Should I Stay or Should I Go?
If things continue the way they have been on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), we may soon be left with only bots from troll farms yelling at each other.
As S. Peter Davis pointed out in his essay about the need for content moderation online - the more terrible stuff you allow on any site - the more it will drive away non-terrible users. In the end, the sludge is all you’ll have left.
“Fringe speech is actually a lot like pornography in the way it proliferates. They’re both what I’m going to call liquid content. That’s not making a moral argument about pornography. But whether you’re against it or not in principle, not everybody wants to be around pornography all the time.
But there is also a lot of demand for pornography. It flows in like water wherever it is allowed to be. It’s liquid. It fills she shape of its container. People who don’t want to swim in it move away from it, but it’s not similarly repelled by anything else. There’s no anti-pornographic content that dissuades porn and drives it away organically. Once you let it in, it’s there, and only manually removing it can get rid of it or even reduce it.
In short: Websites that don’t put restrictions on pornography eventually, inevitably, become porn sites. This isn’t just my theory—if I asked you the first thing that pops into your mind when I mention OnlyFans, it’s probably not going to be its indie music scene or baking videos.
Now you can add X as an example of what happens when you allow lies, harassment, and coordinated disinformation to go unchecked - or very poorly checked.
In the last few months, we’ve seen large disinformation campaigns - allegedly based in Russia - targeting German support for Ukraine and numerous accounts posting faked videos and false information about the Israel-Hamas war.
There are so many garbage accounts on X, some that can create convincing media that looks real, that many users have decided they can’t remain.
So, why am I still on there?
Because before the Muskification of Twitter (I just can’t call it X), many public agencies in Berlin set up accounts to share information in real-time with the public. These accounts are sometimes still the best way to get information.
I follow the feeds for the Berlin S-Bahn and U-bahn to find out about any transit problems or delays.
I also follow the Berlin Polizei. They can be surprisingly entertaining.
But not just for kicks - when they find an unexploded WWII bomb at a construction site two blocks over - yes, it happens - or a grenade in the apartment of the nice lady who used to teach dance but was also part of an underground terrorist cell, you’ll want regular updates.
Our district office also has a feed, as do many other districts, and they post upcoming events and office hours online.
I am noticing that the media that I used to follow on Twitter are moving away from that platform and launching their own direct-email newsletters (like this one). I subscribe to updates from the Berliner Zeitung and the Tagesspiegel.
I do still follow other people, particularly writers, journalists and friends who still post there. But, increasingly, I just find the site frustrating. So, if the agencies shut down their feeds, then I will probably be finished there, too.
If I leave, I don’t know that I will migrate over to BlueSky or Mastodon or another Twitter-like platform. The original universality of Twitter (that people from all walks of life - all over the world - famous or not) seems to be lost on all these segment platforms with different servers. I don’t think the OG experience can be recreated, unfortunately.
Other Stuff
That’s it for this Monday. I wish everyone a good week!
Here are some links to other Berlin- and Germany-related things I’ve been reading and watching:
SWR Room Tour: Mein Haus im Glashaus
Reuters: German train drivers to launch new strike wave from Thursday
Berlin Companion: Berlin Quote of the Day: Kurt Tucholsky
ExBerliner: The Joy of Concrete: The unexpected story behind Berlin’s divisive Plattenbau