digital network that was pretty amazing. There were educators from many distant places, across Canada, the US, and the world, who I knew through Twitter conversations and conferences. This network was pretty amazing, and while we were seldom, if ever, in the same geographical location, I felt connected to these people.

But Twitter changed and I changed. I ended up not participating in this network nearly as much, and the gap between conversations with these people widened. Sure I still consider these people I met through rich conversational exchanges friends, but I don’t chat with them like I used to. I don’t know them like I used to.

It’s easy to get nostalgic and want the old connections back, but the network isn’t as easy to maintain. The conversations don’t seem to be as rich in learning opportunities. The value for time ratio seems lower. But I do miss those deep learning opportunities, the long blog posts with 15-25 comments, and the subsequent Twitter dialogue that continued the learning.

The connections I miss were rooted in learning conversations. Conversations that I might now have in person, but seldom have online. I don’t engage in online conversations like I used to. I auto post this blog to Twitter, LinkedIn, and a Facebook page, and then I really only go on those networks to respond to comments but I don’t go to them for conversations… unless someone responds to my post, then I respond back.

That’s not the way I used to engage. I used to read and respond, I used to question and compliment. I used to actively seek out conversation and connections. So, while social media has changed, so have I. I’ve started seeking videos to learn from, not conversations. I’ve moved to searching for content and viewing, rather than using Twitter like Google, asking questions and letting my network help me.

I miss the conversations that used to happen, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever rebuild what I had. The effort seems too great at this point, and even the people I see still making those connections tend to be ones who travel and maintain those relationships with face-to-face connections… the relationships purely connected by social media network engagement just don’t seem to be there anymore. It’s not a mutual relationship, but a network of influencers and followers, not friends.

Perhaps that will change in the future but for now I see a gap in the way conversations happen online compared to how they used to happen, and I don’t see a social media network that is changing this any time soon.

Daily-Ink by David Truss

Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.

Tag Archives: twitter

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