0:00

From

0:01

WNYC in New York, this

0:03

is on the media. You may know

0:05

Twitter is under new management. Employees

0:07

have until five PM today to commit

0:10

to extremely hardcore work

0:12

or leave the company. While US

0:14

footer users are days been confused.

0:17

Bigger things are at stake beyond our

0:19

shores.

0:19

Some sort of intense sense

0:21

of air against brashness. Yeah. It might lend itself

0:24

to bullheadedly pushing to get your rocket

0:26

in the air, but the priority of building a

0:28

social space requires engineering

0:30

for the most vulnerable among us.

0:31

Plus, with jitters swirling

0:34

around the Twitterverse, some have

0:36

set off in search of smaller

0:38

more peaceful corners of the Internet.

0:40

They're kind of like, look guys, we had this

0:43

kind of quiet space that was working really well

0:45

for us, and now there's ton

0:47

of new people running around with

0:49

very different cultural assumptions. It's

0:51

all coming

0:52

up after this.

0:58

WWF

1:00

Studios is supported

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1:03

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1:15

I'm Kai Wright on the next notes from

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America, a listener exit poll.ortion

1:19

writes, democracy, what really

1:21

motivated voters in these midterms? And

1:24

what can we expect from the new political

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1:37

From

1:38

WNYC in New York,

1:40

this is on the media. I'm Brook Gladstone.

1:43

On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced

1:45

his third run for the presidency at Mar

1:47

a Lago. in what he'd have called

1:49

a low energy hour if he

1:51

hadn't been delivering

1:52

it. Our country is being destroyed before

1:55

your very eyes.

1:56

This on the heels of a weeklong

1:58

defenestration of Magnaism

1:59

and its leader by the press.

2:02

Fourteen candidates in caused

2:04

by Trump, who once said

2:06

that with him in charge would all get tired

2:08

of winning,

2:08

lost, leading to

2:10

the best mid term result for

2:12

president in decades. Since

2:13

then, the pundits have been asking

2:15

Is Trumpism over? I mean,

2:18

the donors are running away. the murder,

2:20

media, and moving away. Donald

2:22

Trump's roman has come and gone that window

2:24

as closed. This is a deeply

2:27

damaged ex president like I

2:29

haven't seen. Now we're talking about

2:31

him being a mixture of war and hardy.

2:33

Andrew Johnson. Trump is a joke. He

2:35

lost the house, the senate, and the White

2:37

House, he's lost a popular vote twice.

2:39

And I'd like to think that the republican party

2:42

is ready to move on from somebody who's

2:44

been for this party, a three time loser.

2:46

But if the GOP is ready to move

2:48

on from Trump, it'll be tougher to move

2:50

on from Trumpism. Tom

2:52

Scocca wrote this week in the New York Times

2:54

that it's difficult to, quote, declared

2:57

defeat for a movement that is built

2:59

around refusing to accept defeat.

3:02

He said that though some may call Trump a

3:04

loser, they haven't yet gathered up the

3:06

her courage to find another less chunky

3:08

way to win. Even so,

3:10

Trumpism is over, is the dominant

3:13

post mid term political narrative.

3:16

Of course, political reporters were

3:18

singing a different tune prior to the

3:20

vote, something about an inevitable

3:22

red wave in a Democratic climate

3:25

that could be described only as

3:27

bleak, and

3:28

I mean only. The economy

3:30

now a top issue in the midterm actions

3:33

less than six months away, with

3:35

Democrats' chances looking increasingly

3:37

bleak. A new poll from ABC News in

3:39

the wash and post explains why the

3:41

midterm landscape is so bleak

3:43

for Democrats. A final CNN

3:46

snapshot of the midterm climate and it

3:48

is beyond bleak for the Democrat. As

3:50

the president and the Democrats remaining complete

3:52

Desirae headed Oh, I

3:54

forgot about GEMS and Desirae. That

3:57

was very popular. You have

3:59

to view

3:59

The New York Times as the Outstanding

4:02

News Organization of our era. That

4:04

is why it's with enormous respect

4:07

for its influence that I've noted

4:09

the things where in politics, it

4:11

has seemed to consistently

4:14

steer US media discussion in

4:16

an unfortunate direction.

4:18

James Fellows has been writing about

4:20

the jarring gap between reality

4:22

and the predict of political reporters

4:25

for forty years. He also writes

4:27

the sub stack newsletter breaking

4:29

the news.

4:30

As soon as the very first results

4:32

came in on election day, which were from those gerrymandered

4:35

districts in Florida that Rhonda Sanders

4:37

had set up and that flipped Republican, The

4:39

York Times put out an early edition

4:41

whose banner headline was GOP

4:44

collects early wins in pivotal

4:46

vote. And the two above the

4:48

fold stories, one was an explainer

4:51

saying allies wonder why America

4:53

can't fix itself. And the other one was

4:55

saying Democrats faced intense national

4:58

headwinds. They were so

5:00

spring loaded to interpret what was

5:02

going on that even on election

5:04

evening as people were voting in

5:06

fact for the best incumbent results in

5:08

fifty years and midterm elections they

5:11

were prepared to interpret this as why

5:13

can't America fix itself?

5:15

As you noted, what happened in reality

5:17

appeared to be entirely at odds

5:20

with what the political reporter cadre

5:23

across the media had been preparing

5:25

the public for. So how

5:27

did the coverage of these

5:30

midterms compare to prior

5:32

election cycles? There are

5:34

two standards of comparison that

5:36

I find interesting and one is

5:38

an admittedly unfair standard

5:41

-- Mhmm. -- which is how this is going to look.

5:43

in, quote, history, unquote, because

5:45

it seems already clear that

5:47

some of the fundamentals of this election, for

5:50

example, a very strong vote for women

5:52

based on the Supreme Court's knobs ruling, and

5:54

then the the changed abortion landscape. And

5:57

a sense that on economics, it wasn't

5:59

strictly the price of gas Celine, which

6:01

we heard about ad infinitum, but

6:03

also the job market, which was very strong.

6:06

Joe Biden's speeches about democracy Sea,

6:08

which were widely ridiculed by the press,

6:10

actually seemed to have gotten some traction. And

6:12

almost all of the election deniers and

6:14

sort of Trump weirdos, if I can use

6:16

that category for a lot of the candidates, they

6:19

lost leading up to the election.

6:22

It was all prices of the pump, Biden

6:24

is on popular hangover from

6:26

Afghanistan, which remember a year and half

6:28

ago, was gonna be the end of his presidency.

6:31

There was a really fundamental

6:33

mismatch between what seems to have been going

6:35

on there and what our experts were

6:38

telling us.

6:38

I'm wondering where these narratives

6:41

come

6:41

from. I would enumerate three

6:43

streams. One is whatever has happened

6:45

to political polling. But

6:47

it seems as if all the fellabilities

6:50

of polling, whether it's not reaching enough

6:52

young people, not getting enough answers overall,

6:55

people not answering. Honestly, they

6:57

seem to have cumulated in a number

6:59

of really large scale errors.

