What is Lost if Twitter Fails?

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

As I record this on Friday morning, November 18, 2022, media reports suggest that large swathes of employees at Twitter have resigned after the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, issued a kind of ultimatum asking them to commit to "long hours at high intensity" to build “Twitter 2.0.” Last night, according to an internal Twitter email shared with CNN, employees who decided to stay at the company received an email that said the company's offices will be temporarily closed and badge access will be restricted through Monday. Whether the platform will remain functional with so many core engineering and other crucial teams decimated is an open question.

I've talked to numerous people- and of course read the tweets of many more- who are expressing what can only be described as grief about Twitter. In many cases they've built networks, relationships, modes of expression and connection that are important to them. They feel they have done that in spite of the platform's failings, carving out a legitimate space inside something they always knew was illegitimate and precarious.

To talk more about Twitter, Musk, and what is potentially lost, I spoke to Dr. Meredith Clark, whose research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power. She’s leading a project to archive Black Twitter, as part of a larger project to archive the Black web. And, she’s the author of a forthcoming book on Black Twitter. We had the chance to catch up on Wednesday afternoon.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Justin Hendrix:

So, we are going to talk a bit about Black Twitter and try to suss out some questions around its health in this particularly acute moment with Elon Musk taking over the platform. But I want to start maybe in a different place. In a recent NPR interview, you got onto how you think about Black Twitter as part of a kind of continuum of the way that Black people have used media in this country. Can we start there? How do you see it as part of a historical trajectory?

Meredith Clark:

Absolutely. So, when we think about the history of just Black existence and specifically the existence of folks who are descendants from enslaved Africans, I think about how Black folks in the US have used the media that are available at the time to speak for ourselves. And so, I go back to Freedom's Journal and its publication in 1827 and how these editors, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, how they work together to talk about how Black folks basically needed to be able to speak for ourselves, to declare our own positions and do the sort of individual and community-based expression that was unavailable to folks in other venues. And that has preceded through history, through everything from the Black press and we see the coverage of Civil Rights movement in the '50s, '60s, and even into the '70s, as one of the central places that we see how having this other tool to be able to express yourself, how essential that was, but then also Black radio, Black television, I think about the talk shows that Black radio hosts had in the '70s and how they were able to create a forum that wasn't being heard elsewhere.

I think about some of the stuff that I grew up with, like BET's own news shows that were specifically catering to Black Americans and how our experiences is different in many ways from the mainstream. And then now with social media, where so many people are able to talk directly to one another, we see that historical example multiplied. And while everyone's not necessarily adhering to the rules and the practices and norms of journalism per se, there's something consistent about the ability to be able to speak for yourself and have that narrative be so markedly different from what mainstream media has manufactured for you.

Justin Hendrix:

And so we, obviously see the impact of that and phenomena like Black Twitter in a lot of current events, certainly during the reckoning after the murder of George Floyd and many other moments that have taken place for the last couple of years. You have studied Black Twitter probably more intently than almost any scholar. You are writing a book about it. You are about to launch a project archiving Black Twitter, seems particularly important at the moment as lots of people are thinking about what happens if the lights go out on this thing. What do you think that you are gathering? What are you capturing? What do you hope will happen with that archive?

Meredith Clark:

Well, with the archive, I want to of provide a space for the kind of corrective that we're seeing now in a number of other media projects that are attempting to reclaim lost archives from the past and give them proper context. So, for instance, the example I use is if you're cleaning out your grandparents' house and you find letters between the two of them, or you find recipes, or just ephemera that otherwise might not be of interest to someone outside of your family, but it does tell an important part of your story, you would want to keep that. And for so many years, the communications that Black folks came up with, whether they were personal, or within a family, or even within a smaller community, they were just deemed not important. I'm afraid that that sort of thing might happen again with some of what Black Twitter has created.

