Twitter may be dying, and it's dying because of a problem we're all facing

Twitter is one of the largest Internet companies outside the Great Firewall, but it has recently been unable to protect itself amid the reshuffle of the Internet industry. From its declining market value to today's announcement of 336 layoffs. Although former Microsoft CEO and billionaire Steve Ballmer has bought 4% of Twitter's shares in the past few months, pushing up Twitter's stock price, this may not be the way to save Twitter. The problems Twitter faces may not be simple.

The following is shared by Umair from Medium.

I was in Dupont Circle earlier this summer and I felt like something was off. People were suddenly not tweeting as much as they used to. I had a book deadline at the time so I just took careful notes of what I saw and would discuss it later.

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In late summer, I stood in Madison Square, feeling melancholy, and again felt that something was wrong with Twitter. Back then, Twitter felt like an abandoned bar... people were leaving early, rushing, disappointed, rolling their eyes. Maybe, I said to myself, everyone was on vacation.

I’m sitting in my favorite London café in early autumn, and what the hell? Twitter is a graveyard of the walking dead! The walking dead are what we call professionals, journalists retweeting journalists… activists retweeting activists… economists retweeting economists… maybe, soon, there will be a big fight among these professionals, but the fact is: no one cares, because everyone else seems to be in a hurry to leave.

What happened to Twitter? Is it a mystery?

No!

To understand what happened, let's look at what didn't happen. Competition! This starts with a lot of talk about emerging startups. Some people think that the reason for Twitter's sudden decline is simple, that people don't use it enough. But this is just a side story. The real reason for Twitter's decline cannot be attributed to it. The bigger reason is that it can't replace chat software, but only supplement it.

There is something deeper at work in Twitter’s troubles than simply being blind to its own problems. In a very real sense, it is a victim of its own blindness.

I have my own micro-theory about this, which is, in short, abuse. More specifically, I intend to discuss in this short article the larger problem facing the tech industry and the media today, which is not the lack of money, but abuse. It is cyberbullying. This problem is the biggest challenge facing the Internet today, far more than censorship, regulation, and monetization. It is a problem of staggering scale, and worse, it is also very expensive: it is a problem that cannot be solved by the cheap, easy methods favored by the tech industry, such as patching code and pushing out updates.

We are the cause of violence and abuse on the Internet

To make this clear, let me first explain what I mean by violence and abuse. I don't just mean the obvious violence: violent threats, but also the endless quarrels, predictable rants, and the widespread small-scale violence that has permeated social media... and the fact that the public can't do anything about it.

We used to proudly think of Twitter as a great, global town square, a gathering where everyone could join in. But I have never seen a town square where people could push, jeer, bully, yell, harass, threaten, stalk, fawn over, and mob each other… to eavesdrop on a conversation they weren’t a part of… to relieve their anger… because their dreams had been shattered… and you couldn’t even call the police. What does this particular social phenomenon sound like to you? Twitter might have been a town square, but now it’s more like a drunken, shaky dance floor. While such a dance floor has its followers, it’s not the kind of audience a billion-dollar public company wants to build to change the world.

Social networking sites have become nasty, brutal places. All because its companies don't take online violence seriously, and they really never think about it. Can you remember the last time you heard a CEO of a big tech company talk about violence instead of advertising? Why not? Because of this hard fact: they see violence as a fringe issue to their "business model," a minor annoyance that's certainly not worth investing in, and what they care about is trying to sell more ads.

They are wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is cyberbullying that kills social networks. It is not secondary to the Internet business model but core. It has a classic chilling effect: at a certain point, people will stop using the network and turn away... Apparently, this is what is happening to Twitter now. In the social technology world, the issue of violence is as important to people as sterilizing meat in the food industry. The simple fact is that no one wants to waste their life being yelled at by strangers whose anger has nothing to do with us. I want to emphasize this important point again: if we build a platform full of violence in a simpler and more brutal way, turn a blind eye and don't take it seriously, then you have become the past, but you don't know it yet.

