Futures of Twitter: Scenario Testing

Yes, I've railed against the appetite for future forecasting in this blog before. In fact, pretty much every post from the past few years is, in its own way, a screed against the kind of prediction of complex systems of long periods of time that news readers and journalists who interview academics can't seem to get enough of. And yet, when something "big" happens - a pandemic, the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk taking over Twitter - I feel the same insatiable pull toward forecasting that everyone else feels. These are important events with far-reaching implications, and so despite their complexity, we can't seem to just say, "who knows what will happen!" We have to venture a guess.

And not just any guess. When we see worst-case-scenarios as plausible, we detest a future in which we ignored the threat so much that we have to predict doom. The unpleasantness of comprehending those futures is outweighed by our fear of feeling guilty about (and of being guilty of) not having done enough to prevent them. The other side of the argument is that there has never been a time in human history when worst-case-scenarios weren't plausible, and to spend time constantly ringing alarms is both joyless and unproductive, and that our inability or unwillingness to recall the false alarms of yesterday keeps us from learning anything about how complex systems actually work, to actually improve our prediction accuracy, and - by extension - to improve our world. I do get both sides of that argument, and so to me it seems unresolvable. 

So, to further refine my stance against long-term predictions about complex systems (the global economy, geopolitics, culture, developments in technology, etc.), I'll say that I prefer something less like predicting whether some event will spell doom for society (super vague, no timeline for when "doom" will occur, what shape it will take, etc., and so unfalsifiable) and more like fivethirtyeight's scenario testing. You start with several plausible scenarios - each one mutually exclusive to the degree that it's possible, and fairly specific about outcomes and timelines but not so specific as to be inevitably falsified by some minor quirk of history. This, at least, would allow us to learn something if our predictions are wrong, allow us to do a post-mortem and see what we missed, what variables we weighed too heavily, etc. Of course, this is dissatisfying if you are a doom-predictor because all the learning in the world won't amount to a hill of beans after the apocalypse that you failed to predict! But assuming there's at least a few people left on planet Earth, learning will be a good thing. To my mind, entertaining somewhat optimistic scenarios isn't mutually exclusive with being prepared for (though not actually predicting) the worst. 

In that spirit, here are a few scenarios regarding Musk's takeover of Twitter, some more optimistic than others. They use three metrics of success/failure: financial success (does the company turn a profit, stay solvent, continue to exist), cultural relevance (does the general public care about what's said on Twitter as much as they do now, more than they do now, or less than they do now? Does some other platform become the proxy for vox populi that Twitter is right now?), and "externalities" (affective polarization, political violence, political revolutions, cancelling/calling out people. Externalities could be both "good" [revolts against dictatorships, publicly shaming those who deserve it] or "bad" [downfalls of democracies, publicly shaming those who don't deserve it]).

Scenario 1: Financial success with lower cultural relevance and few "externalities." The most intriguing part of Musk's takeover to me, so far, is his apparent willingness to blow up the existing way that Twitter makes (or attempts to make) money. Perhaps the changes he instates drive user count WAY down, but this won't necessarily make Twitter less of a financial success. He could charge a portion of users $8, or pay the 100 most followed $1,000,000 and charge anyone who tweets more than 100 times a year $50 (a kind of 'lottery-ticket' model that, when you think about it, isn't that different than would-be filmmakers shelling out for expensive equipment and film school for a crack at a studio contract). My personal favorite idea is Willy Staley's "congestion pricing" plan - when a certain number of users have tweeted about a topic, the price of tweeting about it increases, which would - in theory - encourage people to tweet less about trending topics and more about a diverse array of topics. Or maybe a revived Vine drives profits and allows Twitter to continue to be a loss leader. Regardless of how he does it, it's possible that Twitter becomes profitable.