7:02

There seems also to be a sort of self sustaining

7:04

narrative within a number of the

7:06

political press corps that might good

7:09

friend Timothy Krauss wrote

7:11

about fifty years ago and send him

7:13

a oath of poison a bus. Yeah.

7:16

This was actually the election of nineteen

7:18

seventy two, and Tim Krause wrote the

7:20

boys in the bus about the way a

7:22

narrative would evolve. And I think back

7:24

then, guy named Walter Mears was the

7:26

AP correspondent. People would say,

7:28

okay, what do you think the narrative is after

7:31

a speech by McGovernor or Nixon

7:33

or whatever. You'd say, yeah, the speech was

7:35

x and that became kind of the narrative.

7:38

And we have the modern

7:40

era of that, I think, where certain

7:42

narratives Biden is unpopular.

7:45

It's all about prices in the pump.

7:47

Trump is unstoppable. They became

7:49

the modern version of the boys on the bus.

7:51

That single word analysis has

7:54

prevailed in all the ensuing

7:56

elections. Al Gore was

7:58

a liar George W. Bush

8:00

was a dummy. Hillary Clinton

8:02

was an emaculating

8:04

It is unlikable. And also,

8:06

her emails. Oh, and her

8:08

emails.

8:09

That was a narrative that

8:11

The Times made great use of, and

8:14

I marked that down to fairness

8:17

bias. It's a kind of

8:19

both sidesism and it's because

8:22

the legacy press is

8:24

still upset about being

8:26

labeled liberal starting

8:29

with Richard Nixon all those years ago.

8:31

still trying to overcompensate to

8:33

report two issues as if they're

8:35

equal when they aren't and never

8:37

were. It's just a matter

8:40

of observed fact

8:42

that more people who go into the

8:44

press as their career are politically

8:46

liberal than none. why he

8:49

go in this line of work and not become a fan fier.

8:51

And out of self consciousness of

8:53

that reality and also because

8:56

of relentless criticism

8:58

from the right of all your liberal bias,

9:00

a lot of mainstream organizations wanna

9:04

make sure they have on Marjorie

9:06

Taylor Green along with J.

9:08

B. Raskin as if these were people of comparable

9:11

weight and what they're saying. And I think that was

9:13

special occasion, the two thousand sixteen election

9:15

where it seemed so, quote,

9:17

certain unquote, that Hillary Clinton would win

9:20

that mainstream outlets wanted to show that they were

9:22

fearless and criticizing her thus

9:25

her emails.

9:26

Now I'm curious about the narratives

9:28

that are emerging post midterms.

9:31

In The New York Times, I

9:33

saw a really good opinion piece

9:35

by Tom Scocca. who described

9:37

the temptation by some reporters to

9:40

declare that, quote, the strength of the

9:42

Mago forces is ebbing

9:44

at last the calendar leaf is turning

9:46

over on the Trump era. I

9:49

have heard so many times. This is the

9:51

thing that'll sink it. That's the thing that'll get

9:53

them and so on.

9:55

On the one hand, do you like how

9:57

I'm setting this up? On the one hand,

9:59

there are

9:59

indications of some

10:02

greater normalization of politics

10:04

one might have guessed two weeks ago that if,

10:06

for example, Kerry Lake were

10:08

losing in Arizona or Doctor

10:11

Oz or any of these other characters, Blake

10:13

Masters, there would have been all these widespread

10:15

protests and election denial and

10:18

things we saw after Trump's defeat in

10:20

twenty twenty. And so far, we haven't

10:22

seen that as you and I are talking. So

10:25

that could be some sign of

10:27

normalization.

10:28

I just think that that is a weariness

10:31

with Trump and not

10:33

an exhaustion with Trumpism.

10:34

Yes. And as we

10:36

say, yes. And this kind

10:39

of Trumpism has always always

10:41

always been part of the American makeup,

10:44

ramped up or damped down

10:46

by different leaders at different stages of

10:48

history. obviously has been ramped

10:50

up to a truly rancid degree

10:52

in the last six or eight years as it

10:54

was by George Wallace generation ago

10:56

and others before that And so

10:59

if even Fox is turning its back on Trump

11:01

and seem as sort of past his

11:03

sell by date, the sentiment will

11:05

still be there. And the question is whether somebody

11:08

else will emerge with the same

11:10

talent at ramping it up. So

11:12

what are the post midterm narratives

11:14

that you think maybe people

11:17

ought to take a moment. The post

11:19

mid term narrative, I'm against even

11:21

more strongly, is looking

11:23

instantly to the twenty twenty core

11:25

lineup. If there were a single

11:27

thing I could change about the political press

11:30

corps, it would be to reduce by about

11:32

ninety percent the effort

11:34

space assignments, energy, etcetera,

11:37

right, to what is going to happen two

11:39

years from now or four years from now and

11:41

switching that instead to what is happening

11:43

right now. If you look back to any previous

11:45

presidential election and try to correlate

11:48

what is said right after the midterms with what

11:50

happens two years later, there's basically

11:52

zero correlation. between who

11:54

people think is strong and weak and

11:56

rising and falling and just just

11:59

forget about it. And instead, tell

12:01

us more about what it was

12:03

that made people the way that they

12:05

did. So for example, thought

12:07

experiment, you recall how after Trump's

12:09

election, some of our leading newspapers,

12:12

we won't name head what we think of

12:14

as the guy in the diner crusade of

12:16

saying, oh, how did we miss people about

12:18

for Trump by this hair's breath margin.

12:21

And we could maybe have not the guy

12:23

in the diner, but the

12:25

woman in an office narrative.

12:27

of what it was that shifted

12:30

the vote as fundamentally that

12:32

made things not turn out the way

12:34

all the reporters thought. over the last couple

12:37

of months. And I'd like to hear from more of the people

12:39

about the complexities of

12:41

people's motives in voting how they did.

12:43

talk

12:43

to me a little bit about the business

12:46

of prediction. You wrote

12:48

the book breaking the news twenty six

12:50

years ago about how strong

12:52

this impulse is.

12:55

I understand why people

12:57

in our business, the politically minded

12:59

media, like predicting things.

13:02

It's always interesting to think who

13:04

has the combination of intangibles and

13:06

luck that might end up with that person being

13:08

president. That is the fun

13:10

part of our game. The challenge

13:12

is that it's both cheating and

13:15

it's not useful. It's cheating

13:18

because it reduces everything to an area

13:20

where people in our business are the

13:22

supposed experts. Rather

13:24

than what are the economic fundamentals?

13:27

How does this person work with colleagues?

