I wonder if there might be other factors to consider in what you diagnose as the depoliticization of social media. When I hear this, I think it must reflect a perception that the volume and intensity of political discussion on social media has reduced. I think you say in one of the Facebook comments that this observation seems to date from after the mid-terms.
I imagine one data point you might rely on is the level of reaction you get on your own Facebook posts. This could be a true read of overall salience of political posts, or a hint that overtly political posts are de-ranked in your friend's feeds because of either a top-down algorithmic adjustment (e.g., a strategy by Facebook to depoliticize) or "learning" by the algorithm that political posts aren't as popular *at the moment*. Or it could be an anomalous condition based on some other unrelated factors about you or your content. In any case, I'd love to hear more about the data you are using to assess the prevalence of political discussion on social media.
I certainly think Twitter is a little easier to understand. Musk reflects the same basic misunderstanding of social media that has led to the rise, and inevitable demise, of multiple pockets of "conservative" social media sites like Gab, Parlor, Truth Social, etc. What highly active MAGA folks and influencers want is social media warfare where they can antagonize and infuriate their opponents. What Musk and fake first amendment absolutist warriors mistakenly *think* they want is freedom to say whatever they want without blowback. What Musk has activated is defensive behavior by anyone that's not a right wing culture warrior to either retreat from Twitter, or wall themselves off from an onslaught of fascist shitposting. I almost never see these (fascist troll) posts unless I go looking for them or someone on my curated list retweets (or now, usually, screen captures) some egregious post. It's not hard to avoid the toxic soup, and so I think most people do; or else they just stop using Twitter.
I really love the thesis advanced here, and in The Holocausts We All Deny, that the global response against the rise of fascism arose from the bottom up. That the leaders joined the fight after "the people" made it clear that they were willing to fight for Democracy. But I wonder if we might overinterpret that phenomenon, especially when we're looking at such recent history. I wonder if there is a genuine "withdrawal" from the battle by "the people", if that's really reflected in the data about social media activism, and if there's a causal connection between that and what you fear might be a return to a mere "power struggle" among the great powers?
For one thing, we are, as you point out, in an interregnum. And we've trained people to GEAR UP TO 11 for each election. There's definitely fatigue (I think we share a view of a group we work with that exhibits that fatigue). I also think the last war WAS fought largely on social media, perhaps because our institutions did not know how to respond and we felt visceral fear that they would fail. It's only now - almost 3 years later - that we're seeing law enforcement and our jurisprudence system really meting out justice. It might just be the right time to "take a break" and see how that plays out (if, in fact, it does play out before the next election, which we must hope for).
You mentioned a flagging of enthusiasm on the part of Trump supporters (e.g., when he calls them to arms at his arraignments) -- to me, this might well reflect that the justice system has achieved one of its main goals: deterrence. Going forward, I would not be surprised to see a bunch of angry boomers thinking three times before being summoned to a mob that might very well land them with a life-changing engagement with the law. I'm hopeful this plays out at a higher level as well. For example, the recent indictments of 16 fake electors in Michigan might well signal to the lieutenants in Trump's army that the gig is up. Similarly, Fox is still digesting the outcome of the Dominion lawsuit (and faces several more of similar magnitude), and we may well have seen that accelerant of MAGA extremism tamped down a bit (e.g., Tucker firing). And Facebook faces a very angry bipartisan Congress that probably has it seriously thinking about how to tamp down on mis/disinformation (I'm not convinced they'll succeed; we should not underestimate that the bad guys have learned a LOT from prior iterations of this warfare), and that might be reflected in a temporary reduction in the material that most inflames a response from both sides.
All that to say that -- on "both sides" -- we're in an interesting interregnum and it feels to me too soon to really judge what the grassroots (and astroturf) level of energy is going to be going forward. Whatever it is, I'm pretty confident that social media -- at least Facebook -- will remain a primary target for misinformation and that we'll see that continue to ramp up. In fact, I go hunting for toxic MAGA related content nearly every day, and I find it readily. I think -- as the GOP is increasingly cornered by Trumpism -- the activity level will likely accelerate and become ever more vicious. I anticipate a great battle on social media. I'm hoping that we've created antibodies that will rise in proportion to that threat.
