Twitters Legacy: Community, Dead Parrots and Starting Over #61 #cong24 #legacy

Synopsis:

The article reflects on the profound impact Twitter had on the author’s life over nearly two decades, connecting them to communities, opportunities, and collaborations. Despite its initial promise and transformative potential, the platform’s decline under Elon Musk’s ownership—marked by toxicity, poor moderation, and a shift away from its core values—led the author to leave the platform. The piece concludes with a call to rebuild communities on new platforms like Bluesky, emphasizing that community lies in people, not platforms.

Total Words

1,285

Reading Time in Minutes

5

Key Takeaways:

  1. Twitter’s Legacy: It was a platform that fostered community, connection, and collaboration but struggled with moderation and toxic elements.
  2. Decline Under Elon Musk: Musk’s ownership saw an explosion in toxicity, a collapse of trust and safety, and the platform’s shift towards a harmful ideology. Evil is as Elon does.
  3. The Power of Community: The value of platforms lies in the people using them, not the technology itself. Communities can move and rebuild elsewhere.
  4. Rebuilding Elsewhere: Platforms like Bluesky offer hope for recreating the positive aspects of early Twitter, free from the current issues of toxicity and poor moderation.

About Dermot Casey:

Fan of Strategic Mischief.
A Catalyst, synthesist, and ever curious.
Into Innovation, books, tea, and occasional dips in the sea.
CEO at IRDG. Former lifeguard. Featured on Irish Starter Pack 2 on Bluesky. Godless, 80s child still into SF&F and a better society.

Contacting Dermot Casey:

You can connect with Dermot onBluesky, LinkedIn or send him an email

By Dermot Casey

A number of weeks ago I said goodbye on Twitter. My last thread covered a multitude. Twitter has been the most important technology in my life over the last 20 years. It opened up community, connection, collaboration and Crowdflash. A tweet from Joe Garde led to my first visit to #dalkeyopen in 2010. It may be the world’s longest running tweetup. Its still going. And has outlasted Twitter. First Thursday every month in the Club in Dalkey if you’re around and want to pop in. I’ve recreated the group on LinkedIn (not something I thought I’d be saying even a few years ago) to share the reminders so join there too.

Twitter brought me in contact with Mark Little and led to me joining Crowdflash, the legal name for the company that became Storyful. We built a business on Twitter and brought me into the orbit of so many other people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. The post Storyful career of many of those colleagues has been fascinating. Gavin Sheridan founded and building Vizleagal, Markham Nolan more recently founding Noan, Malachy Browne pioneering visual investigations at the NYT. For good measure Mark went on to found Kinzen with other Storyful Alum Aine Kerr and Paul Watson selling it to Spotify. Alumni work everywhere from Tech roles to media to the International Criminal Court. A talent magnet built via Twitter.

And Twitter was people all the way down. Its probably FOMO after the first CongRegation in 2013 that led me to CongRegation in 2014. My first huddle had Maryrose Lyons, Bernie Goldbach, Sean McGrath and Tom Murphy in the Quite Cailin.

Twitter continued to be important across work and play through consultancy and NDRC. I used it heavily at the start of the first lockdown in 2020 to pull an online version of #DalkeyOpen together. I also used it to keep in touch with my dealer. That’d be Louisa owner of Ravenbooks. Regular ordering of books generally via Twitter DM is the best form of ecommerce.

In many ways Twitter while a superb source of news, craic, and conversation missed its full potential. Back in 2011 in conversations with the Twitter development teams we struggled to explain the value and power of Twitter lists to the people building the product. Twitter also struggled with the rise of the alt-right and the need for moderation. The free-speech absolutists (in reality people who wanted a consequence free way to impose their views on others) regularly took aim at Twitter, and the far right took aim at any form of moderation or limitation of hate speech.

Then in 2022 Elon Musk bought Twitter. For $44billion dollars. Possibly the cheapest purchase of all time. You can view it two ways, purchasing a platform and burning off 75% of its value at a loss of $33billion. Or purchasing a platform and with a 4 year rental of the US Presidency thrown in, eliminating the chance of prosecution and increasing the value of his shares in Tesla by $75billion (not counting SpaceX or any of his other holdings).

Musk is a malign individual and has been a malign influence on Twitter. He is a transphobic parent who rejected his own daughter while he gave free rein to some of the most awful individuals online. Firing trust and safety, he shifted Twitter into another version of Truth Social. Toxicity exploded.