13:30

what has this person done, what kind

13:32

of personal characteristics does he or she

13:34

have, etcetera, etcetera. So it

13:36

moves the playing field away

13:39

from all the vast three d

13:41

reality of life to

13:43

a flattened one d reality of

13:45

of politics. It's also

13:47

just not useful and it's not even

13:49

as accountable as being a Las Vegas

13:51

sports book. The sports bookies

13:53

or the crypto investors they finally

13:56

have to cover their losses. You don't have

13:58

to cover a loss if you were saying

14:00

person x is gonna be president and that

14:02

person is not. you just say, well, any

14:04

surprising result, blah, blah, blah,

14:07

and it's just a surprise. And

14:08

it's contrary to expectations because

14:11

it's these political pundits that

14:14

establish what those expectations

14:16

are. It was like an Olympic ice

14:18

skating move of landing a

14:21

quadruple axle or whatever, the

14:23

same exact people

14:25

who a day before the election were writing

14:27

about the red wave

14:30

or the day after the election saying,

14:32

which many people had expected to turn

14:34

into a red wave? Instead, blah blah

14:36

blah, not saying many people

14:38

including me. think in

14:40

many other fields, there would be at least

14:42

a pause to say, let's recalibrate

14:44

here. you

14:45

know, we once reported on a

14:47

study that found that

14:50

the number of appearances that a particular

14:52

pundit had on television

14:55

was inversely proportional to

14:57

how accurate their predictions were.

15:00

The more wrong they were, the more likely

15:02

they were to be invited back, No

15:04

one wants to hear on the one hand,

15:06

on the other hand. Someone

15:09

saying, with great passion, something

15:11

extreme is just better TV.

15:14

So when it comes to print,

15:17

have you seen any publications who

15:19

have self corrected post

15:21

midterms? Let's

15:22

take an example of Andrew Sullivan.

15:25

Once my colleague at the Atlantic

15:27

for a while and he did very

15:29

forthrightly do a I

15:31

was wrong piece after the midterm

15:34

election saying that all of his woke

15:36

narrative was excessive and rising crime

15:38

narrative was as if any hadn't taken either

15:41

abortion or democracy seriously

15:43

enough. I've seen a couple

15:45

of other people do limited versions

15:47

of that But institutionally, it

15:50

would be worth it for our colleagues. Again,

15:52

speaking you and me in the press to say

15:55

the kind of after action report you get

15:57

in medical operations or whatever when

15:59

there's a problem to say, what went

16:01

wrong here? And how can we

16:03

count to our public for things

16:06

where we didn't do

16:08

what we thought we were doing. So

16:10

though

16:11

you're recommending that

16:14

the press just take a time out from predicting.

16:18

Yes. I'm saying that that I had

16:20

actually a little little formula, which

16:22

was for an assignment

16:24

editor or a writer for

16:26

every three times the impulse

16:29

comes up to say, let's follow

16:31

Rhonda Senes. Let's follow the

16:33

next six people who might be contenders

16:36

twenty twenty four, for every three of

16:38

those impulses, shut

16:40

off two of them to a story about

16:42

the actual world of the now of

16:44

its culture, of its economics,

16:47

of its technology, of something

16:49

else, of its sustainability, Don't

16:51

predict the future which you don't

16:54

know. That is my time out suggestion. It

16:56

might be nine out of ten, but I was gently suggesting

16:58

two out of three.

17:00

And the chances of that, any

17:02

predictions?

17:03

Well

17:06

done, Brooke. I see how talk about

17:08

landing the quadruple axel. I

17:11

would predict zero out of zero.

17:13

I hope that in surprising results,

17:16

in results that many observers did

17:18

not expect. We'll see a

17:20

diminution in predictions. Thank

17:23

you so much. Jim.

17:24

Brook, it's a pleasure to talk with you. coming

17:31

up Twitter in disarray.

17:34

This is on the meeting.

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19:06

This

19:07

is on the media. I'm Brook Gladstone.

19:09

Elon Musk acquired Twitter less

19:12

than month ago. but according to what

19:14

I'm reading on Twitter, his

19:16

debut weeks have been somewhat

19:18

disorganized. The

19:21

social media giant appearing to be in

19:23

disarray after as many as half

19:25

of its employees were laid off.

19:27

this for a first message from your

19:29

new boss. Elon Musk suggested

19:31

the company could go into bankruptcy as

19:33

executives are resigning, advertisers are

19:36

fleeing, and trolls are running rampant. Latest

19:38

turmoil at Twitter this morning more than

19:40

four thousand contract workers were terminated

19:42

over the

19:43

weekend. There's a money story

19:45

and then a people story, and both of

19:47

those seem to be in crisis. Zoe

19:49

Shiffer is the managing editor of platformer,

19:51

an investigative newsletter on the tech

19:54

industry in Silicon Valley. one

19:56

of the first things that happened was

19:58

he decided to change

19:59

how verification worked on Twitter.

20:02

Now you no longer had to prove you with a

20:04

big shot. You claimed to be just

20:06

pay eight bucks monthly. We instantly

20:09

saw brands being impersonated

20:11

by spoof accounts we had Eli

20:13

Lilly, a big pharmaceutical company with a

20:15

speed of account saying insulin is free.

20:17

Musk dropped the eight buck gambit.

20:20

He said he's just trying to find ways to

20:22

pay the bills. but his actions

20:24

have scaled off advertisers who supplied

20:26

ninety percent of the company's revenue. They

20:29

like to float their ads in calm

20:31

waters. and the big ad agencies

20:33

have put up red flags. So

20:36

companies like Volkswagen, Pfizer,

20:38

General Mills, and no surprise

20:40

Eli Lilly are fleeing

20:43

the platform right now. On the

20:45

people side of things, we've seen

20:47

if anything even more of a crisis.

20:50

In addition to laying off half the company

20:52

and an estimated eighty percent

20:54

of the contract workforce, they're

20:56

increasingly worried that Twitter employees

20:59

are going to actually sabotage

21:00

the service.

21:01

So on the engineering

21:03

side, they've implemented a complete

21:05

code freeze, so that's fairly normal,

21:07

not allowing people to ship code. But right

21:09

now, they're not even allowing people to write

21:11

code. and they're going

21:13

through Slack and making lists of people

21:15

who've been critical of Elon Musk, who've

21:17

emoji reacted to people who've been critical,

21:19

and then they're terminating them overnight.

21:22

Then on Wednesday, Elon

21:24

Musk

21:24

sent out the hard core

21:26

email.

21:27

Employees have until five

21:29

PM today to commit to extremely

21:31

hardcore work according to Musk

21:34

building Twitter two point will mean

21:36

working long hours at high

21:38

intensity. The email directs

21:40

employees to click yes if they want

21:42

to continue working there Anyone who

21:44

does not respond will be let go and

21:47

given three months of severance pay.

