I abandoned my Twitter and TruthSocial accounts following the election. I had purposefully spent time on these sites because I found both contained so much content I knew to be factually inaccurate I felt a responsibility to respond. My professional interests include what is described as argumentation and most folks probably recognize as debate. Interactions that use facts to explore important issues are valuable, but falsehoods purposefully promoted are a very different matter and this seemed to be so common on these platforms. Now the election has passed.
I think I can identify motives when challenging falsehoods. It is very common to experience a personal attack in reply. For some reason, my personality protects me from such attacks. I don’t lose sleep and I don’t become preoccupied. I set aside a certain amount of time a couple of times a day to check my accounts and I try to apply logic and facts.
I spent time on TruthSocial is a sort of personal experiment. I was mostly curious. Twitter was different. I joined Twitter in 2006 when it was very different. At first it was kind of silly. People posted what they had for breakfast and such. Eventually, I thought it became useful. I used it primarily as a discovery tool. Folks couldn’t really say much so the content itself was not that informative, but I found the recommendations and links to be useful. With Musk, things have changed. The content from those I followed remained constant, but the discovery function changed. This algorithm driven option definitely did not provide information “For me”. Musk’s comments always seemed to appear and he was someone I did not follow and I certainly did not find his comments informative. My strategy of challenging misinformation resulted in an increase in the same type of false claims. The algorithm appeared to interpret my activity as a sign of interest, but increasing the proportion of false claims seems very different from increasing the frequency of comments on topics of interest.
The algorithm was not the primary reason I left Twitter. Musk made a decision that Twitter was a content site, but not a site for sharing links. This was clearly not the way I thought about the opportunities Twitter provided with its limited character limit. By using the algorithm to decrease the likelihood tweets with links were seen, Musk had eliminated what I thought was the primary value of the platform. I valued links for discovery and I used links when arguing facts. Positions that refer to external sources as justification are very different to me than personal opinions. So, after the election I decided my time could be better spent on other activities.
I am starting to have second thoughts. If many people decide it is not worth their time to interact and challenge, the lies and misinformation will only increase the impact of the echo chambers. Twitter and now Facebook and Instagram have made it clear they will not try to enforce a standard of truthfulness. All of this is now argued to be a matter of free speech. I suppose this is one way to try to distance the company from the complaints of politicians, but the reality is that once algorithms are used to guide users, companies have made decisions about what user experiences will be. Many users don’t understand and they have no way of actually knowing how their experiences are being shaped by the decisions social media companies have made in prioritizing what they see.
The reality is that voting patterns can be predicted from differences in whether voters pursue news content and the sources voters regard as providing any news they consume. It is not the difference between FOX and MSNBC viewers I am describing here. It is the difference between those who rely heavily on social media and newspaper or television news programs. I am a Democrat and I know that those who primarily rely on social media to inform their voting decisions disproportionally vote Republican. The situation seems clearly defined. Expecting those satisfied with the status quo to seek out more diversified and quality sources of information seems naive. Social media companies have signaled they are willing to accept the “lies don’t matter” definition of free speech. I personally see Twitter as a lost cause because of the bias of the algorithm, but I can still use Facebook and Instagram to challenge falsehoods with facts and reach a more general audience. I do encourage others to explore Mastodon and BlueSky, but I am not convinced that these sources offer the access to the mixed audience necessary for political influence.