So, the Library of Congress up until 2017 was archiving tweets from the service, but of course they weren't necessarily saying, "Hey, we should pay attention to what this one group of super users is doing and be sure to archive that and narrate it and curate it in a way that makes sense for telling their set of stories." So, this is a project that allows people who participated in the creation of those stories to really maintain them, create and mold them for themselves.

Justin Hendrix:

One of the more substantial pieces that you've put into the public domain in the last couple of weeks was this piece in TheGrio around Elon Musk's purchase is not Black Twitter's problem. You address of course, Musk's purchase, but you get at some underlying issues that Musk's purchase represents. Can we just delve on that for a moment?

Meredith Clark:

Absolutely. So, one of the things that stands out to me and why I say it's not Black Twitter's problem is that what you basically have here is the creation of the American version of oligarchs, only ours are in tech instead of oil, instead of some of those more natural resources. So, people like Jeff Bezos than even Bill Gates and now here's Elon Musk, but Musk has purchased this platform that has become so essential to our communications environment, not only in the United States, but really throughout the world. You think about the different groups who use this platform, from journalists who are looking for different perspectives on stories as they break and develop to activists in different countries who are looking to connect with one another and have their voices heard, especially when they're governed by oppressive regimes.

I don't think I say it as clearly as I probably could have, but the reason that it's not Black Twitter's problem is because that problem is not of a single group, it's everyone's problem at this point. The fact that a billionaire could still borrow enough money to purchase this platform and then have it subject to his will, presents a significant problem for those of us who are interested in issues of tech policy, especially when it comes down to communication and what that means for the way that people are able to connect with one another.

Justin Hendrix:

It feels like we're dealing with a issue of legitimacy. I mean, in many ways, Twitter is a public square on some level, and yet it's completely a private platform and at the whim of one individual. How do you think we should rectify this going forward? How do we preserve these counter publics, like Black Twitter, in these spaces? What do you reckon from this point?

Meredith Clark:

Well, I think that I like the use of the word reckon because there is a reckoning that needs to take place. There's a much bally-hooed racial reckoning in media in 2020 that didn't really rectify much. But I think one of the things that we need to do first is think about what our public construction of this idea of the public sphere really is and what it means when so much of it is controlled by private companies. The public sphere in the great American traditions, the European and British influenced traditions, had a lot to do with being able to meet in public places and having the leisure time, having the literacy and having the connection to the community to be able to come out and talk about ideas altogether.

We have created a society and a technological environment where that isn't possible in the same way, but because of the internet, we have this false sense of access and freedom that we think about as being ever present and unimpeded by governmental forces, when in fact we are really at risk of falling subject to the whim of whoever's rich enough to purchase, maintain the platform, decide what the rules of engagement are, and then leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

So, all that said, I think the one thing that we need to start with is thinking about how we construct collectively our idea of the digital public sphere in the 21st century and at this moment in history, and then really start thinking forward. I'm concerned about the construction of the Metasphere, or the Metaverse rather, and how folks are already thinking about it, how again, another billionaire has stepped forward and attempted to define it in his own image and what that means for the rest of us. I would like to see us think more about collectivity and cooperative ownership of communication platforms like Twitter, like ... not so much Facebook, but the metaverse beyond Facebook and what it means for those platforms and those spaces to be returned to the public.

Justin Hendrix:

When you do cast your mind forward, are you able to imagine a time 10 years from now perhaps, where perhaps we have created a space that is more public in nature or an environment where there's more equanimity? What does that look like to you? Do you have a vision of a social media that could accommodate these counter publics on the one hand into a broader public sphere? Is there anything like that out there in the world right now that chimes with what you're hoping will come into existence?

Meredith Clark:

Certainly not at the same scale that we're used to. I mean, when I think about this idea, I think about the very intimate spaces that we have for connecting with one another, so family around a kitchen table, or friends sitting together at a pub and sharing drinks, and being able to talk one to another, but that doesn't scale itself very well.