21:49

The ultimatum led to a wave of

21:51

resignations. And then on Thursday

21:53

night, San Francisco based Twitter

21:55

has closed all offices and

21:57

suspended badge access until

21:59

Monday TO THE QUESTION TONIGHT, WILL

22:02

HE HAVE ENOUGH WORKERS LEFT TO

22:04

KEEP THE PLACE RUNNING. IT'S

22:05

A FAIRM OUT OF PESSOMISM. THE

22:07

TOP trending hashtag on the

22:09

site right now is RIP

22:11

Twitter.

22:12

Users tweeted their good buys.

22:14

Reminist about good times gone

22:16

by and prepared for the burial.

22:19

And some wondered yet again what

22:22

the hell Musk thought he was doing.

22:25

and why. Elon Musk

22:27

said that he bought Twitter because

22:29

he is a free speech absolutist. Anything

22:31

that there needs to be a place where

22:34

everyone on the Internet can speak as freely

22:36

as possible. So there is

22:38

deep irony in the fact that we are

22:40

seeing him crack down so harshly on his

22:42

own employees who are critiquing him.

22:45

And I think, you know, for listeners, it's

22:47

easy to say, well, you know, you can't

22:49

just criticize your boss online. Like, of course,

22:51

there are consequences. But you have to understand

22:53

that under Jack Doris See, Twitter had a culture

22:55

where it really encouraged people to do exactly

22:58

that. It wanted employees at

23:00

every level of company to push back a company

23:02

executive. and company

23:05

policies haven't changed. So

23:07

suddenly, people are being fired

23:09

for policies that they

23:11

didn't know existed in the first place.

23:13

by a boss who has ostensibly said

23:15

that the reason he is their boss is because he believes

23:17

in free speech. So

23:19

that was the national Twitter news

23:21

from Zoe Shiffer, manage editor

23:23

of platformer. Overseas, the

23:26

situation is rather more dire.

23:28

Of the staff Musk has already fired,

23:31

A large number were engineers, human

23:33

rights specialists, and content moderators

23:36

from Twitter's international desks.

23:38

over ninety percent of the staff in

23:40

India, nearly the entire Africa

23:43

hub and most of its staff in

23:45

Mexico. So what does that

23:47

mean for the more than two hundred and

23:49

sixty million Twitter users

23:51

outside the US? In the global

23:54

south, Twitter has often provided a

23:56

crucial

23:57

free speech zone in Egypt

23:59

during the

23:59

Arab spring. I will name it

24:01

a Twitter revolution, and I am

24:04

betting on this new trend of revolutions,

24:07

hashtag revolutions that are sweeping

24:09

across the region.

24:10

During the two thousand seventeen end

24:13

SARS

24:13

movement in Nigeria,

24:14

activists protested police

24:16

brutality. Twitter kind

24:19

of helped Nigerians amplify

24:22

their voices something that

24:24

Nigerian government was not happy

24:26

about. Just a couple of satisfied

24:28

users among very many human

24:30

rights activists All these

24:33

movements, of course, were powered by

24:35

people putting their lives on the line.

24:37

But there's no denying that Twitter amplified

24:40

their efforts then and now.

24:43

What happens if they lose a

24:45

tool to be heard? Reporter

24:47

Avi Asher Shapiro started

24:49

reporting his article called how

24:52

Musk's Twitter takeover could endanger

24:54

vulnerable users. Long

24:56

before Musk's purchase of Twitter

24:58

had gone through.

25:00

Why so early?

25:01

In countries like India and

25:03

Turkey, Pakistan, Twitter

25:05

is often in a really tough spot

25:07

wedged in between its users and

25:09

the government and has to make very tough

25:11

calls. And and I knew that if there was change

25:13

the guard at Twitter if there's a change of priorities,

25:16

the ground would start shifting in these places.

25:18

What was a role that

25:20

it played in countries like Nigeria,

25:22

and Egypt, and India,

25:23

and other parts of the global south

25:26

prior to Musk's acquisition. in

25:29

parts of world where, you know, let's say, the

25:31

media is owned by all friends

25:33

of the government or it's very difficult to

25:35

organize protest on the streets without getting

25:37

arrested things like Twitter are really key.

25:39

I mean, places where you can post anonymously

25:42

and be critical of the government, places where you

25:44

can start trends and hashtags, around matters

25:46

of public concern that you might not be able

25:48

to get the newspapers to pick up on. And the

25:50

flip side of that is authoritarian governments get

25:52

this. Right? I mean, there was a crazy story the last

25:55

couple of years the Saudi government tried

25:57

to infiltrate Twitter, recruiting

25:59

spies within the company to get them to unmask

26:01

the identities of people who were using Twitter

26:04

in Saudi Arabia to be critical of the

26:06

royal family. And that just gives you a sense

26:08

of the threat here, you know, like you're not gonna be

26:10

able to transform society just from

26:12

tweets. but it forms part of

26:14

key infrastructure in places where

26:16

things, you know, that we might have in the United States

26:18

like a relatively free press and the ability

26:20

to write not bad or go organize street protest.

26:23

If that space is heavily constricted, Twitter

26:25

becomes much more important. And that's why Twitter

26:27

is constantly locked in these really high stakes

26:29

battles in these places.

26:31

You've noted that Musk hasn't

26:33

been shy about tweeting everything

26:35

that's happened since he entered the

26:37

building. and yet he's

26:40

yet to weigh in on major free speech

26:42

and human rights issues.

26:43

Every day, Twitter got

26:45

hit. with dozens, if not hundreds

26:48

of requests from governments all around the world asking

26:50

them to do stuff. We want the IP address

26:52

of a user. We want you to block this tweet. We want

26:54

you to do this. We want you to do that. that's what

26:56

it's like running a global social media

26:58

platform. And they are in the

27:00

position of having to make a lot of tough

27:02

calls. that's why at Twitter they had

27:04

a human rights team until, you know,

27:06

Musk took over and fired them

27:08

who were tasked with thinking through

27:10

strategies along these lines and

27:13

figuring out how the company positions itself

27:15

in its very tough situations. To the extent

27:17

Musk has spoken about this at all, he said that

27:19

he wants to hue closely to local

27:21

laws. But, you know, that doesn't tell you

27:23

a lot. It just raises a lot of questions.

27:26

If you know little bit about how

27:28

companies deal

27:29

with local authorities, you

27:31

know that historically, their compliance

27:34

rate for requests under local

27:36

law can be quite low. You know,

27:38

Turkey, for example, they might

27:40

comply with like fifty to sixty percent of

27:42

the requests they get from the Turkish court to the

27:44

Turkish government.

