Posted on 11/06/2022 7:09:28 AM PST by DoodleBob
Elon Musk announced that “the bird is freed” when his US$44 billion acquisition of Twitter officially closed on Oct. 27, 2022. Some users on the microblogging platform saw this as a reason to fly away.
Over the course of the next 48 hours, I saw countless announcements on my Twitter feed from people either leaving the platform or making preparations to leave. The hashtags #GoodbyeTwitter, #TwitterMigration and #Mastodon were trending. The decentralized, open source social network Mastodon gained over 100,000 users in just a few days, according to a user counting bot.
As an information scientist who studies online communities, this felt like the beginning of something I’ve seen before. Social media platforms tend not to last forever. Depending on your age and online habits, there’s probably some platform that you miss, even if it still exists in some form. Think of MySpace, LiveJournal, Google+ and Vine.
When social media platforms fall, sometimes the online communities that made their homes there fade away, and sometimes they pack their bags and relocate to a new home. The turmoil at Twitter is causing many of the company’s users to consider leaving the platform. Research on previous social media platform migrations shows what might lie ahead for Twitter users who fly the coop.
Several years ago, I led a research project with Brianna Dym, now at University of Maine, where we mapped the platform migrations of nearly 2,000 people over a period of almost two decades. The community we examined was transformative fandom, fans of literary and popular culture series and franchises who create art using those characters and settings.
We chose it because it is a large community that has thrived in a number of different online spaces. Some of the same people writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction on Usenet in the 1990s were writing Harry Potter fan fiction on LiveJournal in the 2000s and Star Wars fan fiction on Tumblr in the 2010s.
By asking participants about their experiences moving across these platforms – why they left, why they joined and the challenges they faced in doing so – we gained insights into factors that might drive the success and failure of platforms, as well as what negative consequences are likely to occur for a community when it relocates.
‘You go first’
Regardless of how many people ultimately decide to leave Twitter, and even how many people do so around the same time, creating a community on another platform is an uphill battle. These migrations are in large part driven by network effects, meaning that the value of a new platform depends on who else is there.
In the critical early stages of migration, people have to coordinate with each other to encourage contribution on the new platform, which is really hard to do. It essentially becomes, as one of our participants described it, a “game of chicken” where no one wants to leave until their friends leave, and no one wants to be first for fear of being left alone in a new place.
For this reason, the “death” of a platform – whether from a controversy, disliked change or competition – tends to be a slow, gradual process. One participant described Usenet’s decline as “like watching a shopping mall slowly go out of business.”
It’ll never be the same
The current push from some corners to leave Twitter reminded me a bit of Tumblr’s adult content ban in 2018, which reminded me of LiveJournal’s policy changes and new ownership in 2007. People who left LiveJournal in favor of other platforms like Tumblr described feeling unwelcome there. And though Musk did not walk into Twitter headquarters at the end of October and turn a virtual content moderation lever into the “off” position, there was an uptick in hate speech on the platform as some users felt emboldened to violate the platform’s content policies under an assumption that major policy changes were on the way.
So what might actually happen if a lot of Twitter users do decide to leave? What makes Twitter Twitter isn’t the technology, it’s the particular configuration of interactions that takes place there. And there is essentially zero chance that Twitter, as it exists now, could be reconstituted on another platform. Any migration is likely to face many of the challenges previous platform migrations have faced: content loss, fragmented communities, broken social networks and shifted community norms.
But Twitter isn’t one community, it’s a collection of many communities, each with its own norms and motivations. Some communities might be able to migrate more successfully than others. So maybe K-Pop Twitter could coordinate a move to Tumblr. I’ve seen much of Academic Twitter coordinating a move to Mastodon. Other communities might already simultaneously exist on Discord servers and subreddits, and can just let participation on Twitter fade away as fewer people pay attention to it. But as our study implies, migrations always have a cost, and even for smaller communities, some people will get lost along the way.
The ties that bind
Our research also pointed to design recommendations for supporting migration and how one platform might take advantage of attrition from another platform. Cross-posting features can be important because many people hedge their bets. They might be unwilling to completely cut ties all at once, but they might dip their toes into a new platform by sharing the same content on both.
Ways to import networks from another platform also help to maintain communities. For example, there are multiple ways to find people you follow on Twitter on Mastodon. Even simple welcome messages, guides for newcomers and easy ways to find other migrants could make a difference in helping resettlement attempts stick.