I think if we have a chance for designing a future in which we have comm technologies that allow us to communicate with one another at the same sort of scales that say, a Facebook or a Twitter does, without some of the same trappings of those companies and those platforms, it has to be designed with folks' vulnerabilities at the center. So, that's one of the ideas that I'm working on now, this idea specifically of reparative journalism, and that's as an approach to addressing some of the harms that journalism has already wrought by the way it's been practiced.

But I do think that there's an extension of that when we think about technological development, policy development and what it means to think about those who have something to lose and what it is that they have to lose, whether that's their own physical freedom, psychological safety, the ability to speak without being faced with hate speech or harassment, the ability to connect with one another without being surveilled by the government and then that surveillance being used to prosecute or otherwise persecute people. I really think that that takes development from the minds of folks who have experienced that sort of discrimination in the past, who are used to being erased, who are used to being on the margins and putting their experiences at the center of the development and seeing what comes out of that. I have to say in my own experience, I don't know that I possess the kind of mind and perspective to do that or even speak about doing it very well.

Justin Hendrix:

I mean, I think that's the ongoing conversation I try to have on this podcast all the time, is literally how do we deal with this incredibly complex and audacious problem of how to connect human beings on digital networks and not produce more harm than good? Which seems to be the real challenge that we've got in front of us. Let me ask you this, your book's about to come out. When's it meant to publish?

Meredith Clark:

So, this is a great question. I thought I had it all lined up for an early 2023 publication, but I got my reading reports, or my reader reports rather, back just around the time Elon Musk started toying publicly with the idea of buying Twitter. And now that the purchase has been made, I have significant changes to make. So, I hope that the book can still come out in early 2023, but right now, I'm aiming for early to mid 2023.

Justin Hendrix:

Can you give us a little sneak peek of one of the things that would change in your assessment of Twitter and your look at Black Twitter generally as a result of this?

Meredith Clark:

Absolutely. So, for writing the book, as of all of this was unfolding, I mean, this is a process for me that has been ongoing for about 10 years at this point. At that time, I was really writing it from a place where this was all unfolding as we were speaking and now, and for the last few years, I've had to think about it as almost a contemporary history of what's happening, recognizing that even as I'm putting words on a page, they are becoming more descriptive of a past than they are of present reality.

And so, I have to be really mindful to think about the context in which my descriptions about Twitter make sense. There's stuff that was initially in the book, where Twitter's functionality, for instance, was limited to 140 characters and now we're up to 280, where I talk about things that when I initially wrote them, the affordances to do things like create quote tweets, or include video, or even make a thread using the platform and the way it was designed, was not possible.

But now as I go back and I look at those earlier chapters and I see how the platform has evolved over time, all of that is possible. All of it is a part of how people use the platform now. So that if you're a user who came to this within the last four or five years, it doesn't really make sense to see me say being able to do this in 140 characters or developing threads, like this is ... what are you talking about? These are functionalities that are part of the platform now. So, that is a big change and something that I really have to hold in my mind.

The other thing about that is keeping in mind how things change, I guess, just so quickly. Even now as I'm trying to write about what this takeover has looked like, what the first couple of weeks of it have looked like, trying to put that in a historical context at the same time as it's happening, fairly difficult, but also really necessary if what I discuss is going to be relevant or make sense a year from now to 20 years from now.

Justin Hendrix:

A lot of observers would look at Elon Musk's ideas about Twitter and behavior over the last couple of weeks and come to the conclusion that he actually doesn't terribly much understand the platform that he's purchased. If you had an opportunity to sit down across the table from Elon Musk, what would you tell him?