27:45

When you're referring to compliance requests,

27:47

what

27:47

are you talking about? I can give you a very

27:50

specific example. I spoke to a Turkish

27:52

academic and dissident thinker named

27:54

Yamond Oncindits for my story. he

27:56

often tweets stuff that's critical of the

27:58

ruling party in Turkey or

27:59

making connections between business

28:02

people and the Turkish regime. And

28:04

people will go to court in Turkey and they will get

28:06

an order saying that this tweet is defamatory

28:09

or it breaks some sort of law against public

28:11

order, and the court will send a note to

28:13

Twitter saying, hey, we have a ruling here that says

28:15

that you have to take this down based on our

28:17

local law. And often -- Mhmm. -- in the Turkish

28:19

case, they would just ignore that order. And

28:22

that's a good thing. Well, from

28:23

your mom's perspective, it was a great thing. It

28:25

was a place where he was able to share

28:28

important information about matters

28:30

of public concern He was thankful

28:33

to Twitter that they had been resistant to

28:35

this, and he has no idea

28:37

what it's gonna be like in the future. And he's worried.

28:39

these are the kinds of users that it doesn't

28:41

seem like Musk is considering when he says

28:44

he's gonna queue close to local law. What does

28:46

that mean for Yamam?

28:47

You talked about high stakes battles.

28:50

I know Twitter's in the middle of a court

28:52

battle right now to resist censorship

28:55

orders from the Indian government.

28:57

And you've said that case is seen as

28:59

a key global precedent.

29:02

How come? It's been reported

29:04

elsewhere that Indian police had been dispatched

29:06

outside of the homes of Twitter workers

29:08

in India in moments when Twitter

29:10

had been resistant to comply with

29:13

take down request from the Indian government. You know,

29:15

they were locked into a pretty intense battle

29:17

where you had Indian authorities saying,

29:19

hey, these tweets are violating Indian law

29:21

and Twitter was thinking, well, these

29:23

tweets are really important, but it matters of public

29:25

concern, or free expression, or these are journalists,

29:28

and they were sort of playing a game of chicken with

29:30

the Indian authorities to a certain extent. And

29:32

couple months ago, Twitter made the decision to actually

29:34

take the Indian government to court and

29:36

say that these blocking orders are

29:39

violating your own laws. So trying to find

29:41

ways within Indian law to sort

29:43

of narrow and push back the scope of these

29:45

requests. And India is one of the largest

29:47

markets for Twitter. I think there's at least twenty five million

29:50

or more users there. And so for

29:52

them to go head to head with the government

29:54

over these blocking orders, it's a risky game.

29:56

and you could imagine a version of

29:58

the company without its human rights team or

30:00

with a different orientation saying, let's

30:03

just not fight this up. Let's just take these things

30:05

down and keep operating in India. Why are

30:07

we going to all this trouble to defend these

30:09

users who are tweeting things that are pissing off the

30:11

Indian government? That's not our battle to fight.

30:14

people are looking at this case and is

30:16

Twitter going to continue to push this in the courts

30:18

and we couldn't get them to confirm it. You know, we

30:20

tried to call everyone we knew who's associated

30:22

with this case at Twitter in India, and

30:25

no one would tell us anything. You would

30:27

think Elon Musk who seems so concerned

30:29

about freedom of speech and likes to talk about

30:31

Freedom Moon's speech lot in public would take

30:33

an opportunity here to say where he stands.

30:35

What about concern over

30:38

online misinformation and hate

30:40

speech, an upcoming elections. I'm

30:42

not talking about here. I'm talking about

30:45

Tunisia in December, Nigeria in

30:47

February, Turkey in July. These

30:50

are dangerous times in those countries.

30:51

Howard Bauchner: Right. And we've seen that

30:54

as part of his rush to get cost

30:56

down, Musk has fired half

30:58

of the company Those cuts seem to

31:00

be taking disproportionate effect

31:02

in places outside the United States. So

31:04

we've seen reports that ninety percent of the staff

31:07

in India were fired. The entire Africa,

31:10

hub, and Ghana was fired overnight.

31:13

Twitter doesn't need someone there to run its

31:15

servers and allow people to use

31:17

the platform. But if they don't have local staff,

31:19

if they don't have local content moderators who

31:21

speak the language, if they don't have people who specialize

31:24

in managing these relationships with tough governments,

31:26

if they don't have people whose job it is to

31:28

be in touch with civil society groups

31:31

who have their ear to the ground, you know,

31:33

they're gonna be operating blind in a lot of these

31:35

places. And and that can be a big

31:37

problem. Their coordinated harassment

31:39

campaigns, disinformation campaigns,

31:42

if you fire the entire, you know, staff

31:44

in Mexico, which is a place where

31:46

there's massive trolling problems in Spanish

31:48

on Twitter and they're everyone's gone

31:50

who knows how to deal with those and has studied them

31:52

and looked at them, what do you do? I mean, you're just

31:54

starting from zero. Let's face

31:56

it. Social media in general

31:58

has had a long standing problem

31:59

in the area of human rights.

32:02

So is it realistic to put

32:05

that on Musk and

32:05

his team to solve? this is

32:08

not a problem that starts or ends

32:10

with Elon Musk. But I think that these

32:12

companies have been forced to some

32:14

extent to integrate some

32:16

human rights thinking into their decision making

32:19

over time. They have brought

32:21

on pretty serious people

32:23

to think about these trade offs. And there

32:25

are huge trade offs here. Right?

32:28

I mean, do you operate

32:30

in a country where you know

32:32

you'll be asked to turn over sensitive information

32:34

about your users. Do you open

32:36

an office there and opened

32:39

up your staff to being held hostage by

32:41

government that is trying to pressure you

32:43

into doing something. I mean, these are the kinds

32:45

of decisions you have to make. obviously,

32:47

there are other equities in the room when they think about

32:49

these things. These are publicly traded companies.

32:52

They need to make money. But they were making

32:54

these considerations. And I think that

32:56

by just eliminating the

32:58

team and never talking about the human

33:00

rights issues. You know, that's definitely a

33:02

pretty problematic starting point. Is Musk

33:05

gonna be able solve the free expression

33:07

issues in the semi authoritarian

33:09

places where Twitter operates by sheer force

33:11

of will or or even by hiring ten million

33:13

human rights lawyers, like, no. there's,

33:16

you know, tremendous opportunities to

33:18

do good and do harm. We've

33:20

seen a lot of people

33:23

worrying whether Twitter will even

33:25

continue to exist. What happens

33:27

if it doesn't? What happens

33:29

to the activists? and activism that

33:32

relies on it.

33:33

Look, it's really hard to know the implications of

33:36

of what's going on right now. But the ability

33:38

for the world's richest man to buy

33:40

the rails and wires of

33:42

such a massive communications apparatus

33:45

that is used by millions of people around the

33:47

world. And then unilaterally make changes

33:49

to it, I think, is an important

33:52

reminder of what it means for our

33:54

communications infrastructure to be, you know,

33:56

up for sale to the highest bidder, which it is.

