I'd even go one step further. It is a global weapons platform for information warfare- specifically designed for that purpose. I mean- right after they rolled it out, half the regimes in the middle east were swiftly overthrown, plunging it into chaos. Not to mention what the drug cartels and ISIS used it for in the early days.
And while I largely like what Musk has done with the place (ie, I can actually have my say on there without being immediately suspended) I am not super thrilled with the algorithm. My threads are filled not as much with the content of the accounts I follow- but mainly with the postings of influencers I despise. And, strangely- with rando accounts who seem to still be obsessed with Covid and screaming that everybody needs to still be masking everywhere.
I can only surmise they are farming deliberately negative interactions, baiting me to viciously denigrate the likes of Harry Sisson or the Crassenstein brothers or whomever.
After seeing your posts on here for a long time, I think it’s fair to say we generally see the world through different lenses. You see a lot of things being pre-planned or at least deliberate, while I see them being the outcome of bad process.
In this case, the difference doesn’t matter because both paths lead to the same conclusion. Was Twitter designed to be a weapon of information warfare? Maybe, maybe not… without question, it definitely
is a weapon now. Are they deliberately farming your interactions to make you hate people with certain beliefs? Maybe, maybe not… but the negativity leading to hatred definitely
is built into the architecture of the platform.
At this point, I see our society at a strange precipice where by all rights we should be disconnecting from the platform, and instead are actively deluding ourselves into thinking we can co-exist with it.
We don’t need to speculate that our perception is being manipulated for political/military/commercial/unknown effect, because that is a known fact and has been for some time now. Yet we keep coming back for another dose of the seratonin because we can’t make ourselves stop. Do we need to monitor Canes news as it’s breaking by the minute? No we do not, it will be on major news outlets within 10 minutes either way. Do we need to see a bunch of unverified speculation and propaganda every time a political event happens? No we do not, we’re seeing a live feed of events as they unfold. Does the platform offer healthy or even meaningful social engagement? No it does not, it simply leaves you craving validation from strangers.
So what’s drawing us back to keep making profiles and pretend we’re somehow smart enough to control the algorithm, when we
know that it’s controlling us like a puppet on a string? Smells a lot like addiction, of a kind that is impacting the world on a broad social level. None of this adds up to anything good happening in the end, IMO.