Now, that’s the way to challenge an article. If everybody did it like that, we would all be clamoring for people to debate us. You certainly highlight a lot of gaps in my thinking, but there are more answers than space permitted.
Let’s start with anecdotal evidence of a decline in social media usage. I can’t think of a single mid-level political influencer like myself who has anything close to the audience now that they had a few years ago. At least half of those in my friends’ list, with several drawn from divergent political communities, have mostly stopped posting. All of my close friends have withdrawn from political posting in a major way, even though each was focused on a different issue (i.e. trans rights, antisemitism, Palestinian rights, Syrian rights, etc.). There are very few people like yourself who appear more engaged now than you were before, and those who are like this are not building audience like people used to. Meanwhile, people routinely talk about withdrawing from politics, and with it social media.
I think that a lot of this is by Zuckerberg’s design. But street protests have also declined dramatically. And the failure of Twitter users to coalesce around another forum is telling. I have also noticed this decline in activity among friends from foreign countries, including Palestinians, Nigerians, Syrians, Burmese, and British. So, the collapse of activity on social media, at least in liberal and leftist circles, seems more general.
The left of center parties in the two countries I know best, the US and UK, are each led by leaders who lack charisma. So, mainstream political activity has disappeared. There are constant strikes in the UK, but it seldom appears in the press, which suggests that people don’t want to read about it. And as I mentioned in the article, American candidates on the right are generating little excitement. Our mutual friend, Richard Munoz, just mentioned that he regularly goes to Trump rallies, and while they used to be hatefest, now they are mellow lovefests, like meetings of old friends, even though he says the same old racist stuff.
There is also a theoretical argument to explain the decline in participation. Most people don’t stay politically active for long. Burn out is common among activists. And most of the people participating half a decade ago were new to politics and not likely to last. Meanwhile, institutions tend to contain political expression over time. Dangerous speech tends to be sidelined, revolutionary speech smothered. Business classes find it bad for business. Political classes find it exhausting and uncontrollable. Ordinary people find it annoying.
Anyways, that’s a lot, and I could say a little more as well.
You give a lot to contemplate. I don't have any metrics to support my position, so I'm going to consider it an untested hypothesis (i.e., that there are many factors that are driving a perceived decline in social media activity that don't *necessarily* correlate to a loss of energy). I also think it's too soon to draw any conclusions if this is a phenomenon that's happened mainly over the last year. But reasonable minds can disagree on some of the causes, and your article and response give me a lot of food for thought and places to go look for more insights.
Of course, you are right that this needs to be treated as a hypothesis at this stage. But that’s generally the case with just about every political trend. It reminds me of the apocryphal story of someone asking the Chinese Zhou Enlai whether the French Revolution was a good thing, to which he replied, “It’s too soon to tell.” I just think that we have to look at a whole lot more things going on than are happening on social media right now. Take the Democratic Party’s virtually unwavering support for Israeli apartheid a couple of days ago. The state of Israel, not just its rightwing president, is vastly more racist than Trump, routinely carrying out directives that even the most paranoid among us have not accused MAGA of attempting, and every major human rights organization in the world has made this abundantly clear. But the overwhelming majority of the Democratic Party signed onto a Republican backed statement that that the state is not racist. And forty Democratic Congressional representatives signed onto a statement accusing the tiny handful of decent Democrats, who persisted in recognizing Israel’s racism, of antisemitism. In short, the Democratic Party declared itself once more as the party of segregation—and there was radio silence. Virtually no protest on social media, in the streets, in the media. And the same thing is happening in the UK in regards to Israel, as Labour Party members who continue to point out their racism, who just happen to be the ones most likely to challenge unjust economic policies, are systematically purged from the party. Why have these parties been able to become essentially vehicles of apartheid without the vast majority of their members seeming to care? Whatever the reasons, I want nothing to do with them.
