With Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, we saw chaos reign as the mercurial billionaire, who previously tried to renege on a US$44 billion ($69b) deal to buy the social network, sacked Twitter’s entire board of directors and half of its employees.
Twitter, Musk points out, is losing US$4 million ($6.29m) a day. That’s clearly unsustainable. He had to do something to stem the losses, including a plan to make verified users, who have the little blue tick logo next to their name, pay US$8 ($12.59) a month for the privilege. His disruptive and erratic management style will either rescue the company or drive it into the ground. I’m picking the latter.
Musk has an absolutist approach to free speech - when it suits him. His Twitter takeover has already seen a surge in hate speech on the platform and the dismantling of teams involved in stemming the spread of misinformation. It’s a telling sign that the horrific video the Christchurch mosque shooter was able to livestream over Facebook in 2019 as he undertook his murderous rampage was again circulating on Twitter in recent weeks.
Musk’s skeleton crew just isn’t able to police its own network anymore. Twitter’s involvement in the Christchurch Call, a voluntary effort to reduce online harm spearheaded by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, is in doubt, despite Musk’s assurances that the company is still committed to it. Whether Musk has the resources to continue Twitter’s work to support the initiative’s aims and the same philosophical buy-in, as Twitter pivots moderation towards tackling clear-cut problems like child exploitation content, is yet to be seen. Twitter is used by over 500,000 Kiwis every month and journalists, celebrities and politicians are adept at using the platform to set the news agenda.
But the average Kiwi is oblivious to the incessant flow of tweets from the elites. Musk may see Twitter as the world’s digital town square, but the conversation is slanted in favour of those with the most followers. As with his other businesses SpaceX and Tesla, he will treat Twitter as his own personal fiefdom, imposing his political ideology on the platform and mining users’ data as he tries to stem financial losses and claw back his massive investment. Many users aren’t waiting around to see what happens, but choosing to jump to rival emerging platforms (more on that below).
Meta’s massive gamble
More than 80 per cent of Kiwis use Facebook at least once a month, but the platform that has dominated social media in the English-speaking world is in trouble. Growth has slowed, engagement on the platform is dropping and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has seen its share price drop 66 per cent since the start of the year. The company’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has an iron grip on the company thanks to the structure of his shareholding, which makes it virtually impossible for investors to stand up to Zuckerberg.
Seeing the core Facebook platform losing momentum, Zuckerberg is ploughing billions into its successor, the so-called ‘metaverse’, a 3D virtual world he sees us working, playing and shopping in. Meta is spending US$10 billion ($15.7b) alone developing the virtual reality headsets and software that will power the metaverse. But the results to date are underwhelming, characterised by clunky avatars and nausea-inducing headsets.
“I got this wrong,” Zuckerberg admitted recently after he fired 11,000 employees to cut costs as advertising revenue, the lifeblood of Facebook and Instagram, slowed significantly. It’s not the only thing Zuckerberg has got wrong over the last decade, as the Cambridge Analytica scandal and numerous whistleblower revelations attest to. Zuckerberg will forge on with his metaverse vision, but without the social licence to make it a core aspect of how we use the internet, it will be a digital ghost town.
The TikTok effect
The new star on the social media scene is TikTok, with its feed of addictive user-generated videos that combine elements of YouTube, Instagram and social media messaging in a format that is now used by more than 30 per cent of New Zealanders.
TikTok has engagement statistics that Zuckerberg and Musk can only dream of. But there are two big problems. TikTok ramps up the algorithm-driven business model that spawned Facebook, but also the social harm that has gone with it. Their business model is addiction, which is toxic for society.
Secondly, TikTok is not a Silicon Valley giant, but is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. That makes it susceptible to manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party, who could use TikTok’s powerful recommendation engine to influence politics all over the world and gather data on users. With more than one billion users on TikTok, many governments now see it as a national security threat.
What’s the alternative?
For too long, many of us have invested hours of our lives consuming and creating content on digital platforms we have little control over and which are manipulating us for commercial, political and ideological ends. We are the product. Our data is used against us.
But the turmoil at Twitter, Meta and ByteDance is finally opening up new opportunities in the social media space.
Disillusioned Twitter users are heading to Mastodon, a previously obscure social network founded in 2016 that is experiencing a revival, as it is now being seen as a viable alternative. Mastodon is based on an open protocol shared by other fledgling social media platforms in the so-called “fediverse”.
The idea is that social media users shouldn’t be restricted to monolithic platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but should be able to publish their messages, microblogs, videos and photos across whatever platform they like, retaining control of their content and potentially publishing in multiple places with one click of a button.
Mastodon is refreshingly free of advertising and there is no subscription required to use it. It is currently a not-for-profit with crowdfunding paying for its development and upkeep. Whether it can maintain a civil tone and financial sustainability as new users pile in is yet to be seen.
I was among the millions of new users who joined Mastodon in the last six weeks. Several other platforms have received similar interest. But I like what Mastodon represents. Anyone can use and adapt the software, ushering in the concept of a social media space built by and run for Aotearoa. There is no top-down control of Mastodon, with moderators setting the rules for each “instance” of it.
It means we could more easily police these networks according to our own laws, deliver content that fits our culture and create more equitable business models in the social media space. With the use of blockchain technologies, we could better secure and authenticate users and their data.
We are therefore presented with a once-in-a-decade opportunity for renewal in the social media space. If you can’t imagine online life without Twitter, remember that MySpace was once the reigning social media champion. Then it was gone. Digital platforms come and go.
The current upheaval in the US social media scene allows new players to gain a toehold against the tech giants. This is the time to reject the notion that we need to take what we are given in the digital world, served up from servers in Palo Alto, and to build the digital world that suits our own needs, right here in our own country.
Peter Griffin is a Wellington-based science and technology journalist, the founding director of the Science Media Centre, and the former technology editor of the New Zealand Herald. Follow him on Twitter @petergnz
