Twitter Used to Make Us Smarter
Not only was the social network a subject of research, it was also a facilitator of knowledge creation. That may all be in the past now.
A handful of months into Twitter’s new management and it’s clear an era has ended. For the site’s power users, which include academics, journalists and lawmakers, the sudden changes in the social network’s policies, practices and culture have destroyed years of careful network building. What that will cost us in the future in terms of relationships never forged and knowledge never created, we can only guess at.
The loss of free access to Twitter’s API has disrupted countless large-scale research projects, while adjustments to the verification system have made impersonation easy and trusted identification nearly impossible. Without a strong moderation team, misinformation, harassment and spam are thriving on the platform. My own replies are full of harassment, often from self-identified Musk fans, and my direct messages are full of basic spam. Many of the researchers I follow have either locked their accounts or left the platform entirely. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Twitter, but it has also been instrumental in building my writing career and conducting research for my work. Its loss is meaningful.