I wonder if there might be other factors to consider in what you diagnose as the depoliticization of social media. When I hear this, I think it must reflect a perception that the volume and intensity of political discussion on social media has reduced. I think you say in one of the Facebook comments that this observation seems to date from after the mid-terms.
I imagine one data point you might rely on is the level of reaction you get on your own Facebook posts. This could be a true read of overall salience of political posts, or a hint that overtly political posts are de-ranked in your friend's feeds because of either a top-down algorithmic adjustment (e.g., a strategy by Facebook to depoliticize) or "learning" by the algorithm that political posts aren't as popular *at the moment*. Or it could be an anomalous condition based on some other unrelated factors about you or your content. In any case, I'd love to hear more about the data you are using to assess the prevalence of political discussion on social media.
I certainly think Twitter is a little easier to understand. Musk reflects the same basic misunderstanding of social media that has led to the rise, and inevitable demise, of multiple pockets of "conservative" social media sites like Gab, Parlor, Truth Social, etc. What highly active MAGA folks and influencers want is social media warfare where they can antagonize and infuriate their opponents. What Musk and fake first amendment absolutist warriors mistakenly *think* they want is freedom to say whatever they want without blowback. What Musk has activated is defensive behavior by anyone that's not a right wing culture warrior to either retreat from Twitter, or wall themselves off from an onslaught of fascist shitposting. I almost never see these (fascist troll) posts unless I go looking for them or someone on my curated list retweets (or now, usually, screen captures) some egregious post. It's not hard to avoid the toxic soup, and so I think most people do; or else they just stop using Twitter.
I really love the thesis advanced here, and in The Holocausts We All Deny, that the global response against the rise of fascism arose from the bottom up. That the leaders joined the fight after "the people" made it clear that they were willing to fight for Democracy. But I wonder if we might overinterpret that phenomenon, especially when we're looking at such recent history. I wonder if there is a genuine "withdrawal" from the battle by "the people", if that's really reflected in the data about social media activism, and if there's a causal connection between that and what you fear might be a return to a mere "power struggle" among the great powers?
For one thing, we are, as you point out, in an interregnum. And we've trained people to GEAR UP TO 11 for each election. There's definitely fatigue (I think we share a view of a group we work with that exhibits that fatigue). I also think the last war WAS fought largely on social media, perhaps because our institutions did not know how to respond and we felt visceral fear that they would fail. It's only now - almost 3 years later - that we're seeing law enforcement and our jurisprudence system really meting out justice. It might just be the right time to "take a break" and see how that plays out (if, in fact, it does play out before the next election, which we must hope for).
You mentioned a flagging of enthusiasm on the part of Trump supporters (e.g., when he calls them to arms at his arraignments) -- to me, this might well reflect that the justice system has achieved one of its main goals: deterrence. Going forward, I would not be surprised to see a bunch of angry boomers thinking three times before being summoned to a mob that might very well land them with a life-changing engagement with the law. I'm hopeful this plays out at a higher level as well. For example, the recent indictments of 16 fake electors in Michigan might well signal to the lieutenants in Trump's army that the gig is up. Similarly, Fox is still digesting the outcome of the Dominion lawsuit (and faces several more of similar magnitude), and we may well have seen that accelerant of MAGA extremism tamped down a bit (e.g., Tucker firing). And Facebook faces a very angry bipartisan Congress that probably has it seriously thinking about how to tamp down on mis/disinformation (I'm not convinced they'll succeed; we should not underestimate that the bad guys have learned a LOT from prior iterations of this warfare), and that might be reflected in a temporary reduction in the material that most inflames a response from both sides.
All that to say that -- on "both sides" -- we're in an interesting interregnum and it feels to me too soon to really judge what the grassroots (and astroturf) level of energy is going to be going forward. Whatever it is, I'm pretty confident that social media -- at least Facebook -- will remain a primary target for misinformation and that we'll see that continue to ramp up. In fact, I go hunting for toxic MAGA related content nearly every day, and I find it readily. I think -- as the GOP is increasingly cornered by Trumpism -- the activity level will likely accelerate and become ever more vicious. I anticipate a great battle on social media. I'm hoping that we've created antibodies that will rise in proportion to that threat.
