How Twitter Works in 2019

Someone tweets: I like mushrooms. Mushrooms are great. Yummy! Hits “send tweet”.

Most of the replies are from the person’s followers. “Wow, you’re so right! You have the best take on mushrooms.” “Totally! Mushrooms rule!” “Ugh people who don’t like mushrooms be like [GIF from The Office]”.

Then one person says “mushrooms are OK, but garlic is also cool”.

Everyone else goes: “oh look it’s reply guy! here to mansplain the evils of mushrooms. Who hurt you?!?”

I kind of understand the product decision behind this, because in previous iterations of Twitter, what would happen is some random user with a Nazi avatar searching the hashtag #mushrooms would find the tweet and say something like “death to the mushroom eaters!!! I will track you down and rape and kill you. I know where you live” So helpfully, Twitter wanted to make the conversation more like a conversation in a safe space between friends, and less like an open space.

The problem is just that Twitter is also an open space: lots of people (like me) follow influential people because we want to hear their views, but it’s nice to see those views encounter the views of others who disagree, fostering conversation. When someone’s conversation is only with their acolytes, the public discourse is impoverished.

I don’t have a good solution for this.

(This essay is indebted to Megan McArdle’s idea here about friend circles and internet circles.)