Newsletter

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

On the effects of our choices, the agency and the responsibilities we have when using social media.

Federico Gaggio

10 Jan 2025 — 7 min read

Morpheus offers Neo the choice in The Matrix (1999)

Happy new year. I doubt anyone has been wondering, but I feel moved to explain the long gap since my last post. There are some practical reasons (a lot to do) but also one of method. I wrote my last post in a manner more suited to an academic paper, through much research, reading, checking and editing. Nothing wrong with that, but my stated goal here is to write to help me think. That can take many forms, and it should not always require a disproportionate investment of time and effort. I have much to think and write about so I’ll experiment a bit more with form, pace and style.

My exploration of Media Ecology happened in the context of an ongoing reflection on how people use media, including our underlying motivations, the effects and implications. This is not my only focus here, but it is likely to grow into a sizeable patch of the ideas garden. In the spirit of more spontaneous and freeform posting, I’ll start somewhere and see where it leads me, rather than try to make sense of it all at once. Publishing my thoughts is a way to get them out and mingling with other people's ideas. It's a social engagement of sorts.

As social beings, we want to take part in conversations and to connect with others. We want to have a voice, be seen, liked, understood and respected. Well before social media technologies existed, people used various forms of representation to build a social self. We define our identity in relation to others. Our friends and the company we keep reflect back to us who we are.

The digital revolution opened up new ways for people to connect and debate in open societies. A networked society allows individuals to join in communities of interest or affinity, connect with others across distances of time and space, expand our knowledge and cultural horizons. Before the internet, long distance connections were harder, and even local ones required the availability of physical infrastructure for communicating, organising and participating.

When Facebook came along, I marvelled at its potential for the curation of personal identity. Here was a place where I could connect with friends anywhere in the world, and mutually share what we cared about. Music, art, design... By posting examples of my cultural tastes and references I would be able to craft the kind of persona I wanted other people to see. But soon Facebook grew so fast and wide that it became something else entirely: its enshittification is well documented. Two years ago Cory Doctorow argued that "Facebook is terminally enshittified, a terrible place to be whether you're a user, a media company, or an advertiser".[[1]] I was never a heavy user, but I withdrew entirely at the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal (2018). I never really spent much time on Instagram either. My daughter uses Snapchat and TikTok and I knew to avoid them. But Twitter was different. On Twitter I felt I could connect with people I wanted to hear from, and with whom I could have meaningful conversations. I could keep my finger on the pulse, discover new ideas, and follow live news. On Twitter I felt I could meet grown-up, inspiring and interesting people, and be one of them.

It has been over two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter. He since proceeded to turn it into a toxic, right-wing propaganda channel, pursuing his personal and business interests, and making it unwelcoming and unusable for people seeking a plural and vibrant platform for news, public engagement and civilised debate. As a result, many users felt the need to move on. Many left, but others argued for staying. Should one leave to avoid the toxicity, or should one stay to avoid leaving the whole arena to the trolls?

An X ad stating that 'X is the world's town square' — An X ad appearing on top of my timeline

X is not the world's town square

The ἀγορά (ágorá) of ancient Greece is the original place of citizen participation: the public square. Its meaning is "gathering place, a central public place of assembly".

Musk bought what he believes to be the "world's town square" with the very obvious intention to grow his own influence. Quite effectively, as it turned out. It's a catchy claim, and many bought it, even among critics, but it doesn't have much substance in my view, for a number of reasons.

A town square, whether local or global, is a public space. A commons. Even before Musk bought it, Twitter was not a public space. It was an open-access platform privately run by a listed company. Musk took it off the market, and he exercises absolute control over it.

With approximately 336M users worldwide [[2]] it is bigger than direct competitors such as Bluesky, but orders of magnitude smaller than any one of the other main platforms (Facebook 3Bn, Youtube 2.5Bn, Instagram & Whatsapp 2Bn each).

Most users are in the US and Japan, so it is hardly "global". It is such a narrow view of the world, but living in Europe or the US we may not notice. According to Statista, Twitter's largest markets are the United States (108.55 million users), Japan (74.1 million), and India (30.3 million). [[3]] In the US that's 33% of the population, and in Japan 60% (what's going on there?). But considering India's population of nearly 1.5 billion, only 2 in 100 Indian citizens are on X/Twitter. Even so, it appears to have a considerable influence on politics.

