Can Twitter’s Failings Spur a Better Social Media?

The platform is a case study in why deliberation matters.

Last week, Elon Musk bought Twitter, and the gossip flew fast and furious about what was coming. Much of it promised a Wild West of misinformation and bigotry, and I have no doubt that that will be true. There was also a palpable melancholy, a sense that the fraught public square might be coming to an end.

My own ambivalence about the platform predates Musk’s acquisition. I tried to sound an alarm years ago, noting how troubling it is that our public arenas are privately owned, and therefore especially subject to the distortions and whims of those who hope to capitalize on our participation. This moment draws that reality in sharp relief.

But maybe, as we worry about the demise of the platform, we can reflect on what the space made us into. We shared information and nurtured sociality, met like-minded people, and found ourselves transformed by others we wouldn’t have met under different circumstances. But we also witnessed—and far too many of us participated in—terrible bullying.

Pile-ons are common on social media. Egged on by peers and private discomforts, people act out in gleeful unison with less empathy—I imagine—than they’d have in the flesh. You can feel the displacement that’s happening; personal frustrations are unleashed on the unpopular figure of the moment.

Having experienced several cycles of cyberbullying over the past decade, I can attest that it is profoundly disorienting. You do not recognize the person they are describing and therefore try to defend yourself. But because social media isn’t really dialogic—it’s not a sequential conversation, but rather a set of discrete proclamations that exist in the ether far beyond you—there is no way to defend yourself. And you can’t win an argument. It’s a blood sport without a clear beginning or certain end.

In the worst moments, these pile-ons are occasions for the ugliest kinds of bigotry and venom. Every worst value you can imagine has crowds of celebrants on social media. But some mob moments are just middle-school-esque torment, and that’s bad enough. If Twitter is truly on its way out, I won’t miss witnessing any of it, even though I anticipate that I will miss Twitter itself.

Whatever becomes of the platform, something else will come in its stead—that’s for sure. And I hope that the next wave of social media is closer to being a public good, or at least has a collective-ownership model that is more accountable to participants. And I hope that as these spaces grow, we develop modes of ethical reengagement that can sustain dissent and disagreement. Even better, it would be wonderful to congregate in virtual spaces where conversation is better supported both structurally and culturally.

Deliberation matters, and not because we are supposed to be respectably civil or nice, even when dealing with people who deny our humanity. Deliberation matters because it helps people understand the stakes of our political positions. One can witness a “drag,” and one can witness a righteous claim. The latter holds promise, if sometimes less pleasure. It is an invitation to join a struggle, instead of a thrashing. More of that, please.