>Twitter has given voice and power to a lot of people who didn’t have much before, and if companies started ignoring the platform’s outburst of rage, much of that newfound power would evaporate.
Power is a zero-sum game. From whoever's grasp the Twitter mob may have wrested power, I rarely feel they are wielding it in my interests. One oligarchy has been swapped out for another. I've met the new boss, and I generally prefer the old boss.
This is absolutely brilliant. One thing to add though - the media is obsessed with Twitter. Normally this is a good thing since it helps connect experts to the media - and it's democratised that set of experts to include people who are sometimes hard to find otherwise (e.g. no institutional hat, early career, not in a major city).
But the side effect of this is that a lot of these Twitter storms get written up by media as if they matter... which makes the illusion stronger.
I think the issue with those Weissman tweets was how dramatically he misconstrued the video he was commenting. Nobody said "no country other than the USSR contributed to beating the Nazis". In fact Grim acknowledged American contributions to the war effort!
Grim's co-host in trying to dismiss his complaints about the US working with Nazis to fight leftists after WWII asked the rhetorical question "Who ended the Holocaust?", looking for the answer "the US." Grim than accurately answered "The Soviet Union" as the country that did literally march into Poland and end in the Holocaust, as well as by far the largest participant in the anti-Nazi struggle in terms of damage done to the Nazis and damage sustained themselves.
You're having to construct a very flimsy strawman of "they claim literally no other country besides the Soviets fought the Nazis" in order to put the 'tankies' on the wrong side of that one.
Jennifer Doleac is probably right in that whatever budget pays for her RAs won't increase immediately with a wage increase. Unlike, for example, a burger chain, the general equilibrium impact of a wage increase on universities' RA budgets is unclear and probably lagged.
you are right about twitter, good article. One thing about it is that seems to be the only place left where average people are actually engaging each other that disagree with each other. It has totally dried up on facebook, for me at least, because people are too nasty with each other any more and no one wants to go through that. When someone does post political stuff now only people who agree respond, and not many of them.
So twitter is important I think because it gets people out of their echo chambers.
It seems dangerous that people can settle private scores by digging up something posted online and sending it to someone's boss and getting them fired. Workers are yoked enough already without having their lifetime of personal opinions hanging over them.
Maybe someone should start a Twitter war about that.
Why is it always that a large group of unidentifiable people are to blame, and not the actual managers and companies responsible for depriving people of their jobs for saying incredibly stupid and wrong things? Could it be that it's way easier to do that than actually admit the companies and managers with names and addresses shouldn't have that kind of insane ability? Or maybe you don't want to admit that some people actually should be fired for bragging about underpaying workers?
And surely you understand that even if you were the best writer on earth, you'd have no chance of changing the minds of hundreds of thousands of people in a materially significant way. You could, however, probably change the mind of one CEO. This is what i don't understand with the 'screaming into the void' type of anger people have towards twitter. The world is hardly changed by collectively telling people what the best opinion to have is, without some sort of practical side, where you actually give them money or change a law or something. That's the folly of twitter users, I guess.
The big problem is that once in a while someone is crazy enough to turn online harassment into *offline* harassment - you can't "block" someone in real life.
I do have some concerns about us getting used to it, as there are some actually bad takes online. If we get used to it, don't we risk becoming numb to these takes? Would we let them proliferate? Is the issue jumping too quickly at questionable content, blending them with actually bad things?
>The only way companies are going to stop firing people at Twitter’s behest is if the fired people sue and sue and sue and sue.
I don't think "saying dumb things on Twitter" is a legally protected class. It's possible that nuisance litigation is more troublesome for the company than nuisance tweeting, but I don't know if you'd actually have a legal leg to stand on if you got fired because people were tweeting about you.
I’d be interested in the difference in demographics/ideologies between high profile Twitter Users and traditional media types. I imagine the former, on average, to be younger and more liberal, but I have no estimation as to degree.
>Twitter has given voice and power to a lot of people who didn’t have much before, and if companies started ignoring the platform’s outburst of rage, much of that newfound power would evaporate.
