Every Wednesday, Numerama+ subscribers discover the newsletter Always More. Between mood, analysis and reflection, she explores tech, its financial and societal issues… and its future. The topic of the week comes with an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the editorial team and tips for shining in society. This week, it’s the exodus of X that is being questioned.
As every time something important happens in the world, a mass exodus from mainstream social networks takes shape. In more than 20 years on the web, I have experienced lots of them. The most famous were those of Facebook or Instagram, for each problem linked directly or indirectly to Mark Zuckerberg. Each time, however, observers realized that these crowd movements were short-lived.
Either the people who had left quickly left social networks – so it was the trigger for a deeper, understandable desire. Or, in the majority of cases, they returned to these initial networks… because the alternatives fueled by these crowd movements have never worked. In the history of the web, a social network only broke through because it invented new uses quickly adopted by a mass of users – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even TikTok are not historically points of contact for the disgruntled.
To leave X or not to leave X: a not so complex problem to solve
After the election of Donald Trump, many saw Elon Musk as one of the architects of the return of the American president. And it's true that X, formerly Twitter, served as a massive platform for the Republican candidacy. Musk is accused, with a strong body of evidence, of having biased his social network to bring out a speech favorable to Trump – and to all the fights of the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, even the most reactionary. From then on the sentence fell: this X, who supports these ideas and pushes them to stir up hatred, we no longer want – and that is easily understood.
Then follows, as for several years, a sequence where the happy points of contact communicate on the growth of their community. Formerly, it was Mastodon; in the United States it was Threads; this time it's BlueSky.
GOOD. Diversifying your communication channels is obviously a good thing – Numerama has no lessons to teach: the media is on Facebook, XTikTok, Instagram, Flipboard, Google News, YouTube, Threads and even WhatsApp. We even had a presence on even more obscure social networks, like the late SWEN, dedicated to video. Anticipating a future where one delivery channel is not dominant is also an excellent strategy.
But leaving X is, in my opinion, a mistake.
First of all, there is a damaging side for democracy in stopping speaking on a platform because we believe that it is not oriented enough as we think.
We made enough fun of Truth Social or Parler, creating reactionary and conspiratorial bubbles in the United States at a time when Twitter was considered “too left-wing”, not to take pride in transforming BlueSky into the only haven of progressive peace which deserved » our ideas. What is worse than a society that builds walls, even virtual ones, that are increasingly impassable?
If you no longer speak on if media outlets with an excellent reputation like the Guardian or Ouest France leave X, if progressive public figures leave X, they choose to carry their discourse only within a restricted circle of people who agree with their postulates. They no longer enrich a debate of ideas, they no longer deceive, they no longer provide the necessary contradiction to their opponents – if not to rally them to their cause, at least to bring about a compromise. The media, even worse, are choosing to no longer supply a dominant platform with quality information.
Difficult to find up-to-date figures, but the Social Room estimates that there are 17 million X users in France – this is the number of BlueSky users worldwide. This means the audience left, by contrast, on the sidelines. This audience that we will not see coming during the elections, that we will comment on with a “ who could have believed “, while she just expressed herself in the elsewhere of unique, violent and low-brow thought that was left to her.
Don't destroy a bridge after crossing it
Leaving X is therefore also, naturally, missing the subjects that drive France. Basic trends are always detectable on a social network that has as many users as possible. Whether commenting on the Star Academy, a rugby match, domestic politics, a news item or a social phenomenon, there will be on Representative, moreover, in terms of its number and the subjects that X brings to the fore. Like it or not, the motto “ What is happening » of the social network is still strong in 2024.
So yes, I readily admit it: But X is, fundamentally, a mirror of real life: kindness and respect for others are not the best shared values – I am well placed to know this, I am a cyclist in Paris.
Sometimes we tell ourselves that we deserve better, on the web, than the violence passively suffered in real life. We could choose something else, more peaceful, which most resembles us, talking to tighter communities who share our ideas. Yes, it's fun and basically everyone does it, on groups, forums, group conversations, etc. But that does not make a society, if the absolute approval of one's opinions or the sharing of one's passions is a sine qua non condition for entering into contact, in communication. And when we think that it is the other who makes the choice to be extreme, perhaps we have every interest, in the long term, in remaining the adult in the room: not the “camp of good”. » and his fantasies, but one who keeps his feet on the Earth and embraces the dialectic of nuance.
Because this does not make a society if the groups of thoughts no longer have any porosity, incapable of evolving by learning from others. And that everything, physically, ends up radicalizing them. The exodus on Truth and Parler from the American alt right after the election of Joe Biden is a good example of a wall erected, which has not helped American mentalities.
Again, this only creates dead ends. On the contrary, finding comfort on another social network should always be a bridge that is not destroyed after having taken it.
Because X will always need quality technological, scientific and cultural information, regardless of the reception by its community, regardless of the audience that the social network generates on our site (negligible), Numerama will remain there.
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