Reclaiming Twitter

In the Internet age, the era of needing constant validation, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey must be ecstatic that the most powerful person in the world, the man with launch codes to over 8,000 nuclear weapons, is using his website as a platform to drag opponents through the mud on a daily basis. Donald Trump's use of Twitter signifies a new era of influence for Twitter, one where the President of the United States does not just send polished and poll-tested tweets but instead jumps head first into Twitter beefs and shitposting. Twitter is no longer just another tool for public relations but instead an integral arm of the White House; Trump is fully immersed in Twitter culture and its propensity for drama. Besides the President of the United States, scores of other rich and powerful elites have turned to Twitter over the last five years to cash out. It is hard to think of a Fortune 500 company, especially those that extensively market themselves to adults 18-35 years old, that does not have an active Twitter presence. In fact, companies that are the most popular with young adults, usually fast-food restaurants like Wendy's and Taco Bell as well as smartphone apps like Uber and AirBnB, are the most eager to participate in Twitter culture.

In many ways, Twitter users have become a cultural vanguard for this current generation. Every meme is either started on Twitter or gains  mass traction through Twitter. These memes range from dance videos, like the "Juju On That Beat Challenge", to short freestyle rap videos like the "Hmm Challenge" to politically motivated hashtags like #SayHerName and taking hoodie selfies in memory of the late Trayvon Martin. Though there are plenty of conservative memes and hashtags, such #tcot and #DraftOurDaughters, Twitter is by far more progressive and culturally diverse than its competitors due to its unique demographics. For example, black and Hispanic Americans are 40% more likely to use Twitter than white Americans, Americans aged 18-29 are 10% more likely to use Twitter compared to those aged 30-49 and 146% more likely to use Twitter compared to those aged 50-64, and Americans that reside in urban centers are 30% more likely to use Twitter than their suburban counterparts and twice as likely to use Twitter than their rural counterparts.

Accordingly, a large segment of all Twitter trends originate in a subsection of users often referred to as Black Twitter. Though not all people that participate in Black Twitter are black, Black Twitter is undoubtedly a product molded by African American culture. The lexicon of Black Twitter derives largely from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the musical discussions on Black Twitter is overwhelming centered around hip-hop and R&B, the celebrity gossip on Black Twitter is logically focused on black celebrities. Even if the subject matter is not uniquely African American, the 'takes' are undoubtedly from a black perspective. For example, during the holiday season, hashtags like #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies and #IfSantaWasBlack are immensely popular, even with non-black audiences. With its bite-sized portions of content and user-friendly layout, Twitter has become a platform that allows marginalized voices to gain traction. This is in contrast to many conventional platforms that implicitly or explicitly restrict marginalized voices; these restrictions could be cultural, racial linguistic, economic or gender-based barriers that impede a person from realizing their creative potential. In particular, academia and mass media have historically been dominated by moneyed white Americans in the United States and as a result traditions not originating in upper and middle class white culture have been pushed to the side, which means that linguistic traditions such as AAVE have not been given  historical legitimacy by these institutions. On a platform such as Twitter, there are less restrictions on creativity than traditional outlets and therefore groups that would be hesitant in posting content on traditional platforms are more likely to post on Twitter.

Though Twitter has become a unique and positive platform in many ways, it is important that the credit goes to the users themselves that are involved in creating and maintaining vibrant communities on the website and not just to those who are in positions of control in its corporate structure. Founder Jack Dorsey may have created the framework, but the company would be worthless without the hundreds of millions of users constantly creating content. Its success is not something that is due to profit motive or capitalistic ingenuity but rather the holistic formation of communities within the website where there is rarely a profit incentive to create content; content is created instead to contribute to the online community and for the enjoyment of others which in turns brings personal satisfaction to the user. It is also important to keep in mind that investors have been eyeing Twitter, the corporation, and complained about it not being profitable enough. In fact, in the 10 years that Twitter has been around, the company has never had a single year where it has turned a profit. In many ways, Twitter has been able to become a cultural vanguard because it has uniquely resist market forces in ways that competitors like Facebook have not been able to. While Facebook becomes increasingly investor friendly every successive year by sanitizing its website and adding more profit generating features, Twitter has on the whole stayed loyal to its founding values, keeping its 140 character tweet limit, allowing anonymity  and and censoring content and users sparingly compared to its competitors.

As previously mentioned, moneyed interests have been pouring into Twitter not only to try restructure the internal workings company to increase profitability but also to use Twitter to modernize public relations and advertising. As a result, many companies are saving marketing and advertising costs by using content created by Twitter users without financially compensating those users. For example, fast food giant Wendy's shared this tweet by a user that was a play on common meme used to express disgust and Wendy's "fresh never frozen" marketing slogan. Similarly, Taco Bell shared this tweet that riffs on a common meme of prioritizing food over common social expectations on their page and sent this tweet out that uses the lexicon of Black Twitter to respond to another tweet praising their product. The vast majority of these companies trying to market themselves as hip and down with the culture are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and their only interest is to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility of maximizing profits to their shareholders. Essentially, Twitter has become a marketplace for free labor and ideas for the wealthy, who capitalize on free labor and ideas to enrich themselves even more. Exploitation like this has existed for ages;  artistic and creative breakthroughs often take place at the margins of society by people who are disempowered and unable to stop those more powerful from capitalizing from their ideas and labor.     A good example of this is when record companies marketed The Rolling Stones and The Beatles as new innovative acts and made millions of dollars when in reality much of their early music was rehashed blues, bluegrass and rockabilly music, the music of some of the most marginalized communities in America. By combining hip young white faces with the music of those not agreeable to upper and middle class Westerners, record companies were able to maximize profits and then move on to exploiting other genres. Similarly, multi billion dollar companies are capitalizing on content on Twitter that comes from people that might not be agreeable to mainstream society due to their gender, race or economic status. By sanitizing and regurgitating content, companies are still able to ride the wave of popularity but without compensating or helping the originators.

 Market forces rarely spare anything on their path, transferring wealth to the those with plenty of money by way of the accumulated labor of those with far less wealth. Whether it be farmers' cooperatives setup by the Knights of Labor in Texas in the 1800's, radical unions and working peoples' societies in the early 1900's or mutual-aid programs set up by the Black Panthers in the 1960's, any space or institution that subverts the endless greed of the wealthiest will end up facing facing retribution. While far from a perfect entity, Twitter still provides space for the exploited to gather and spread ideas, which is why it is a hotbed for organizers of popular movements. There is a good chance that Twitter will rapidly conform to the pressures of investors and sanitize their website just as Facebook has, which is why it is important to be assert collective power and try to diminish moneyed influence. This would entail pushing companies to compensate for users for the content that they use as well pressuring Twitter to not bend to market pressure and eventually trying to implement some degree collective ownership and decision making. A path to a more just and free future must entail bringing  social spaces, virtual and physical, under popular control so they function for the benefit for all of society instead of existing to enrich a select few.