Over the summer 2024 I stayed off Twitter. Over the past 18 months you could see the decline. Active twitter lists I’d used for years faded. And yes I didn’t leave the platform. I’d opened Bsky and Mastodon accounts a while back. A social media liferaft of sorts.

After posting my goodbyes I kept the account open. And then on the 8th of November I deleted my account.

And honestly it felt like a relief. I’ve seen lots of people sharing that they want to stay on Twitter and not give it up to the far right. Honestly that ship sailed when Musk bought the platform. Twitter died. We may have tried to convince ourselves otherwise but to quote the dead parrot sketch

Mr. Praline: ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!”

Twitter is an ex-platform, (an x-platform) bereft of decency and devoid of community. We forget that its not land. Its a virtual space. And multiple communities. And the connections between them. Twitter was always us and never the technology.

There is no there there on Twitter, there never was there was ever only us. If everyone moved from there to elsewhere there would be no there there. There would only be here.

On LinkedIn I shared a post on leaving Twitter and encouraging others to do the same. I posted it on a Sunday. It had nearly 7000 views, 110 likes and 50 comments. I think my views have crystalised more since. Now is the time to leave. And to rebuild elsewhere. Right now that seems to be Bluesky. Right now its algorithm free, has the vibes of early Twitter, and a better set of engagement and blocking tools that give it a better chance of survival.

It won’t be the same. We are not the same.

And I guess that’s the legacy of Twitter. The lessons of community and change learned again. After the early rush of connectivity, and the influx and the building of community the need to make money and the misunderstanding and the mishandling Twitter was killed by its owner as he pressed into the service of the worst forms of hate. And into the service of the worst of people.

And we don’t have to hang around and continue to support it.

And lets be honest. Staying is supporting. Time to start over.

November 20, 2024 2024 Legacy 1 comment

A Lovely Legacy of Roaming the Twitterverse #13 #cong24 #legacy

Synopsis:

Legacy can mean broad and lofty, but it can also mean personal. The latter is easier to download and keep with you as you roam.

Total Words

780

Reading Time in Minutes

3

Key Takeaways:

  1. Just one takeaway – just knowing good people are out there somewhere in the world, doing good things for the world, is legacy enough for me

About Mags Amond:

Who is Mags right now? A retired teacher. A PhD of Trinity College Dublin School of Education. A Treasurer of CESI, Computers in Education Society of Ireland. A Steering Committee Chair for OurKidsCode projest.

Contacting Mags Amond:

You can contact Mags via email

By Mags Amond

This blog post [with apologies and thanks to the B-52s] is my 2024 entry to CongRegation, the annual unconference held in Mayo Ireland each November. The cost of entry is thoughts translated into words on a theme. Each year as we leave, the theme for the following year is announced by convenor Eoin Kennedy. This year the theme is Legacy.

Thinking since last November about Legacy as a theme for Congregation 2024 has been daunting. Darn it, Eoin, I think – It is too broad, too lofty, for me. Too many meanings. Then something happens that makes me think about legacy at a more local level. A while ago I realised I’d have to leave the Twitter site (I’ll stick with that name, it is the version whose legacy I’ll speak of) which is increasingly tainted with toxicity . It isn’t what I signed up for any more, and today it is time to go.

‘I hear a wind
whistling air
whispering in my ear’

Walking away from Twitter is a very difficult thing to do – because of how important it has been to me for fifteen years. I signed up early 2009 after seeing how well it worked as a backchannel to TeachMeets, connecting those far far away with the people in the room (long long before the pandemic version of forced hybrid). A huge part of the Twitter legacy for me is the magic of its synbiotic evolution with TeachMeet ( yes, looking at you, @EwanMcIntosh !).

I loved the constraint of the early 280 sms-length tweets, though I hated the name. Very quickly it became a simple but potent way to learn, to discuss, to have the craic, to get the real news behind the news. The stickiness of a hashtag is the richest part of the legacy for me e.g. the runaway train of Monday night #EdChatIE conversations; how the #teachmeet, #CESIcon, #Turtlestitch, #CongRegation, and a myriad other timelines enabled chronicling of events although they were far far away. [On the darker side, I’m convinced that what tipped the outcome of the 2016 referendum next door was just that #Brexit was much much sexier than #Remain].

I have been roaming about in the fediverse, at mastodon social, for two years – it is very different but in a good way for me. It is quietish, and a bit clunky, but the mastodaoine are welcoming and I have learned and enjoyed a lot already. Most importantly, as was Twitter fadó fadó, it is open.

