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.
I balance it against empirical observations.
“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.”
Perhaps some people, but I suspect the VAST MAJORITY of that crap was from Leftists trying to ‘weaken Twitter’ under Musk.
Or a Vertical Transportation Operation Technician calling himself an elevator operator.
Twitter has 400 million users, and this guy is crowing about 100,000 user gain at Mastadon “over a few days”?
But there is a sliver of folks even in our camp, who really are despicable people. Every now and then, they wave their freak flag. Then they crawl back in their hole. Sadly, some people act like they don't exist, or lend tacit support by saying "yea, but on that other point, I gotta agree with him."
They're sort of the equivalent of Jew-haters, who retort "I don't hate Jews....I'm anti-Zionist...some of my best friends are Jews..."
You can't be partially pregnant. I'll quote Ayn Rand again:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical forces beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.
They will be back to Twitter. They are activists who like to fight with those they don’t agree with. It will be no fun and boring for them if everyone is in mutual agreement in their Mastodon groups. Who do they argue with?
“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.”
I agree. They have controlled the narrative far too long. Let them go hide in the deep web.
“As an information scientist who studies online communities, this felt like the beginning of something I’ve seen before.”
Horrendous grammar!
The filled-with-herself author, Casey Fiesler, has an academic job at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“I balance it against empirical observations.”
Okay, how many businesses like Twitter has Mush owned, operated, and lost.
So far, the only empirical observations you have is parceled out to you by hostile MSM types who salivate over the possibility of Musk losing out.
As I was once surprised to see in an economic textbook, you can have events and observations, but you can’t quantify the possibilities of the human spirit.
But thanks.
“The decentralized, open source social network Mastodon”
How do you censor people on this? I can’t imagine these “We must control speech!” people would want to go to a platform that DIDN’T have “content moderation” in place.
“I saw countless announcements on my Twitter feed from people either leaving the platform or making preparations to leave”
Some folks just can’t stand to have freedom of speech.
Agreed, and we’ll stated.
I think some of those Twitter people have found there way here.
I reference the new Ukrainian Trolls as an example.
Keep up the good work Mr. Musk. I think I may join Twitter if Trump rejoins.
I tried to sign up, and it said I was already a user there, it just needed my user name or password to get going again.
I had forgotten both, so I just ended up in an endless loop to try to get my log in info again.
There are always clowns that threaten to leave, (Twitter, some sport league, the country, whatever,) but never do.
it’s just like a divorce, and the RATS are pissed because they don’t get to keep the house...
Incoherent responses are always welcome.
Twitter survived banning Trump and censoring free speech. I think it can survive restoring Trump and restoring free speech.
I think most of the Ukrainian trolls are Feds. They’re clearly paid by someone. And some of them were early Trump supporters before he won the primary who went dark after he won. Makes me wonder.
Twitter is worth joining...it’s actually a lot of fun and a good source of information.
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