And through all of this, it’s important to remember that this is such a hard problem by design. Platforms have no incentive to help users leave. As long-time technology journalist Cory Doctorow recently wrote, this is “a hostage situation.” Social media lures people in with their friends, and then the threat of losing those social networks keeps people on the platforms.
But even if there is a price to pay for leaving a platform, communities can be incredibly resilient. Like the LiveJournal users in our study who found each other again on Tumblr, your fate is not tied to Twitter’s.
This is likely also why FR has been in business for 20+ years.
It takes a lot of time for a platform to lose its user base.
FR has been working on chasing it away for a long time now and has lost much of what it once had. I don’t say that with any glee...I find it extremely unfortunate.
FR steadfastly refused to keep up with the times and add much needed features. Misguided moderation policies have turned the breaking news into something completely useless. Cantankerous old farts who have zero clue have chased away people who wanted to contribute to the site. Some users who were very generous with their time curating the news have either died or been chased away for various reasons.
If you want to kill a platform, that’s the way to do it. What Musk is doing isn’t going to kill anything. In fact, I see it as building something much bigger than Twitter ever would have been without him.
Aren’t you so full of yourself.
Bkmk
I don’t know...if that’s what the guy does, that’s what the guy does, no?
It’s like starting the “Kool Kids Klub” in high school then wondering why you’re the only member.
Musk will end up with a smaller but higher quality platform that will cost much less to run and which will be profitable.
It’s like starting the “Kool Kids Klub” in high school then wondering why you’re the only member.
Musk will end up with a smaller but higher quality platform that will cost much less to run and which will be profitable.
I just signed up for Twitter for the first time
Most of Twitter usage bleeding is bot loss. Ignore it. It never had anything to do with revenue, except for those advertisers who were stupid enough to believe Tw execs.
Twiw was a paid propaganda machine.
We’ll be friends till we’re old and senile then we’ll be new friends.
People don’t realize that the important part of Big Tech is not “Tech”, but “Big”. Some here used to say conservatives need to start our own site — but that’s not the point. President Trump is a case in point. 4million followers at Truth Social is not the same as 80 or 100 million at Twitter. The “Big” is what’s important, not “Tech”. It’s the neutral or semi-neutral audience that may be converted is the important part, not your loyalists. You can start an even better site, but the neutrals will not go with you. There is “neutral inertia”. That’s why Rumble, Truth, Gab, Parler — none of these will work like their Big Tech counterpart. We have to change YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It seems impossible, but starting a different site is definitely not going to work. And if you don’t think it’s important — why do you hear such howls about Twitter from the Left? They realize how important it is.
And unnecessary. The study Casey ran was MUCH more compelling, answered questions, and authentic.
It's still a good article. But I'm deduction points for technique.
Does anyone else find it ironic that “ I’ve seen much of Academic Twitter coordinating a move to Mastodon.”
Mastodon: belonging to the extinct genus Mammut. Mastodons lived in herds and fed on plants.
Mrs DoodleBob and I are looking forward to that senile “first date” in our 90s.
The far left loons hating on Musk are resting g most of their ire on a foundational lie. They are pretending that the site will become a vile pit of profanity and racist propaganda if their enemies are no longer censored. Of course, Musk can moderate the discourse to prevent Illegal content without censoring Republican voters, which he’s going to do.
He’s just being a businessman at this point though. There aren’t enough purple haired non binary zoomers and blue check hall monitors out there to form the customer base for a viable business.
It’s like a janitor calling himself a custodial engineer.
Just like liberal “herdthink” and “My veganism is the only way” are going the way of the mastodon. I say good riddance to the cruel little dictators that infest what should be a “freedom to share ideas” media site. The worst part is, and always has been, the leftists refusal to let anyone else share ideas freely. “The only way to make a bad idea seem like a good idea is to silence the good idea that shows just how bad the bad idea really is”....L.Star
Why do you automatically accept the writer’s analysis?
Everyone is replaceable. That lesson alone is paramount.
Or ….? Is the argument/contention that Twitter is (was LOL) the exception to the rule?
The world’s Maoists have declared jihad on Twitter. I wonder if Musk will come to regret his purchase...like I came to regret having bought Beta.
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