Meanwhile, the platform loses some of its cultural cache. The behavior (on Twitter and off) of Musk and a handful of high-profile Twitter users who would have been regulated under the old regime turns off journalists and tastemakers to such a degree that they stop paying attention to it (regardless of how outlandish it is) and pay more attention to how YouTubers, TikTokkers, and podcasters react to the day's events. Twitter will always have the brevity and "portability" of text on its side - it's easier, in the course of conversation, to tell someone what another person Tweeted than to try to describe even a short video. So, maybe a Twitter alternative (short text, highlighting trending topics) pops up and steals at least part of the cultural spotlight from Twitter. 

Regarding "externalities," there's no convincing evidence that what people say on Twitter causes political violence, revolutions, voter intimidation, cancelling, etc. These things happened before and they continue to happen, but it's just as easy to point to what people are saying on TikTok, YouTube, and podcasts as it is to point to what people are saying on Twitter as the cause of it, and so the argument that a Musk-led Twitter is leading to the downfall of society never really gains traction. 

Scenario 2: Financial success with the same level of cultural relevance and no apparent increase in externalities. Same as Scenario 1 except people (journalists, podcasters, YouTubers, TikTokkers, and - by extension - people who pay attention to what those people have to say) keep paying attention to Twitter. Maybe what's said on Twitter doesn't change all that much, or maybe it turns into a different kind of dumpster fire that people can't ignore. This is basically a kind of 'status quo' scenario. Sure, somethings change (the way Twitter monetizes users, the number of users, the character of the userbase), but no seismic changes to culture or to Twitter as a corporate entity. To me, this still feels like the most likely scenario. Habit and inertia are powerful forces - people will want to keep using the platform they've gotten into the habit of using, and reporters will want to keep referring to Twitter as vox populi. The bulk of everyday users who don't engage with trending topics will muddle along - perhaps as long as they have no interest in reaching large audiences with their tweets, they'll be allowed to use the platform for free. 

Scenario 3: Financial success with the same level of cultural relevance and "bad" externalities. In this scenario, there are a few instances of political violence that can be clearly and obviously linked to what people say on Twitter. Musk will point out that people are saying the exact same things on other platforms like YouTube and TikTok and that his company is being judged by a double-standard, but the sizable portion that already has it in for him won't want to hear it. On a "normal" ad-supported social media platform, this would start a death spiral - advertisers pull out, revenue craters, and they can't keep the lights on. But it's interesting to consider what would happen if Musk pivoted away from an ad-supported model, which he already seems to be doing. How bad and/or obvious would the externalities have to get before governments blocked the platform? I suppose middle-layer companies (occupying the space between users and platforms) like Apple, Alphabet, and AT&T might say 'enough is enough' and drop Twitter, but then maybe Musk uses Starlink to do an end run around them! This sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but you never know. 

Scenario 4: Financial failure. Enough high-profile Twitter users leave that the platform becomes less attractive to many everyday users, and the ad-supported models becomes unviable. Musk's attempts to charge subscription fees results in users trying to circumvent the fees, leading to draconion crack-downs, further turning off everyday users who head over to YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, Reddit, and Twitter clones. It's odd to think of a platform that still has cultural cache going belly up, but to some extent this is what happened to Vine. If you can't make the numbers work, your impact on culture is a moot point - you just cease to exist...or you get acquired, sold off, merged, etc. What might Twitter's afterlife look like if that happens? 

This, I think, gets us to focus on particular observables - financials, number of users, the extent to which people are talking about/paying attention to what's said on Twitter, political disruption - which is all I'm really hoping for in conversations about the future. 

Why do some people believe smartphones and social media are harmful?

I try to read and listen to critiques of smartphones and social media with an open mind. Typically, these critiques note the addictive qualities of these technologies and lament their effects on our abilities to engage in deep, sustained contemplation and substantive social interaction. A decade of experience conducting research on the uses and effects of social media has taught me to be skeptical of these claims. The first thing we would expect to see, if these claims were true, would be vast differences between those who use smartphones/social media a lot and those who use them a little or not at all. Among younger folks, we'd expect differences in academic achievement. Among everyone, we'd expect differences in happiness, well-being, depression, and/or the nature of their relationships with others. Even if such differences existed, this would not necessary suggest that these technologies caused changes in individuals. Perhaps individuals possess some existing characteristics (such as a lack of a clear sense of purpose in their lives) that, ten years ago, would have caused them to watch a lot of television and be unhappy, and that now causes them to spend a lot of time on Facebook and be unhappy. When I look at the sum total of what studies have found over the past ten years, I don't even see much evidence of the correlations you would expect to see if the claims were true. To the extent that there are correlations between use and negative outcomes, the magnitudes of the effects tend to be small (far smaller than is suggested by the level of concern they've prompted among many).

