Juha Saarinen: Twitter’s failure during the Russian mutiny

Members of the Wagner Group military company load their tank onto a truck on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday. Twitter had developed into something truly useful for people who cared about what was happening in the world, but a number of good users have now left in disgust. Photo / AP

OPINION

The world watched last weekend with bated breath as the leader of the large Russian mercenary organisation Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched a surprise mutiny and moved on Moscow.

Before the social network got “Musked”, Twitter would’ve been the place to follow the coup action in almost real-time. What would happen? A civil war with nukes, Putin and pals going into exile in North Korea?

Or, a quick fizzle into a chaotic-looking situation that not even the hardest-pivoting social media expert on Russian internal politics is able to figure out?

Russia’s insanity is an ongoing mega-event that will affect us all, but Twitter’s no longer at the centre of it. Instead, people are following what is happening through old-school media outlets like Reuters and the Guardian, because, well, they’re trying to stay trustworthy.

Which is excellent, but it’s quite amazing that we ended up here. With hundreds of millions of interconnected eyeballs and ears on the ground, Twitter ended up being a source for concise news straight from events.

Text tweets, pictures, audio and video; lots of it was bogus, but by accident, like so much technology, Twitter had developed into something truly useful for people who cared about what was happening in the world.

This is why authoritarian regimes made it a priority to shut down Twitter early when the rumble and ruckus started. Russian authorities tried to black out the Internet during the mutiny, but they could’ve saved themselves the time and effort.

Don’t get me wrong: there are still accounts that work to provide the good oil and seek to inform rather than deceive Twitter users. It’s just that those data points get swamped with stupidity and propaganda from “verified” accounts now.

Healthy scepticism and always trying to verify information are even more important principles now, as @Cat_Arse148892 and other Twitter Blue subscribers are able to, for a modest monthly charge, spread conspiracy theories and rank disinformation.

The abuse from Twitter Blue nutters goes mostly unchecked and strongly discourages other users who might have had something interesting and helpful to add to the conversation. A number of good users have already left in disgust.

In fact, one good way to tidy up your timeline, if you haven’t given up on Twitter already, is to block Twitter Blue subscribers on sight. There’s little chance you’re missing anything of significance by doing that.

Why would anyone spend billions on a social media platform that had developed through trial and error (lots of the latter as well) and then take the one feature that truly added value, account verification, and pervert it into a warning sign of disinformation ahead?

The answer to that lies in the politics of the privileged, who get away with anti-social behaviour and a lack of accountancy.

That’s where the similarities end, however. Internet media is instant and part of the largest general-purpose network mankind has known, making it a very different beast from what existed in the past.

Anyone with half a brain can see that. As Twitter’s rapidly declining valuation suggests, Musk’s brave new business model isn’t exactly winning over investors.

There’s no doubt an important digital source and historical record has been severely damaged with Twitter being devalued and turned into a troll farm for the sake of running ads flogging headlights for Crocs and other useless tat, as a friend put it.

That is a terrible shame really. Stepping back and noting how Twitter developed a symbiotic relationship with media and governments around the world, it was an example of technology for good. It should’ve been preserved.

Maybe it can be saved too, for a facile US$20 billion or less, giving media that’s been battered by social networks eating their advertising lunches for so long a proper foothold in the digital world.

Everyone saw value in a free-to-join independent platform that is easy to use, and which brought millions of people from all over the world together (not always happily so, but still). Technically, it would be a doddle, even fixing up and removing the nonsense a certain billionaire insisted on.