The Woebegone Ambassador
Author: Todd Hoskins Issue: 2024-08-07
The Woebegone Ambassador
by Todd Hoskins
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When I hear someone blame social media for society’s ills, I become Jekyl & Hyde. Yes! It is harmful without better regulation, moderation, and habituation. And no! It didn’t have to be this way.
In 2008, I was working for my third tech startup in three years after one successful exit and one unsuccessful nightmare with a CEO who struggled with reality. All three were focused on machine learning of open text datasets to derive insights. (The accuracy and value of these insights would be laughable now, and the sentiment analysis about 50% correct). All three companies were pursuing analysis of data from online communities and user generated content.
Organizations at the time were confused and frightened over the public nature of these conversations, so I suggested we offer free education programs before we get into discussions about the applications of natural language processing for publicly-available data.
For a year, I trained corporate researchers, customer service people, and marketers on how one could use social media (though the term hadn’t quite stuck then) to understand people, improve customer relationships, and resolve support issues in ways that could build trust.
I was a believer. I thought that these open, public conversations could and would lead to more transparency, accountability, valuable discourse, discovery, and collaboration. And 2008 was the year. I had MySpace and Friendster accounts previously, but I didn’t become captivated by the promise of social media until I joined Twitter that Spring.
I became a technotopian idealist in this time of hope, which curiously coincided with the burgeoning candidacy of Barack Obama and the completion of potty training for my son.
It didn’t take long for my idealism to wane. We had data quality and access conversations with Facebook, and it became clear they had a much different vision for the future. Hence, I never opened a Facebook account other than for six months when I ran for local political office ten years later.
I wasn’t completely deflated because we had Twitter. It became a valuable part of my day each day for 15 to 30 minutes.. I was getting perspectives I would not have found on my own. I was finding new sources. I was meeting new people. Two lifelong hugging friends are from Twitter. And that’s not including the professional network that has been much more shaped by Twitter than anything else.
For some, Twitter was about news, entertainment, and humor. For me, it was my scrolling den of discovery. I laughed and I cried, but moreso I learned and I grew with Twitter as a trusted tool.
The Muskification of the platform started happening quite a bit before the acquisition. I began to wonder if I was changing? Am I following the wrong people? Why can’t the people I like to hear from tweet more often?
It became less valuable. And with the acquisition I vowed to step away without even a farewell tweet. I did, though I missed Supreme Court Twitter during the June rulings, and Baseball Twitter on Trade Deadline day.
Am I ranting or mourning?
I miss the revelations that can’t be realized when it’s the same voices–colleagues, friends, experts–even if I have chosen them. Hence the brilliance of the retweet and the h/t.
I miss the banter with strangers that was more clever and playful before creepiness and fear of creepiness became the norm.
I miss thanking people I do not know for enlightening me, or lightening my day.
Please don’t ask me to subscribe to more substacks (too much time), join a federated server (too few people), or listservs (too much email).
But if you have other ideas for restoring some joy in discovering both people and content, please let me know. Or let Pete know, since we’ve been talking about this.
Related:
- Todd Hoskins (author)
- 2024 (year)
- Topics: AI and Technology