This doesn't rule out the possibility that within the more recent past (say, within the last year or two), smartphones and social media may have started to have the kinds of negative consequences about which many people worry. Research moves at a slow pace, and the technologies and the ways people use them are changing. Personally, it's hard to look at some of the freshmen I teach in large lecture classes, who are seemingly unable to stop using their phones, and not think, 'Maybe the worriers are right after all. Maybe we had to wait until a generation of young people had a chance to develop technology use habits at a young age to really see the effects of the technologies on people.' I'm passionate about doing whatever we can to establish solid evidence of the effects of smartphones/social media use on mental health, academic achievement, and relationships. I'm passionate about improving our measures. I don't want to set the bar for evidence of pernicious effects unrealistically high. I just want to see solid evidence before I believe the worriers.

At the same time, I think it's worthwhile for those who worry about the effects of smartphones/social media to consider alternative explanations for what they see. If there turns out not to be evidence of smartphones and social media's pernicious effects, why might it seem as though they have those effects?

I think part of it has to do with the people that worriers observe. Often, they observe young people: children and adolescents. The adults they observe, including themselves, often have the types of jobs (academic jobs; journalism; social media managers) that allow them flexibility in how they spend their time. This is what children and journalists have in common with one another: they have flexible schedules. There are no clear boundaries between work, play, and social time. Under these circumstances, social media, it would seem, can be pernicious. It can be habit-forming to an extent that feels addictive, crowd out deep thought with shallow distractions, put you on a hedonic treadmill that feels impossible to get off.

But these are not the circumstances of the average person.

Most people, in the United States and in the rest of the world, have more structured lives. They spend large periods of the day working or care-taking family members. Do they use smartphones/social media while they work and care-take? I'm sure some of them do. In the absence of smartphones/social media, would some of those folks have engaged in other non-work/non-care-taking activities such as socializing with co-workers face-to-face or watching television? Probably. In any case, it's clear that research on leisure use of smartphones and social media at work ('cyber-loafing' is the humorously antiquated name for this) and use while care-taking is important, but also clear that we should not assume that social media plays the same role in the lives of individuals with more structured lives as it does in the lives of those with less structure.

What I suspect is that many people, perhaps most people, spend most of their days engaged in work that is not especially stimulating or fulfilling, but that pays the bills. At the end of the day, they want to relax. Ten or twenty years ago, they might sit down in front of the television and unwind. Today, they might break out their smartphones (perhaps while also watching TV) and sift through social media posts, exchange messages with friends, and catch up on the day's events. This kind of use would serve roughly the same function as TV use ten or twenty years ago - relaxing after a hard day's work - while helping them to feel connected to far-flung friends and family (an especially valuable perk to those who work at home and may feel isolated).

Does their smartphone/social media use come with some bad side effects, such as exposure to an aggressively polarized online culture war, or exposure to plenty of misleading or untrue information? Sure, but when was it otherwise? Didn't exposure to TV come with plenty of bad side effects, such as exposure to a skewed version of reality, one that often trafficked in violence and ugly stereotypes? I don't mean to rely on the TV comparison as a way of excusing the many problems with online life. But I think it's worthwhile to bring up so as to correct the belief that our leisure time, in the past, tended to be especially productive and pro-social.

Perhaps the lives of certain people (those with flexible schedules) have changed a great deal due to the popularization of smartphones and social media. Perhaps they are suffering and they're angry at the creators and supporters of smartphones and social media, and in their anger, overreach in their claims about the effects of smartphones and social media. Perhaps not! But I hope to make the case that to believe that smartphones and social media are not problematic for the majority of their users is not something that only industry shills do. There is a sensible reason, if an untested one, to believe this.

