Within the newest episode of his Crew Human podcast, my pal Douglas Rushkoff delivered a robust monologue about why he is leaving Xitter, and fairly probably all social media. He argues that the frictionless, poorly moderated nature of those areas results in extremist oversimplification of complicated points, detachment from actuality, and the decay of human values. Twitter’s lack of ability to carry nuanced discussions about international crises, as evidenced by debates concerning the Center East disaster, results in unhelpful and divisive arguments over which “facet” deserves extra sympathy.
He additionally believes that social media is an inappropriate venue for skilled writers and journalists, and its newbie roots have been overrun. Participating on these platforms compromises one’s humanity and sanity, and he believes that effecting change is best achieved by means of real-world connection.
You may as well learn a transcript on Douglas’s Substack.
Excerpt:
And Twitter has no tolerance for that ambiguity. It is lacking the moderated, the emotional, the poetic…the entire human expertise. And once I take a look at how the platform, and ones prefer it, are getting used to deliberate the Center East? I imply, speak about improper instrument for the improper job. And all of it made sense to me once I was on the platform (primarily to put up a hyperlink about final week’s episode. Publicity!) once I noticed a tweeted picture of a lifeless child, adopted by a protracted argument. And down within the argument, somebody lastly asks “Wait a minute. Is {that a} Palestinian child or an Israeli child?” He needed to know which form of child it was so he knew the way to really feel about it. (He made it clear he solely cared concerning the infants on one facet.) And I have been upset about quite a lot of issues currently, however the inhumanity in individuals’s responses to horror has been overwhelming. And I simply cried.
And I spotted, that is simply not good for me. And I had already sworn off these things years in the past. I left Fb relatively publicly again in 2013. So now, no. I am positively totally leaving X. And social media. I am going to nonetheless use the web and human-moderated bulletin boards — Discord, MetaFilter, Reddit, The Effectively — and perhaps I am going to see if the federated areas like Mastodon and BlueSky work higher. However X? I am positively performed.
(I have not fairly left Xitter myself, however I’ve gone darkish on it. I locked down my account over a yr in the past, deleted all my posts, likes, and retweets, and I now not put up on it. I might delete my account, however I do not need someone else taking my username there.)