In fact Twitter's influence is less related to its scale and more to the type of people who use it. It became the social platform of choice for journalists, politicians and everyone working with media. As a result, what happens on Twitter is amplified in every other channel. Using the platform, Musk very effectively hijacks the media agenda on a daily basis (as did Trump before being banned in January 2021). Whatever deranged utterance becomes headline news. The more outrageous, the more it gets amplified.

No wonder many people accept the 'town square' narrative, and have decided that despite all the toxicity they need to stick around, as leaving would mean retreating in their own 'bubble'. Among them is academic and climate activist Rupert Read, who wrote "I’ll be staying on this platform, pretty much no matter what. I hope you will too. Do NOT cede public space to the far-Right". [[4]]

I commend Rupert’s intentions, and I support the Climate Majority Project.[[5]] In order to drive change, it is necessary to reach and engage a majority of people, not only those who agree with us: it is pointless to retreat to 'progressive bubbles'. However I think this position does not give enough weight to the question of algorithmic bias (you can't reach them anyway, since the owner controls who sees your posts), and the role of users in fuelling the mind-control machine. According to writer and researcher Ketan Joshi, by contributing to X, we provide the fuel that feeds it. "Imagine 4Chan, or TruthSocial, except populated by major global institutions, world leaders and politicians, trusted critical agencies, progressives, activists and celebrities."[[6]]

I have been wondering why public figures of all kinds and established news organisations continue to use Twitter even as they repeatedly lament its degradation. US public service media outlets NPR and PBS — a rare oasis in the vast wasteland of US commercial media — left Twitter after Musk preposterously classified them as “state-affiliated media”. [[7]] In November 2024, shortly after the presidential election, the Guardian announced they would stop actively using X, citing toxicity, far-right conspiracy theories and racism, as well as Musk's use of its influence on public discourse.[[8]]

In December the European Federation of Journalists followed suit.[[9]] What about the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and many other reputable news organisations? In France, Le Monde and Libération filed a lawsuit against X for unauthorised use of their content, but continue to maintain an active presence on the platform. What about politicians, government agencies, associations and NGOs? By continuing to use the platform, they lend it credibility. Organisations with tens of millions of followers like the BBC or the NYT have much to loose in terms of reach. But, as the Guardian wrote in its statement, there is a line where the negatives outweigh the benefits. Leaving X/Twitter is not only about avoiding the delirious rants and toxicity of its owner and his followers. It’s also, most importantly, about not fuelling the disinformation-misinformation machine, and reducing our exposure to algorithmic manipulation.

In the digital economy, it is ultimately the users who create the value. Individually we have agency and collectively we have power. While some of us may be comfortable to conduct public conversations on private platforms, I do not think the privatisation of all public spaces and resources is acceptable. Media are fundamental to human societies, like air and water. We have seen more than enough of what happens when we play by the rules of a small group of billionaires who own the platforms, the technology and the algorithms governing all our media interactions.

Commercial tools continue to be used to manipulate, deceive and control public opinion, manufacturing consent for those with most economic power. Musk is only one of the latest and most outlandish of the media barons. As I am preparing to publish this post, Facebook announced its decision to eliminate independent fact-checkers from Facebook and Instagram's content moderation processes. The astonishing rationale presented by Zuckerberg has dystopian undertones, a chilling warning of what we may expect next. [[10]]

Go, but where?

Where can people go for civilised debate? I do not think the answer is to retreat to a solitary corner and watch the horror unfold. How can civil society demand and develop an independent, free and accessible media infrastructure providing viable alternatives?

Jaron Lanier argued that those of us with the means to do so have a moral imperative to quit social media. Especially journalists, I would note. Algorithmic surveillance by wealthy tech corporations undermines individual autonomy, and those who can leave these platforms have a responsibility to free themselves and demonstrate alternative ways of living. Rather than providing solidarity with those who cannot leave, power users who choose stay on these platforms actually reinforce the system's power.[[11]]

Instead, we shall exercise our independence, our agency and our imagination to drive business changes and help create viable alternatives to current social media models. What would an open, safe, public and global town square look like?

I shall explore some of the initiatives and experiments I came across. Stay tuned. And don't feed the trolls.[[12]]