Facebook Photo Album as Everyday Storytelling Device

Let's say you go on vacation for a week. You travel to some interesting place. How do you tell people about your vacation?

Social media is, among other things, the way that we tell people we know (and, sometimes, people we don't know) about things that happened to us. It's a kind of everyday storytelling medium, a way in which we can relate to the choices made by a filmmaker or novelist. As with any form of narrative, Facebook does not include every event that happened from every point of view. There are two "editorial moments" as which people decide what gets left in the story and what gets cut out: the moment at which they decide to take a picture and the moment at which they decide to post it. In addition to determining what gets left in or out of the story, the person assembling a Facebook photo album can re-arrange the order in which pictures are presented.

I can think of several reasons why this kind of temporal re-arranging may take place. You may want to "set the stage" for people looking through your photo album (assuming they encounter it in a linear fashion, starting at the beginning and clicking the "next" button as they go through the pictures). You may wait until the end of your vacation to take pictures of, say, the hotel in which you stayed. But you may put those pictures at the beginning of your album, to orient the viewer. You may also save a picture that you took of an amazing sunset on the second day of you vacation for the last or next-to-last picture of the album, using it as a kind of climax to the story of your vacation (although, maybe it's just me who does this sort of thing).

Do you group all of the pictures of food together? There's a kind of organizational logic to this from the standpoint of the picture arranger. And yet, I would argue, it leads to an inferior experience for the picture viewer. There's a kind of tedium to seeing picture after picture of food. But if the pictures are placed among other events and thing - trips to the beach, happy people, monuments, etc. - then it might feel more like you are experiencing the vacation as the individual experienced it.

But one wonders how much time people spend on telling stories through Facebook. Would people care about having an abrupt ending to an album? The difference between telling a story and simply putting things up is something a viewer might pick up on, at least sub-consciously.

ABRUPT ENDING

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching ME

While listening to a new, poppy-sounding, dance-able Nine Inch Nails song about surveillance (and recalling an older, poppy-sounding, dance-able song about surveillance), I thought about how the topic of privacy and surveillance recurs in the news and in people's everyday conversations. Edward Snowden might just be the beginning of more elaborate, widespread considerations of these topics. Certainly, it's something that many young people have an opinion on, and the songs made me think about the ways in which it is woven into themes of popular television, films, and music.

If the Administration is to be believed, the US government isn't actually looking at everyone's data though they possess the ability to look at anyone's data. There's a logic to this: if your goal is to find potential terrorists (or, hell, if your goal is to find juicy bits of gossip), you wouldn't waste your time looking in detail at everyone's data. You'd try to develop algorithms for identifying people of interest and then dig deeper into their data.

Most acknowledge that authorities (governments, corporations) can "watch" us in this sense. Even the authorities themselves acknowledge that it is technically possible. But who is likely to believe that the authorities are telling the truth when they say that they're not looking at them, in particular?

Certainly, the degree to which one trusts authorities plays some role in this. But I think there's something else at play, something that I've been digging into in my recent research: narcissism. To assume that one is being watched, that one is a "person of interest", is to assume that one is interesting enough to be watched. It would follow that a certain type of person who tended to have narcissistic thoughts would be more likely to think that they were being watched and would express greater concern regarding privacy and surveillance.

Those who exhibit narcissistic tendencies in the age of digital media are in a bind. They want to get more information about themselves and their thoughts out there because they believe it's worth hearing, but they might be more concerned about the nefarious use of this information if they assume this information to be valuable (not just incriminating). They're the most exposed and the most concerned, so the thinking goes.

There's some preliminary evidence suggesting that those higher in narcissism have fewer privacy restrictions on some of their social media, which is, in a way, the opposite of what I would expect. Maybe if an individual high in narcissism were primed to think about corporate data miners or government surveillance with a news story, they would be more likely to change their privacy settings than another person. Maybe not.

If nothing else, the iconography and slogans of the pro-privacy movement are telling: Big Brother isn't watching us. He's watching you.