33:58

one of things as I was reporting this piece actually,

34:01

and I was talking to, especially, like, civil

34:03

society groups that deal with Twitter

34:05

a lot. a lot of these people were telling me was,

34:07

like, we sometimes forget that Twitter or

34:09

Facebook aren't the government. Like, when we're dealing

34:11

with them, we're lobbying them, we're, like, trying to get

34:14

a meeting, oh, can you change this policy? Like,

34:16

oh, please, can you invest more in this?

34:18

It felt almost like the advocacy they

34:20

were doing on tech platforms, resembled

34:22

advocacy they would do for state and but

34:24

the fact of the matter is, like, you know, these are private institutions.

34:27

But they function often like

34:29

public

34:29

utilities. Yeah. And that's

34:31

what I think the Musk thing is

34:33

a great inflection point for people to think

34:35

about that. I mean, Elon Musk can shut it down tomorrow.

34:37

You can take everyone's direct messages as you can publish

34:40

them on the Internet. You know? He could give a list of

34:42

all the users in Saudi Arabia. He could

34:44

give them directly to the state. You know, he can do

34:46

whatever he wants. Right? And hopefully, he

34:48

begins to consider some of these questions more

34:51

carefully. Doing this

34:53

job well requires a tremendous

34:55

amount of empathy. because it requires

34:58

you to put yourself in positions you would never

35:00

be Right? Elon Musk will never

35:02

be in the position where he is

35:04

facing a harassment campaign that puts his life

35:06

in danger and he needs someone to help him. Like, he's

35:09

got bodyguards. Right? Some sort of

35:11

intense sense of self air against bratiness.

35:13

Yeah. It might lend itself to being an industrialist

35:16

and pushing aside contrarians to

35:18

get your rocket in the air, but the priority

35:20

of building a social space requires

35:22

engineering for the most vulnerable among

35:24

us. Avi, thank you very

35:26

much. Thank you, Brook. It was fun.

35:29

Abi Asher Shapiro covers

35:31

tech for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

35:34

Coming up,

35:36

a search for a Twitter alternative.

35:39

This is on the media.

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This is on the media. I'm

36:39

Brook Gladstone. At the

36:41

base of the Statue of Liberty, there's a

36:43

poem that bears some famous lines.

36:46

Gimme your tired,

36:47

your poor, your huddled masses

36:50

yearning to breathe free, the

36:52

wretched refuse of your teeming

36:54

shore, send these the

36:56

homeless, tempest tossed

36:59

to me.

37:00

Today, they could easily address

37:02

a distinctly different huddled

37:05

mass in search of a more specialized

37:07

refuge.

37:09

That refuge could be

37:11

Mastodon originally created

37:13

by a German programmer named Eugen

37:16

Rochko

37:16

in twenty sixteen.

37:18

While the two platforms share

37:20

a general resemblance, the similarity

37:23

is merely skin deep. For example,

37:25

what we think of as a tweet button on

37:27

Mastodon is called a toot. Although

37:30

as of this week, toot has been retired

37:32

being too easily employed

37:33

in double entendres, so the button

37:36

now just says publish. And

37:38

also what you post can be lot

37:40

longer. And to join Mastodon

37:43

means joining a group that acts is your

37:45

home base. That group is called a

37:47

server or an instance. There's no universal

37:50

group with all users. Plus,

37:52

Mastodon's original source code

37:54

is publicly available and

37:56

changeable. All this because

37:59

Mastodon

37:59

just doesn't wanna be like

38:02

Twitter.

38:03

But why I hear you cry? Does

38:05

any of this matter to those of us who

38:07

really couldn't care less about Twitter

38:09

much less Mastodon. Well,

38:12

Clive Thompson, Tech journalist and

38:14

author of coders, the making of

38:16

a new tribe and the remaking of

38:18

the world offered in medium

38:21

a kind of explainer. We're

38:23

accustomed to a social network being

38:25

just one site you go to. And this is not

38:27

like that. These are all thousands of sites that

38:29

are quote unquote federated. They can

38:31

kinda talk to each other. You know, anyone on any

38:33

server can generally more or less talk

38:35

to people on other servers. The other

38:37

piece of lingo is they call this the Fediverse,

38:40

the federated universe. Right? There's

38:42

actually a bunch of things out there in this

38:44

federated universe, Mastodon's only one

38:46

piece of software. But because it's it's so

38:48

much like Twitter, it's kind of the one that's taken

38:51

off recently. The

38:52

Federation aspect of this

38:54

is one of the big differences. Each

38:56

server or instance

38:57

makes its own

39:00

rules. you're

39:00

exactly right. They'll each set up

39:03

rules saying, hey, guys, here

39:05

is what we consider to be good

39:07

behavior. you can't be a racist

39:09

idiot. You can't say it's stuff that we consider to

39:11

be massaging us by the people on this community.

39:14

If you do that, we have the right to kick you

39:16

off the server. and there are other servers that are like, yeah, we

39:18

don't have any rules. You can kinda say whatever you want.

39:20

So it's almost like belonging to a neighborhood

39:22

where there's neighborhood rules. Right? But

39:24

the really interesting thing is that if

39:26

someone comes to me and like starts harassing me

39:29

in d m's or in replies to me, I

39:31

can mute or block just that one person.

39:33

And I can also decide, hey, you know, the server

39:35

that person is on is filled with dirtbags.

39:37

So I'm gonna block that whole server. I don't wanna

39:39

see anything they do. I don't want them sing

39:42

what I said. And that's great. But there's

39:44

this extra layer where an

39:46

entire server could decide there's

39:48

a bunch of other servers over there that are just filled with

39:50

terrible people. Let's put a block

39:53

from our entire neighborhood to theirs. Mhmm.

39:55

So nothing that anyone does

39:57

on our server can be seen by them. You

39:59

wrote an article

39:59

explaining that Mastodon is

40:02

compared to not Twitter, but almost all

40:04

other social media sites. It's explicitly

40:07

antiviral. It prioritizes

40:10

friction. Twitter, Instagram,

40:12

YouTube, they want big viral

40:14

surges

40:15

to push things to get more popular.

40:18

How does Mastodon push

40:20

against virality and why?

40:23

If

40:23

you think about Twitter, a lot of the way it's architected

40:26

is designed to sort of encourage

40:28

massive joint attention of millions of

40:30

people on some hot

40:33

meme or joke or person that has just blowing

40:35

up right now. Millions of people. It's

40:37

trending. Exactly. It's like we're all looking at it.

40:39

We're all talking about it. The way that Twitter does that is

40:41

it has couple tools. It has an

40:43

algorithm that says if a tweet is

40:45

starting to take off, Let's push it to the

40:48

top of other people's feeds. It's

40:50

a rich get richer phenomena. And there's

40:52

other things like the quote tweet button, you know,

40:54

allows me to go someone just said this thing,

40:56

here's what I think about it. Now neither of those

40:58

things exist in the traditional Mastodon

41:00

software. For example, the feed

41:03

It's just ranked in reverse chronology.