Power is a zero-sum game. From whoever's grasp the Twitter mob may have wrested power, I rarely feel they are wielding it in my interests. One oligarchy has been swapped out for another. I've met the new boss, and I generally prefer the old boss.
Seems like stronger unions could protect workers from managers who overreact to Twitter mobs by firing then.
This is absolutely brilliant. One thing to add though - the media is obsessed with Twitter. Normally this is a good thing since it helps connect experts to the media - and it's democratised that set of experts to include people who are sometimes hard to find otherwise (e.g. no institutional hat, early career, not in a major city).
But the side effect of this is that a lot of these Twitter storms get written up by media as if they matter... which makes the illusion stronger.
"The only way companies are going to stop firing people at Twitter’s behest is if the fired people sue and sue and sue and sue."
Based on what cause of action?
I think the issue with those Weissman tweets was how dramatically he misconstrued the video he was commenting. Nobody said "no country other than the USSR contributed to beating the Nazis". In fact Grim acknowledged American contributions to the war effort!
Grim's co-host in trying to dismiss his complaints about the US working with Nazis to fight leftists after WWII asked the rhetorical question "Who ended the Holocaust?", looking for the answer "the US." Grim than accurately answered "The Soviet Union" as the country that did literally march into Poland and end in the Holocaust, as well as by far the largest participant in the anti-Nazi struggle in terms of damage done to the Nazis and damage sustained themselves.
You're having to construct a very flimsy strawman of "they claim literally no other country besides the Soviets fought the Nazis" in order to put the 'tankies' on the wrong side of that one.
Jennifer Doleac is probably right in that whatever budget pays for her RAs won't increase immediately with a wage increase. Unlike, for example, a burger chain, the general equilibrium impact of a wage increase on universities' RA budgets is unclear and probably lagged.
you are right about twitter, good article. One thing about it is that seems to be the only place left where average people are actually engaging each other that disagree with each other. It has totally dried up on facebook, for me at least, because people are too nasty with each other any more and no one wants to go through that. When someone does post political stuff now only people who agree respond, and not many of them.
So twitter is important I think because it gets people out of their echo chambers.
It seems dangerous that people can settle private scores by digging up something posted online and sending it to someone's boss and getting them fired. Workers are yoked enough already without having their lifetime of personal opinions hanging over them.
Maybe someone should start a Twitter war about that.
Great post.
Why is it always that a large group of unidentifiable people are to blame, and not the actual managers and companies responsible for depriving people of their jobs for saying incredibly stupid and wrong things? Could it be that it's way easier to do that than actually admit the companies and managers with names and addresses shouldn't have that kind of insane ability? Or maybe you don't want to admit that some people actually should be fired for bragging about underpaying workers?
And surely you understand that even if you were the best writer on earth, you'd have no chance of changing the minds of hundreds of thousands of people in a materially significant way. You could, however, probably change the mind of one CEO. This is what i don't understand with the 'screaming into the void' type of anger people have towards twitter. The world is hardly changed by collectively telling people what the best opinion to have is, without some sort of practical side, where you actually give them money or change a law or something. That's the folly of twitter users, I guess.
Thanks for this. It's the thing I've wanted to write about Twitter for months but couldn't actually do it.
The big problem is that once in a while someone is crazy enough to turn online harassment into *offline* harassment - you can't "block" someone in real life.
I do have some concerns about us getting used to it, as there are some actually bad takes online. If we get used to it, don't we risk becoming numb to these takes? Would we let them proliferate? Is the issue jumping too quickly at questionable content, blending them with actually bad things?
>The only way companies are going to stop firing people at Twitter’s behest is if the fired people sue and sue and sue and sue.
I don't think "saying dumb things on Twitter" is a legally protected class. It's possible that nuisance litigation is more troublesome for the company than nuisance tweeting, but I don't know if you'd actually have a legal leg to stand on if you got fired because people were tweeting about you.
I’d be interested in the difference in demographics/ideologies between high profile Twitter Users and traditional media types. I imagine the former, on average, to be younger and more liberal, but I have no estimation as to degree.
you should try yen.chat. :) build your own twitter. no nonsense algorithmic feeds.