Twitter was founded in 2004 by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass and supposedly got its start as an offshoot from the Odeo podcasting platform, now defunct.
Incidentally, Evan was previously employed at Google and created Blogger. From long form content publishing to short form, it was a natural fit for the guy.
Twitter was different from most authoring platforms because it didn't encourage lengthy discourse, rather byte-sized 'announcement' like posts. The term micro-blogging was probably not frequently used, and replaced instead with the brandable word 'Tweet' to represent this form of authorship.
Initially, Twitter was SMS-based app so a tweet was in fact a text message that was broadcast on Twitter.com with the user's handle. The Android app made it easy to publish an opinion, a criticism and some form of status update regarding where you were or what you were thinking about.
140 characters, that was all. It was like rocket fuel.
Before long, Twitter gained international attention and grew to become a newsboard of sorts for the hashtag, a tagging system that was already familiar to authors on the web and people who tinkered with Google search listings and website optimization (SEO, search engine optimization). The hashtag was a super weapon for determining what was hot on the web.
It worked wonderfully. You could tag a tweet to get attention and also scroll for hashtags to find other users you could follow.
**So what went wrong with a system that had frequent, mostly unfiltered updates from millions of users in a largely US-based platform?**
Twitter staff changed. US government policies changed.
Gradually, integrating with the tech giants like Google and Youtube, Twitter's mission and inventiveness was exchanged for maintaining the status quo. To accomplish this new goal, controls had to be installed.
In recent years we've seen far more controls over social media companies, but in the earlier days, the precursors were emerging already.
## More filtration: web giants embrace intelligence policies
Google, as a servicer of search results queries, began to publish regular reports and directives to the public -- business owners mainly-- on how they ought to maintain their content and tag their web pages. It was called Search Engine Optimization, but in disguise it was 'follow the status quo' with all the buttons and coats of authoritarianism.
The tagging and categorizing of posts, using specific search phrases, called 'keywords' resulted in, essentially, a content-monopoly system.
--If the search engine servicer Google dictated everyone put a Facebook like box widget on their pages for better 'search visbility' everyone would follow suit. Soon, page 1 listings of results were populated by the search optimized websites and persons. (But more on that later.)
With time, the abuse of this authority and the momentum of a total monopoly over search, Google established more and more opaque 'rating systems', even an AI based system to control and serve the 'right results' that their customers were seeking on Google search pages. You couldn't really say what resulted in page 1 listings in search. It wasn't a 'market dictates' what's popular, it was a 'no one really knows, just listen to the Boss Google' and maybe you'll get lucky to be seen on the web search results...
Twitter adopted a similar model, and through collaboration, established many rules on maintaining a monopoly over the words spoken and shared. Then the overt signs of content filtration erupted on the home pages. Twitter began to carefully curate the results shown for each hashtag.
Google later developed a system where only its subsidiaries and friends of their friends were listed on page 1. Amazon, eBay and other companies suddenly got a boost in their SEO listings. Then content-gates like the Fact Checkers popped higher and high in search results, but by then it was pretty obvious where we were headed.
Back to Twitter again.
## Hashtag De-amplification based on past tweets or user browsing activity on or off Twitter
If in the past you would expect your hashtagged tweet to show up under "cute dogs", now Twitter's staff would have a control in place to ensure your tweet wouldn't be seen if you published something unfavorable about Obama. Your tweet wouldn't be 'amplified' like a sycophantic Blue-check marked user who happens to be best friends with Obama white house staff. But there's more.
## Speech Blackholes: Shadowbans Begin and Never End
Users began reporting shadow bans. Essentially, a user would frequently be placed in a blackhole where they could tweet but never be seen, and they would also never know they were blackholed by a shadowban. The result was a nasty form of psychological negation, akin to silent bullying by Twitter staff and policies.
- Twitter's own staff admitted to this practice.
## Blue Check Marked Users: More Equal Than You
Blue check marked users, the ominously and opaquely distributed 'special status' to Twitter users was just another etch in the new agenda of Twitter.
If anyone wonders how a blue check is given, how one gets it -- there is no open process or set of rules.
It is arbitrary.
As such, it resembles the caste systems of India cultures of old. A remarkable addition to Twitter, really, as a forward-thinking micro blogging platform for speech and content!
## How curation and filtration led to Twitter's irrelevancy
Now if we return to the point about filtering hashtags and the truly popular content on the web... we find something extremely interesting. By establishing controls over what was popular, Twitter was putting itself in the undesirable unintended position of producing the "in" crowd content.
As anyone knows, trends go in and out of style quickly. By determining what was popular in hashtags, and providing a national feed to various countries in the Twitter UI, they took on a gargantuan and impossible task of remaining relevant and reading the 'weather' of millions of people with tastes, interests and varied opinions.
--Obviously, an impossible task for a small staff, let alone think tanks and advisory groups.
So the disconnect took only a few weeks or months to develop and appear, like a gaping wound on the social media company.
**The mis-aligned 'popular' themes presented, showed that Twitter was not at all representing the people you know and consider valued, whose thoughts you consider valuable -- from those near and far in the states or globally via the web.**
The net result of such a system is people who are not gullible sense deception from Twitter and furthermore, that Twitter won't let your contrary opinions to ever make it to the top of a hashtag. Fall in line and you'll mostly do ok, so long as your browsing score is ok....
About 2 years ago, under the Trump presidency, Twitter was set on fire.
New York Times and Wall Street Journal fiascos where Twitter removed tweets really set the tone of top down authoritarianism at Twitter. More users drop off by hundreds of thousands.
Then Chrissy Tegan's horrific tweets which she soon regretted made the hashtags, and all hell broke loose. Now virtually anything that poses a threat to the status quo, no matter how bad the status quo is in truth, would be slammed down with a major, unbreakable ban hammer.
-- Not with the status quo? Your Twitter social life is concluded promptly(but don't worry, not much was lost anyhow!).
With Jack Dorsey at the helm on March 21 2006, the status quo would be treated with kid gloves and continued to get favorable Chrissy Tegan-esque catering services. And so with Jack, integrity was put to the guillotine, Dershowitz style. With it, the 140 character limit, and then Twitter blue team squads who would go about the hashtags armed with the proverbial Twitter-Tommy gun.
Finally, in 2022, Twitter evolved into its final stage, much like a Pokemon that drank nuclear waste... **Twitter staff comments were leaked where they openly confessed to being communistic. **
I was as shocked to hear those words from Twitter staff as the next person. They really believe they're communists? Perhaps they know the meaning of the word, or not, but it was still a stunning revelation that one of the bigger social media companies was proud of being authoritarian.
Nonetheless, we are on to more pressing matters than mere confessions of staff. Elon Musk's latest attempt to purchase Twitter has revealed a far more powerful confirmation of its irrelevance and death as a social media platform:
Twitter staff were unwilling to prove how many of the accounts on Twitter were determined to be bots (computer programs that tweet pretending to be humans with opinions). By showing an unwillingness, they pressed the wide-faring enterpreneur Elon Musk to commission a study into the matter, as any astute business person would do prior to a significant investment.
What did he learn?
22.2 MILLION bots following Joe Biden's official White House twitter account, for one. Now imagine if we had a report that showed just how eroded Twitter really is today. Would we find that more than 80% are bogus accounts, posing irrelevant and invalid opinions to sway the naive?
I think we're in for more surprises regarding Twitter in the months to come. Even if the sale doesn't go through, Twitter's end will likely be very glamorous and amusing because so far it has moved about as gracefully as a train wreck in slow motion with each scandal and revelation.
Stay tuned.
hiveblocks