‘take it hip to hip, rock it through the wilderness’

The main thing that delayed my leaving Twitter behind until now was wondering how to keep contact with others of the diaspora, people I’ve come to respect and care for. But I reckon we’ll find each other when we need each other; I hope to see some of you in Cong next month. But even if we don’t meet again, just knowing you are out there somewhere in the world, doing good things for the world, is legacy enough for me today. I owe you all.

‘roam if you want to, roam around the world
roam if you want to, without wings without wheels
roam if you want to, roam around the world
roam if you want to, without anything but the love we feel’

ps – one thing I will miss seeing are my profile pictures. The banner is an array of glowie critters we made at a #MakerMeet in Thurles, the profile itself is picture of a gang of us in Dublin Castle on the day of days when our conference intersected with the #MarRef count in 2015, overlaid with branding of #CodeWeekEU. So I’ll just hang it here for now …

“Legacy of the Twitterverse” by Mags Amond is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Roam, “Cosmic Thing” (1989). B-52s. © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Writer(s): Frederick Schneider, Catherine Pierson, Cynthia Wilson, Julian Strickland, Robert Waldrop

October 20, 2024 2024 Legacy No comments yet

I Have an Idea, Tell Me a Story #65 #cong18

Synopsis:

Don’t get into a Twitter argument, instead, tell a story.

4 Key Takeaways:

  1. Storytelling helps us to capture attention

  2. It also helps us to give context

  3. Twitter is a tough place for nuance

  4. Storytelling is a skill to be developed

About Rose Barrett:

Rose here, I like to paddle boats and peddle digital consultancy to small businesses. I also end up volunteering for all sorts, particularly when it’s related to improving rural communities or using digital resources to help spread ideas.

Contacting Rose Barrett:

You can follow Rose on Twitter or send her an email.

By Rose Barrett

“Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story” – Ivan Illich

We all know that it can be hard to communicate an idea.  For me I see this regularly in my life as an internet person and it’s obvious on a platform like Twitter.  And I’ve been there myself. Tried to communicate an idea only to fall flat on my face. I swear Twitter was designed with this in mind.

So I took a step back to see how those who are successful in getting an idea across do what they do.  And I noticed a pattern, many of them are great storytellers. I love storytelling. It brings back memories of my family pub when the electricity would go out, candles were lit and stories were told.  It’s no small thing that storytelling is so powerful a communication tool and in the communication of ideas, it is a resource ready to serve.

A struggle of communicating ideas we often encounter are patterns of thinking.  Many of us presume “You say → They think” but it’s rarely this straightforward.  When we communicate we’re often forgetting about the level of difference in perception, or thought patterns,of our intended audience compared to ourselves.  We might get that there are differences but we could miss the mark on how big those differences really are and fail to actually frame the idea as we would like to.  And these differences can make connection difficult.

Culture always complicates the task of communicating ideas and the greater the difference in culture, the greater the task.  But storytelling gives us a method of overcoming some of this difficulty through the use of framing. The words we use or how they use them can greatly impact “how” an idea is heard or understood.

Storytelling makes us more deliberate, which means we are paying more attention to which pronoun we use or the tone of a piece.  As a marketer, I’ve learned to test messages and see what works. I started to wonder about doing the same in my community work and behavioural research backs this up.  Communities that are more deliberate in their message, in the story they tell, have higher levels of confidence in their community.

Storytelling also allows an easier emotional connection.  Our barriers go down when we listen to a story and we’re more likely to connect with the teller of the story.  So if the idea they are trying to communicate is challenging for the listener, in the telling of the story there is a greater chance for the message to get through.  Basically, keep me entertained and I’m less likely to react to that uncomfortable feeling straightaway. If you’ve caused me to smile I want to keep liking you, so when your idea challenges some of my thought patterns, well you made me smile, so I’ll give you more of a chance.

I know I had a habit of storytelling in person from growing up in an Irish bar but I hadn’t brought it through to my online life, I hope to change that in the future.  So many of the best talks or presentations I’ve encountered have been well-crafted stories and those of us trying to spread ideas, particularly ideas that might be challenging, either in how radical they are or in their complexity, storytelling allows for better framing and to create a connection that keeps the listener on our side just long enough for the idea to be heard.

November 15, 2018 2018 Ideas No comments yet