Now, that’s the way to challenge an article. If everybody did it like that, we would all be clamoring for people to debate us. You certainly highlight a lot of gaps in my thinking, but there are more answers than space permitted.
Let’s start with anecdotal evidence of a decline in social media usage. I can’t think of a single mid-level political influencer like myself who has anything close to the audience now that they had a few years ago. At least half of those in my friends’ list, with several drawn from divergent political communities, have mostly stopped posting. All of my close friends have withdrawn from political posting in a major way, even though each was focused on a different issue (i.e. trans rights, antisemitism, Palestinian rights, Syrian rights, etc.). There are very few people like yourself who appear more engaged now than you were before, and those who are like this are not building audience like people used to. Meanwhile, people routinely talk about withdrawing from politics, and with it social media.
I think that a lot of this is by Zuckerberg’s design. But street protests have also declined dramatically. And the failure of Twitter users to coalesce around another forum is telling. I have also noticed this decline in activity among friends from foreign countries, including Palestinians, Nigerians, Syrians, Burmese, and British. So, the collapse of activity on social media, at least in liberal and leftist circles, seems more general.
The left of center parties in the two countries I know best, the US and UK, are each led by leaders who lack charisma. So, mainstream political activity has disappeared. There are constant strikes in the UK, but it seldom appears in the press, which suggests that people don’t want to read about it. And as I mentioned in the article, American candidates on the right are generating little excitement. Our mutual friend, Richard Munoz, just mentioned that he regularly goes to Trump rallies, and while they used to be hatefest, now they are mellow lovefests, like meetings of old friends, even though he says the same old racist stuff.
There is also a theoretical argument to explain the decline in participation. Most people don’t stay politically active for long. Burn out is common among activists. And most of the people participating half a decade ago were new to politics and not likely to last. Meanwhile, institutions tend to contain political expression over time. Dangerous speech tends to be sidelined, revolutionary speech smothered. Business classes find it bad for business. Political classes find it exhausting and uncontrollable. Ordinary people find it annoying.
Anyways, that’s a lot, and I could say a little more as well.
You give a lot to contemplate. I don't have any metrics to support my position, so I'm going to consider it an untested hypothesis (i.e., that there are many factors that are driving a perceived decline in social media activity that don't *necessarily* correlate to a loss of energy). I also think it's too soon to draw any conclusions if this is a phenomenon that's happened mainly over the last year. But reasonable minds can disagree on some of the causes, and your article and response give me a lot of food for thought and places to go look for more insights.
Of course, you are right that this needs to be treated as a hypothesis at this stage. But that’s generally the case with just about every political trend. It reminds me of the apocryphal story of someone asking the Chinese Zhou Enlai whether the French Revolution was a good thing, to which he replied, “It’s too soon to tell.” I just think that we have to look at a whole lot more things going on than are happening on social media right now. Take the Democratic Party’s virtually unwavering support for Israeli apartheid a couple of days ago. The state of Israel, not just its rightwing president, is vastly more racist than Trump, routinely carrying out directives that even the most paranoid among us have not accused MAGA of attempting, and every major human rights organization in the world has made this abundantly clear. But the overwhelming majority of the Democratic Party signed onto a Republican backed statement that that the state is not racist. And forty Democratic Congressional representatives signed onto a statement accusing the tiny handful of decent Democrats, who persisted in recognizing Israel’s racism, of antisemitism. In short, the Democratic Party declared itself once more as the party of segregation—and there was radio silence. Virtually no protest on social media, in the streets, in the media. And the same thing is happening in the UK in regards to Israel, as Labour Party members who continue to point out their racism, who just happen to be the ones most likely to challenge unjust economic policies, are systematically purged from the party. Why have these parties been able to become essentially vehicles of apartheid without the vast majority of their members seeming to care? Whatever the reasons, I want nothing to do with them.