Twitter's new app Birdwatch and its implications
If you’ve been following what has been happening in the United States of America in 2020, then you have definitely seen Donald Trump’s Twitter account get suspended straight after he left office. Well, it turns out that it didn’t go down really well with a significant portion of the internet. For most, even people who weren’t big fans of Trump in the first place, this was a blatant attack on freedom of speech and democracy. Experts were arguing that big techs have gained too much power and now suddenly decided on the type of information available to the public on their platform. Others didn’t seem to think it was a big deal and even applauded the fact that, finally, someone had shut him up - many other platforms followed through with that same action of banning Trump from their platform under the pretext that misinformation spreads too rapidly and that someone as important as the US President should not be allowed to say such nonsense. As a digital marketing agency based in Dubai and after having managed countless clients’ Twitter accounts, we understand the value of being decent, neutral and respectful online as a business - it’s becoming increasingly important to avoid offending anyone, particularly your own audience, on sensitive topics. Your choice of words matter of course but as individuals, would you personally like that big techs control your speech? I bet you wouldn’t like that so much.
Conspiracy theories have been around long before the pandemic happened and will always exist amongst people who simply don’t understand a certain topic or just refuse to comply with the mainstream mindset altogether. Is that so much of a bad thing though ..? Okay fine, flat earthers are really stubborn and misinformed but at least they keep NASA accountable, right? (lol, not a good example). Usually, when there are two very polarised groups (e.g. Democrats vs Republicans), they keep each other accountable, preventing the other from gaining monopoly over data, resources or power. That’s a good thing because it keeps the balance going. Of course, everyone would want to live in a world where you don’t have to work and still be rich and healthy, and where everyone is nice and inclusive towards each other - but that’s unfortunately not the case. Maybe one day when Elon Musk declares himself God Emperor of Mars and imposes science as a new religion (hopefully that happens) and Mint Stalk as its digital marketing agency (whoop whoop).
Anyway. Recently, Twitter decided to create its own little fact checker platform called Birdwatch, a community based approach to misinformation. Sounds cool and awesome until you realise that sometimes, just sometimes, truth can be very subjective - there will always be some data missing to make the statement 100% true and accurate. Even if the alternative answer sounds like utter nonsense, it could very well be true. So, this is why discussion and dialogue are important right? Let’s teach each other and try to understand the other side’s point. Well, Twitter doesn’t seem to agree and will now actively encourage people to flag tweets they ‘think’ are misleading, write a note explaining why this is misleading and offer the answer they ‘think’ is the right one. This informative piece of text from the respondent will be made available for everyone to see so there can be a consensus amongst all the contributors. The only problem with that is, people love to disagree and everyone online is very opinionated/biased. So, how on earth will we ever see the end of it? It’s probably better to give that voice to the people/audience rather than letting Twitter decide what’s true and what’s not, but is the majority always right ..? Also, it’s tricky when it comes to complex political issues. Everyone is an expert on Twitter if you haven’t noticed already. Here at Mint Stalk, we see that happening everyday - the comment sections are always full of life.
Twitter is a platform that fosters discussion, which also makes it very susceptible to misinformation too. I mean, flat earthers are all over the platform too (and all around the globe, lol). As a leading digital marketing agency operating in the UAE and as we have seen with our clients’ accounts, people in the UAE do enjoy getting involved in more mature discussions and Twitter seems to be the more appropriate platform for it as opposed to Instagram or TikTok. Well, Birdwatch is apparently set to root out propaganda and other harmful, extreme discourse (e.g. terrorism). People nowadays spend way too much time on social media - that’s something we can all agree on. And now they have to play the police online ..? Sounds a little exhausting and some very dedicated people will most likely spend all their time trying to refute other people’s tweets constantly, even on the pettiest and most unimportant issues - these people are called ‘Karen’ in the meme world. To avoid manipulation, Twitter will still review the answers and decide if the tweet should remain on the platform. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, the solution to problematic speech should be dialogue and conversation, not censorship.
Shutting down Trump’s account did little to solve the spread of misinformation because often, people just choose to believe what they want. It seems like tech companies are slowly moving away from their initial ideals of freedom of expression. Some even go further and argue that Twitter is being lazy and ‘using’ people (the community) for free to do what paid employees should be doing. Others argue that it is more ‘honest’ if the community decides as it’s more of a ‘voluntary’ act from the community’s part. Anyway, it’s all very confusing but Twitter keeps pushing the idea that Birdwatch is still a trial experiment and if it appears to do more harm than good, they will put a stop to it. So, let’s see.
2020 was indeed a very interesting year. From anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theories all the way to accounts getting suspended over some ‘mildly offensive’ statement, Twitter deemed necessary to intervene on a much larger scale. Some politicians argued that Twitter does not really care about stopping the spread of misinformation but rather making people more engaged on the platform, raising the concern that Twitter is either begging for attention or simply trying to make up for suspending Trump’s account in the first place. It’s almost like “You can’t trust everything you see online, except what we are showing you.” Nowadays, it’s difficult to just see a business’ new strategy/feature as purely innocent and genuine - and rightfully so. It’s actually incredible how so many people called out Twitter for this feature instead of simply applauding it. Faith in humanity is not all lost and people are still showing signs of critical thinking. At Mint Stalk, we have dealt with all the different social media platforms you can possibly think of and this big shift with big techs is a very interesting one. We cannot necessarily predict what will happen of course, as everything seems to be very unpredictable these days, but transparency and accountability are definitely on the line here.