Meredith Clark:

Man, honestly, I don't know that my conversation about Twitter would be where I would start if I had the opportunity to have an audience with Elon Musk. For me, we got to take a few steps back. I mean, I look at these reports and I'm a regular person, so I have to rely on news media to construct what I know about Musk. And so, I look at reports about discrimination in his Tesla factories, particularly against Black workers. I look at some of the offhand comments that he's made lately. I look at something like his statement encouraging people to vote Republican because he wants to see more of a shared system of government in the United States, and I'm going to have to ask questions first about his worldview and really how he has come to certain determinations before we can even get into his understanding of the platform.

I also would probably want to ask questions that were pretty blunt and straightforward about my own mistrust that this is a matter of him not really knowing what to do with the platform or knowing how it works, and ask him about some of his larger ideas of what perhaps the version of the platform might mean for the kind of political reality that he wants to see take shape. After that, I'd probably just sit back and ask him to tell me about what are his plans for Twitter? What does he want to see Twitter do and be within the next year? Does he see it lasting or being as relevant within five years and why or why not?

Justin Hendrix:

I think I share your concerns about his politics and his general worldview. One of the things he said again and again is that if you're ... Well, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but something along the lines of if you're pissing off both the left and the right, or you're coming in for criticism from either extreme, that you're doing something right. That strikes me as very wrong in many ways that suggest that he doesn't understand exactly what he's up to there.

Meredith Clark:

Yeah, I mean, it also strikes me as there are a number of statements that he's made that to me just suggest fundamental misapprehension of the US political system, of global political systems, and what something like having a centrist government or a moderate government looks like and what that means at this point in history. For me, it was profoundly, at best naive, at worst, I don't even know what the label I would assign to it is, but it's just profoundly misguided to think that you could suggest that by people voting to essentially split control of Congress, will somehow get the kind of shared governance and cooperative governance that it seems he wants to advocate for, this idea that no one party should have control.

But if you've been paying attention to the American political system within the last 20 to 30 years, you know that that sort of compromise in statesmanship is a thing of the past. We are now in an era where a hyper focus on media and the ability to really succinctly express your talking points is more important than this idea of compromise and being able to work across the aisle and get things done regardless of your political affiliation, or get them done as a means of showing that you are a cooperative state actor. We don't have that kind of government anymore, and I'm not sure that we will again, and I don't mean to romanticize the American political scene of my own youth, but I just have to be honest about how drastic and dramatic our approaches to politics have become. And so, I am really concerned in seeing someone who has ownership of such an essential platform expressing an idea that frankly is just out and out naive and out of touch with reality. And I'm worried about what it means for our billionaire class to be in that position and so out of touch with the reality of normal people.

Justin Hendrix:

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to get across? Anything that you feel that in the last spate of interviews you've done, that you've wanted to say but you haven't quite found a way to say?

Meredith Clark:

I guess my big thing is a number of interviews focus on the positions and the perspectives of people like me, but we're anomalies. As far as the general population of this country goes, I am extraordinarily educated. I have the luxury of spending my time reading and thinking and writing about things to earn a living. As a Black woman, being in this position, I'm just not the norm. And I think an over-focus on folks whose experiences are so different than those of many users continues to skew what we understand about what this purchase means. And so, I like to encourage not only media professionals, but honestly just everyday people, to talk more to the people in their lives, and that includes the people that they might pass by on a day-to-day basis, the neighbors that they perhaps don't engage with, about what their experiences around social media are, to get a better understanding of what this really looks like for the millions of users who are on these platforms, and then the millions of people who are not. I mean, I think at last estimation, even though 70% of Americans who use the internet use some form of social media, there are still millions of people who do not have immediate access to broadband internet, do not use social media, do not use digital media in these ways, and they have perspectives that are worth listening to and understanding as well.

Justin Hendrix:

Perhaps we'll try to create some opportunity to hear more of those voices in the future here, and I should hope that I can have you back when the book comes out.

Meredith Clark:

I would love that. I would love to be able to talk about this as a finished product. That would be fantastic.

Justin Hendrix:

Well, it would be a first draft of history, it sounds like, even as history is changing around you. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me.

Meredith Clark:

With pleasure.