Operation Thwart Speed
Few days ago I experienced a new "glitch in the matrix" moment. It was not a déjà vu moment version 2.0, but rather a glimpse -- or the illusion of a glimpse ? -- of the internal machinery behind the social media platform. I was shitposting jokes when, out of nowhere, I was unable to reply to a tweet. There were two simultaneous things happening. One was the usual "something went wrong but don’t fret, try again late" message, and the other was a new message saying something like
"We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by X or our partners as potentially unsafe"
inside a blue banner that only appeared for few seconds before vanishing.
The text is the usual social media platform stuff: very vague and at the same sounding like a very legal thing. The standard “version of the law” thing. The intriguing aspect of this everyday life experience is that I was able to crack my low grade joke few hours later. Another interesting point is that I tweeted about my inability to quote tweet or to reply while others, who read my tweets, immediately could. The idea of "version" in version of the law is not only with relation to time —rules are changing on a non regular schedule but on a definitely frequent basis— but also with relation to space. "From where do you speak comrade?" was a famous Maoist injunction used during the events of May 68 to discard uncomforable speech by radical left activists. I then realized that introducing a delay in replies is a very good way to control the flow of discussion.
Operation Tinfoil Hat
I was, for the first time in 5 years, kicked out of social media and was deported to cyberia for few hours. I wrote about this here, here and there about how conversations are controlled by mechanisms that are very hard to grasp.
The control of the conversation exists even if it is subtle and hard to grasp. Mainly it is done by promoting positively or negatively the posts. The social media platforms can tune the temperature with extreme precision: how many of people following you are going to see your posts? Which ones? Because if, as a platform, I display your post to people with whom you have less interaction, then I am killing the story while still being able to show that the post was seen… This is the first idea that crossed my mind. Give me half a week and I am sure that I can come up with a dozen of pretty elaborate scenarios. I am not a professional, but the people in charge at X are. They can make much smarter and less visible manipulations.
Now think at what just happened to me. I was unable to reply for few hours. Is it important? No, it was just a silly joke. Is it provable? No, because I was finally able to reply — I just tried to post a dozen of times to check whether or not I was able to reply. I finally did succeed. Now what would have happened if I were not an autist trying to obsessively tackle with a thing that escape my understanding? Nothing, life would have gone on just as if nothing ever happened. But of course the natural —natural in social media terms—flow of interaction would have been disrupted. It may appear superficial but I bet it could work very well to control the virality of some topics.
Social Media Ecosystem
Before the idea of monolithic social media platform, the infamous Muskian proposition of an “everything app”, there was a very interesting interplay between many platforms. Typically Twitter was used and thinked as a platform that came in addition to other media. The idea was that you were using Twitter to share reaction to live events, or tv shows. Twitter was also used to point to slower media like blogs. The central feature of Twitter was its reactive nature. Time is of the essence of for this medium. Changing the ability to reply for few hours is targetting this essence. It is not by chance. As the news cycle has accelerated it becomes even truer now. Think of it: on one hand the platforms are more and more closed (eg the war between X and Substack) and on the other hand the building of TL presents strange time delays. Every ingredient to manipulate the discussions are there.
Paradoxically time works the other way around too on social media. What you said ten years ago can be used today to crucify, or more in a modern way cancel or ban, you digitally. Searching, selecting and exposing messages out of context has never been that easy. We had a very good example this week with the “bloodbath” controversy. Time dimension is a part of the ongoing topological revolution.
The discussion on free speech has to change and incorporate such remarks. Censoreship is so XX°. There are now deeper and less visible ways to control speech. On rare events you have direct proofs, for instance the Twitter files, but most of the time you are left to guess what is happening based on nth order effect. Reading ancient articles like this one by W. Kirm from 2015 is a good idea. In fact it is a healthy habit to develop for keeping sanity.