41:05

So whatever you're looking at is just what happened

41:08

at this moment, and it goes backwards and timed

41:10

downwards. Mhmm.

41:10

But not allowing, quote, tweaks

41:13

that's pretty controversial. I still

41:15

don't understand why. Well,

41:16

the creator of Mastodon and the early

41:18

community of users thought that,

41:20

quote, tweeting on Twitter had led

41:23

to too much negative, quote, tweeting

41:25

of the form of like, wow, would you look at this

41:27

stupid crap this person just said?

41:29

by Sardonically pointing to

41:31

it, you're actually promoting stupid

41:33

crap.

41:34

Adding to the, like, nasty

41:36

corrosive quality of a lot of Twitter discourse.

41:39

that's how they saw it. Right? Mhmm. And so

41:41

they were like, let's just not do that. Early

41:43

users of Mastodon were often people that sort

41:45

of fled Twitter because they were

41:47

being harassed there. and they

41:49

regarded a lot of these viral surges

41:51

as being related to the harassment

41:53

that they'd seen. So where Twitter

41:56

tries to make things go fast, the design

41:58

of Mastodon, and kind of the norms

42:00

of the community were to make things

42:02

go more slowly. But they could be quite

42:04

weird for someone to come from Twitter

42:06

and look at what's happening. I've literally

42:09

had journalist show up on Mastodon and ask

42:11

me, who are the must follows? You know, where's

42:13

the hot conversations? I'm like, Guys,

42:16

you know, there really aren't any. There

42:18

definitely are people that have more followers

42:20

than others, but they don't loom

42:22

large. in people's feeds the way they

42:24

do in Twitter. But are there conversations?

42:26

Can you learn lots of stuff?

42:29

Oh my goodness. Yes. In fact, in the last kind

42:31

of weak that a lot of people have

42:33

flooded on and massed on. It is really

42:35

transformed. I'm getting

42:37

much better quality conversations on mass

42:39

on than I am on Twitter, and that maybe I've

42:41

had on Twitter in years, frankly. And

42:44

I think it's due a little bit to some of

42:46

these differences in the way things work. People

42:48

are more encouraged just to sort

42:50

of talk about ideas and not as

42:52

incentivized to say something that is,

42:54

you know, gonna go viral. One of the things

42:56

about antiviral design, once

42:58

people sort of orient themselves and go, well, this

43:00

space is not exclusively for sort of self promotion

43:03

and trying to make things take off. it kinda

43:05

changes what you wanna say in the first place.

43:07

So even with all these features

43:10

designed to prevent Mastodon from

43:12

becoming what Twitter is and has been

43:15

at its worst. Can

43:17

Mastodon really immunize itself

43:20

against the plagues of traditional

43:22

social media like harassment and

43:24

hate

43:24

speech and trolls. That's

43:26

a really good question. There was this

43:28

famous moment when a bunch of common

43:30

Nazis decided that all these

43:33

early adopters of Mastodon

43:35

came from Twitter because they wanted to get away

43:37

from Rachel Horassment. There was a lot

43:39

of queer and trans communities that were trying to

43:41

get away. So the Troll said, let's just

43:43

follow them over there. Exactly.

43:46

Exactly. And what the trolls discovered

43:48

was that once they got up in people's grills,

43:50

a couple server said, alright. We're blocking you. and

43:52

the people running those servers, they talk to

43:54

each other. Right? I'm a participant in helping

43:56

run my server. And we will talk to people

43:58

that run other servers to find out how things

44:00

going, what problems you're running into. We'll

44:03

sort of trade stories have terribly behaved

44:05

other servers, and we will jointly block them all.

44:07

And this is exactly what happened. to the influx

44:09

of Nazis was that very rapidly they discovered

44:12

that every other server had just unilaterally

44:14

blocked them and they were sort of in the corner of the federer's

44:16

just talking to themselves. But you know, there's

44:19

lot of vulnerabilities too. Twitter

44:21

had some of the world's top engineers

44:24

working hard on security. if you have

44:26

thousands of people who are kinda like

44:28

me or only slightly more technically

44:30

sophisticated than me running their servers, the

44:32

security is gonna be nowhere near as good. And

44:34

so there is probably going to be,

44:36

I would imagine a lot of trolls and

44:39

even nation states hacking into Mastodon

44:41

instances if they think there

44:43

are people on those servers whose information

44:46

they wanna steal or they wanna screw with. When

44:48

I saw that there's a journalist instance, I thought, well,

44:50

that's great. but it's also kind of a honeymoon.

44:52

Wait a second.

44:52

Is Mastodon collecting

44:55

data that can be hacked into? Or

44:57

are we just talking about the substance of

44:59

people's posts? Well,

45:00

direct messages, one person

45:02

to another, on Mastodon, which are putively

45:05

private, but could easily be stolen.

45:07

Most people wouldn't

45:08

say who they're anonymous

45:10

sources are in those context.

45:13

You would hope so, but people say a lot of

45:15

stuff in DMs. And

45:17

and then there's just, you know, login information, passwords,

45:20

stuff like that could be reused from other places.

45:22

So

45:22

tell me more about the downsides

45:24

then. There are some big downsides

45:27

to this kind of antiviral culture. One

45:29

of them is that for all of the sort

45:31

of bad stuff that we've seen from big viral

45:33

surges, on Twitter. There's also

45:36

really good stuff. Right? Like, some of the biggest

45:38

issues of our day, like,

45:40

Black Lives Matter or Me Too -- Mhmm.

45:42

-- these were issues that have been ignored by the main media

45:45

for a really, really long time. And

45:47

it was these mechanisms of virality

45:50

that a lot of these issues came

45:52

to the fore, to the mainstream. Right? I don't

45:54

think there would have been as robust a conversation

45:56

about massaging in the workplace, about

45:59

the treatment of black Americans by

46:01

police if it weren't for these viral

46:03

surges. There's also some fantastic

46:06

black academics who have been thinking

46:08

about the problems that are caused

46:10

by not having something like quote tweets. For

46:12

example, Jealand Flowers just wrote

46:14

this fantastic series of tweets

46:16

and series of posts on Mastodon saying, look,

46:18

Black Twitter was incredibly important for

46:20

black communities all across the world and in America.

46:23

It relied heavily on, quote, tweeting

46:25

because that tapped into the sort of calm response

46:28

culture that was generations old. I

46:30

know that there's a real push to get

46:32

Mastodon to do

46:33

quote tweets. Right. Quote

46:36

toots. Quote booths. And one

46:38

of the problems is, of course, because it

46:40

is federated because I'm

46:43

running a copy of Mastodon on my server

46:45

and there's thousands of other people running them.

46:47

The only way to get everyone to

46:49

have, quote, boosts would be for everyone

46:51

to update their software in exactly the same way.

46:54

It's not clear that everyone would wanna do

46:56

that.