What the hell is going on with Twitter these days?

Looking back in the past, people spontaneously formed small factions, small groups, and even tribes. However, the purpose of these tribes was to defend their beliefs, their lifestyles and customs, and their culture, that is, the way they looked at the world. However, today, this belief, we call it "ism". It is also true that people who hold these beliefs, such as economism, conservatism, radicalism, and patriarchy, have developed them into an ism, and most importantly, they regard these "isms" as a collection of beliefs. At the same time, they also have enough confidence that it is the unity of beliefs that unites them. Therefore, for them, totems are a necessity, and everyone in a group, including outsiders, must worship them. Any disrespect or even a challenge to their authority will have serious consequences. Believers will attack you in the name of their beliefs to defend the authority of their beliefs.

So, for you, first you need to express your resistance to a belief - usually a certain "ism" - to show that you are questioning the authority of the belief. Then, get their attention. The final result is usually that a fight full of anger, fighting, violence and humiliation begins. If you are a woman, you will most likely be threatened and hurt more in this violent incident. But please note that in all these endless quarrels, angry emotions and difficult to calm violence, if we do not participate in it, it must be because there are more important beliefs that we need to defend. So, are there people who are wise enough to stop such childish fights?

Engineers, MBAs, and engineering MBA programs are technologies and cultures that cardinals and archbishops do not like, let alone participate in. At the same time, they are constantly fighting against the spread of these technologies and cultures. The reason is simple, because this knowledge threatens their basic beliefs about the world. After all, they have built their own worldview in their own way and developed it into a business, just as natural as the "product" department, "engineering" department, "monetization" and other phenomena that we often see now.

Violence, abuse

Yes, in the current situation, we can't tell what the primary products and services are. As the organizations mentioned above, they have always been committed to the goals of the industrial age, while constantly improving productivity and work efficiency, striving to achieve the highest sales price at the lowest manufacturing cost. But just as a meat processing company will eventually fall into a situation where sales decline if it repeatedly sells unclean beef products that make consumers sick. Similarly, once social networks are abused or even used violently, they will inevitably reduce user usage. If you don't mind, I can explain it from an economic perspective: network effects have an important impact on the development of social platforms, but network abuse is a negative anti-network behavior that does more harm than good.

For a real enterprise, what is really conducive to development should be the continuous questioning and innovation at the technical level. Technology, as a cultural phenomenon, will be a very tragic thing if it is out of touch with reality or even does not understand what it has to do with the enterprise. Many people believe that the interaction between enterprises and society is more useful than programming codes. However, in the 1980s, how many people knew what the code meant? In fact, this is not only a problem at the technical level, but more of a problem of social norms and values. Therefore, technology is no longer just about product quality, and the so-called "quality" is no longer just a bunch of perfect codes, but a state of harmonious development between enterprises and society.

You can create a bunch of perfect technical code, perfect in the sense that it is not used to ruthlessly belittle, bully, beat, torture, frivolously, trample, quarrel or even shout. Then, it will be a sign of progress. People see it as a central point, not the whole. When the invention of a technology limits people's creativity, it will not be seen as a technology that can create value. So people will adjust it, but the result is often ignored or even abandoned. Because we can all understand that such technology will not be able to create long-term value for us. When we find that technology brings harmony to society and reduces resistance, then we can say that the invention of this technology is not as good as the level of social development, and people will find greater benefits in it in the future. This interaction is a contradiction for people, and a harmful contradiction.

But the problem of Internet abuse is more subtle and intangible, and its severity exceeds all of the above problems.

Abuse problems do not arise out of thin air. A healthy mind and body do not need violence. Violence is a manifestation of trauma and a drawback of trauma. It manifests itself in self-avoidance, anger, depression, and masochism, so this violent mentality must be corrected, otherwise you will always be hurt in some way, and even if you are lucky enough not to be hurt, you will take a great risk before you correct it.

