Go ahead and complain about Twitter "censoring" things you post. Twitter's a platform. They have to choose what they want on there. Eventually it gets to "Oh, you saw that on Twitter? That's some garbage site where the users post every crazy, unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that comes along." At that point their platform is worthless. Censorship is no different than any other decision about what business you're in. If their decision makes you emotional, oh well.
I wonder if it's possible to avoid that, once it gets going. Twitter already seems like it's in the "garbage site" category, and they won't be able to fix that without throwing away the network effect that they depend on.
Anybody can post anything they want on their own sites, or a number of other completely unmoderated sites. People don't go there because their friends are already on Twitter. The conspiracy theorists follow because that's where the target is. They don't want to just post on their own site, or on sites where only other conspiracy theorists will read it. Even if those sites weren't perceived as garbage, people wouldn't go there simply because they don't know anybody.
It feels like Twitter and FB have the tiger by the ears and can neither let go nor continue to ride.
> I wonder if it's possible to avoid that, once it gets going. Twitter already seems like it's in the "garbage site" category, and they won't be able to fix that without throwing away the network effect that they depend on.
I think the real danger to Twitter is driving out the 'good' users because they don't want to be affiliated with the brand. The pandemic had the potential to end Twitter. To their credit, they realized it and did something about it.
A secondary concern is that the good users will start to retweet stuff that's borderline because they like what it says. I think we're already seeing that. There seems to be developing an attitude of "Well, it's not exactly correct, but it's probably sort of correct, so...[retweet/reply tweet]."
If Twitter is actively censoring content, then Twitter is not just a platform, Twitter is a curator.
Censorship is very different than any other business decision that you make. Censorship is something that is done in response from government/media pressure. Censorship costs money, but it is a cost of doing business in places like China, and now it seems to be becoming part of the cost of doing business in the United States as well.
An additional point that I think many people are not realizing is that Twitter is the defecto medium that journalists and "informed citizens" use to get breaking news in the US. Sure there is a layer of indirection in the censorship, but how is this layer of indirection meaningfully different than the censorship done on the WeChat "platform"?