46:57

However, Twitter

46:57

though a dumpster fire

47:00

is not fed nor are

47:02

all the other virally driven

47:05

social media platforms. I mean,

47:07

they're still there. does Mastodon

47:09

have to

47:09

be won? This

47:10

is really on point. A lot of people have been

47:12

arguing long before me that Mastodon and

47:15

the other services on the Fediverse are

47:17

not even supposed to be replicas or

47:19

substitutes for Twitter. They have an intentionally different

47:22

way of encouraging conversation. Personally,

47:25

I hope the Twitter doesn't go anywhere.

47:28

Sure it's a dumpster fire, but it has some amazing,

47:30

amazing things that come from shoving

47:32

everyone in this one room and having

47:34

these weird rangey conversations. I think that's

47:36

powerful.

47:37

Now part of the reason traditional social

47:40

media promotes engagement,

47:43

which is often expressed in ugly

47:45

interactions, is that

47:47

those interactions prompt clicks

47:49

and views that drive up ad revenue.

47:52

How does Mastodon make money?

47:55

It doesn't make money at all. It is software

47:57

that individuals run to provide a service

47:59

for

47:59

themselves.

48:00

Is it like Wikipedia? Can

48:02

you contribute to Mastodon?

48:04

Mastodon again is just software

48:06

that I and a bunch of friends run. We

48:08

have a bill for a server every month,

48:11

and we have to cover that bill. And so

48:13

we just sort of pass the hat. and we have

48:15

a Patreon. There's some much larger servers

48:17

that have it more formalized. They're like, okay.

48:19

If you want to be part of the server,

48:21

you kind of have to kid in this amount, you know,

48:24

a month so we can pay not just for the

48:26

server cost, but for someone to run it and make

48:28

sure it works very, very different from

48:30

a regular social network like Twitter

48:32

where there's a central place that has to pay for employees.

48:35

This is like little, you know, anarchist

48:37

gatherings. And I I say, anarchist in the positive

48:39

sense like not lack of a rule but self rule.

48:42

I'm curious why

48:45

you got unmasted on. You said

48:47

it prioritizes friction The

48:49

producer of this segment, Becca had

48:52

a great phrase. She said it's like

48:54

old school communication using just

48:56

a quarter cup of Silicon Valley.

48:59

to make it palatable. Do

49:01

you think people will enjoy it?

49:03

I originally got a marathon because,

49:05

you know, I was interested to see what

49:08

this new thetaverse was like and and

49:10

I joined like a server filled with open source

49:12

software nerds. Okay. This is cool. Like, we could go

49:14

really deep and nerdy without me bothering my

49:17

Twitter followers who would have no interest in hearing me

49:19

talk about Linux drivers for antique webcams.

49:21

Mhmm. I was attracted to the idea

49:23

of this sort of self run non corporate

49:26

world and I could see that people were behaving differently

49:28

and I wanted to understand why.

49:30

Now the question is, is this attractive

49:32

to enough people that a lot would wanna do

49:34

it. If you'd asked me three weeks ago before

49:36

Elon Musk started driving people in a panic

49:38

away from Twitter, I would've said I

49:40

don't think a lot of people are gonna wanna

49:43

interact in the way that, you know, Mastodon's community

49:46

and technological affordances allow you

49:48

to do. But lo and behold,

49:50

there are just tons of folks now

49:52

who've joined Mastodon that I'm following, and they're

49:54

from every walk of life. someone

49:56

posted something on Mastodon saying, I don't know, man.

49:58

People keep on saying Mastodon

49:59

is hard to join, but I just

50:02

got a note from my retired mother saying, oh,

50:04

yeah, I just followed you on the elephant site, you know.

50:07

But let's acknowledge that

50:09

Twitter isn't even close to the most popular

50:12

social media site. It's no Facebook,

50:15

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat.

50:18

That said, why do you

50:20

think a migration from Twitter

50:22

is worth paying attention to

50:24

even if you've never used

50:26

Twitter and will never use

50:29

Mastodon. It

50:30

does matter for the following reason. Twitter

50:32

has, for better and for worse,

50:35

become kind of a fulcrum for

50:37

various apps specs of civic discussion and

50:39

civic debate. It's designed

50:41

to be really fast. It's designed to be really

50:43

easy. It's text heavy. There's definitely

50:46

pictures and videos, but Twitter is fundamentally

50:49

one of the last big social medias

50:51

that heavily prioritizes text and

50:53

writing. That gives it skimability

50:55

and speed. That's why Twitter

50:58

has had this outsized force

51:00

in public debate. partly also, you know, there's

51:02

a lot of journalists, there's a lot of celebrities there, but

51:04

I honestly think it's because of this text

51:07

based discursive format. And I'm not the

51:09

first person to point this out. In fact, there was a great

51:11

tweet thrown by Taylor Lorenzo, the Washington Post

51:13

a while ago saying exactly this. So

51:15

even if you don't use Twitter, That's why

51:17

it matters because it has that outsized influence.

51:20

The really interesting thing is that the long

51:22

term users of Mastodon

51:25

on the Fediverse are not entirely

51:27

thrilled with this new migration

51:29

because they're kinda like, look, guys, we had this kind

51:32

of quiet space that was working really well for

51:34

us. And now there's ton

51:36

of new people running around with

51:38

very different cultural assumptions, very different

51:40

behaviors. They're a little worried that

51:42

the conventions and the culture of Twitter

51:45

including some of that thirst for morality,

51:47

will be injected into the DNA

51:50

of the culture of people using Mastodon. because,

51:52

of course, it isn't just technology, it's

51:55

culture, how people want to behave, and

51:57

spaces change when people's cultural expectations

51:59

change. Clive,

52:00

thank you very much. I'm

52:03

glad to be here. That was a lot of fun.

52:04

Clive Thompson is a tech journalist whose

52:06

work appears in the New York Times magazine

52:09

wired in Smithsonian. His most

52:11

recent book is coders, the making

52:13

of a new tribe, and the remaking

52:15

of the world. You can

52:17

find on the media on Mastodon by

52:19

searching at on the media at

52:22

jerna

52:23

dot host.

52:29

And

52:29

that's the show. AMA Media

52:31

is produced by Micah Lowinger, Elouise

52:34

Blondeo, Mollie Schwartz, Rebecca

52:36

Clark Calendar, Candice Wong,

52:38

and Suzanne Gaber. with

52:40

help from Tami George. Our

52:42

technical

52:42

directors, Jennifer Munson,

52:45

our engineers this week for Andrew Nerviano,

52:47

Mike Hutchman, and Sam

52:50

Bayer. Catcher Rogers is our

52:52

executive producer on the media

52:54

is a production of WNYC Studios,

52:57

I'm Brook Gladstone. And

53:00

please check out our new series The

53:02

Divided Dial on the OTM

53:04

podcast.

53:05

I'm pretty sure you won't be

53:07

sorry.