But the disturbing truth remains. We have created a theory of social violence and normalized, formalized, and proceduralized it, that is, we use violence all the time. We are treated violently at work, working according to the rules, norms, and expectations set for us by the outside world, subconsciously believing that we are just "human resources" and should be used and assigned until our abilities are exhausted. At the same time, we are also treated violently outside of work, and some companies take advantage of our ignorance and human weaknesses to gain profits. And we are also abusing online resources all the time, talking about secrets that we originally planned to keep with people we will never meet through video calls; we live in a society ruled by law, but there are still school shootings; there will always be people who abuse antidepressants without regard for the consequences... Now, almost everyone abuses the Internet to spread some unscrupulous comments, lazy thoughts, trivial things, and even trivial and meaningless experiences.

This is an era of stagnation, broken dreams and frustrated expectations. The stagnation here does not only refer to the "economy", but more importantly to ourselves - our potential and possibilities for development, the way our lives were originally, which creates a huge cycle of abuse. Stagnation is the result of abuse, and we are its victims. We have been cheated of not only our savings, retirement rights, jobs, social contracts, but also the freedom to be ourselves, and all we have is anger and despair, which are the consequences of stagnation. Its endless - at least in social relations - plunder, bullying, arguments, condemnation, anger... these activities have no meaning. And those who are abused eventually become abusers.

However, the current mainstream trend has caused social networks to become one of the most abused parts of society, and the stagnation of social development has caused a wave of public anger. If you think I am exaggerating, you might as well look back at history, starting with the rise of right-wing extremists around the world. This movement is rooted in social resentment and disappointing stagnation. And this emotion and frustration, whether it is the continued social anger or the irony of passive aggression, may be the cultural characteristics of today. While we abuse each other, we are also being abused.

This is a very serious problem indeed. However, technology must play its part to restore society’s acceptance of it. The most successful social platforms will start by exploring the stagnation of their products and counteracting the current abuse of the network. In this era of disillusionment, doing so will help heal people’s emotional wounds. These wounds affect people deeply, not as simple as the shadow of a mistake. It is not a common knife, but a scalpel, with a blade sharper than a razor’s edge. Although the wound will continue to bleed after it heals, although there is no bandage or ointment. The difference is that society is endowed with grace, mercy, love and a deeper meaning.

We can create a better society

Personally, I appreciate the following passage and would be happy to use it as my future epitaph.

In fact, he didn't really die, but continued his life in another way, because there was a promise. Even if it wasn't a promise, it was something else. Let me tell you my story slowly.

I dreamed that we made a revolution, but we did not realize the greatness of this revolution. Today's revolution may become tomorrow's tyranny. Just like the French Revolution, it wrote a brilliant hymn to the power of the people, but at the same time it also represented a terrible bloody storm. Therefore, every revolution - including the revolution of the electronic age, will leave a negative mark in history. Therefore, please remain silent, and do not express your anger for the sake of revolution itself.

We dream that, gradually, we will be like all eager revolutionaries, we will create a new order for society, one that allows people to have more freedom, a more real and better social order. We dare to subvert the rules set by the gray class, and we dare to speak freely without restraint. But in fact, we have only created an order that is eager for power and control over the people, which is different from those who desire revolution, because we do not fully understand what revolution is, and therefore it is impossible to obtain freedom above power.

Can we create a better society? The answer is yes. But I think we need to start with humility, gratitude, and reality, and abandon arrogance, privilege, and blindness. Then there will be no more corruption, and "those people" will eventually return to the ordinary, enduring the squalor and toil with us, working to change and create an outstanding world. This process may go through severe cold, even stalled, and even all efforts will be overturned and restarted. But in the end it will bear fruit and flourish like life. If your goal is to achieve social interaction, but you use corrupt methods to do it, then repudiate it immediately, just as Twitter did in 2015. This process is not full of charm, but full of fierce collisions. Start now, and good luck!