Words. Ideas. Actions.

10 January 2023

I come to you again tonight with a nugget from a podcast. This time, it’s a line from the recent episode of “Decoder with Nilay Patel.” It was a broadcast of a live discussion between Patel and Chokepoint Capitalism co-authors Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin. If you’re interested in the cross-section of creative work and capitalism, the entire chat is worth your time. But Patel said something towards the end of their discussion that leads me to tonight’s post: 

“There’s a difference between having an audience and having an algorithmic audience.”

Last weekend, we watched “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” It’s based on characters created by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp in the Marcel the Shell books that we read to our daughter when she was little. The movie is a sweet look at Marcel’s search for his family after a marriage breaks up. That search leads to him creating a YouTube channel to talk about the search. I won’t give away much more about the plot, but Patel’s quote reminded me of a line from the movie that I jotted down in my notebook when Marcel was talking about the people watching his video uploads: 

“It’s an audience, not a community.”

Both of these quotes are so important to the work I used to do. And both the nuance and the differences between an audience, whether algorithmic or not, and a community seem to be important all over again as we get word that Twitter is moving toward an all-algorithmic timeline. I won’t get into the ins and outs of what we prototyped and what we learned while I was there, but trust me when I say that I was very vocal about the design and product decisions when we were testing a purely algorithmic timeline for people. 

Which brings me to the nut of tonight’s reason for all this exposition: If we can trust people to build an algorithm, we should be able to trust them to curate a timeline. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s get into it. 

Years ago, while working with my friend Scott, the social web was just taking shape, and the cost of building an app was falling precipitously. We would often think about mashing up different existing app ideas to create a new one. One of my favorites was what we ended up calling Looksy. It was basically a way that you could share links with your friends to items you had seen around the web that were interesting to you, asking them to “give ‘em a Looksy.” This was back in 2008, when sites like StumbleUpon and Digg as well as RSS feeds were a lot more ubiquitous, and useful, than the walled gardens we have today. But core to our idea was that people, friends even, were trusted link sources for their other friends. That human curation, and the ability to target specific links to specific people, was an essential piece of the experience we wanted to create. 

Later, services like Nuzzle (whose parent company, Scroll, was bought by Twitter bought about a year before Jack Dorsey stepped down), started to fill the space we were looking to fill with Looksy, but it was more of a heat map of popularly shared links from the sources you had already trusted, whether from your Facebook friends or accounts you were following on Twitter. It was a great way for me to keep up with what the people I was interested in were interested in. Which was always one of the biggest attractions of Twitter to me. It was like I had self-selected a couple of dozen editors-in-chief for the most interesting publication on the web each and every day.

This curation concept was also one of the big reasons I always admired the Curation team at Twitter. They were constantly gathering and vetting and explaining the links and information and trending topics on the service. The Explore tab on Twitter became the fastest, and usually best-sourced, breaking news service on the planet. Without argument. I miss it every day. Especially when I need a quick update on something I’m not totally interested in. Need to know the score of a game you’re not watching, the Curation team had you covered with not just the scores but a few Tweet-length highlights so you could get the gist of any match. Natural disasters? The Curation team had the latest, accurate information from trusted sources served up at the top of your feed. And for the all-too-often breaking news of a terrorist attack or mass shooting? Unfortunately, the Curation team had a lot of practice, and brought their humanity and care into crafting updates with the right balance of information and empathy. 

I started my writing career as a news producer for Florida Public Radio. Drafting and editing scripts with our reporters was one of my favorite tasks. But it was tough going more often than not. So, when I see people who get it right, over and over, I have to stop and admire them. It may be why I miss that part of Twitter most of all. Because I know how much work it was. And what a talent it is to do it well. As we lose one more space where careful curation is being replaced by an algorithm which rewards engagement over curiosity, I am lamenting Twitter’s loss all over again. 

See you tomorrow?

15 December 2022

Whelp, I’m not going to lie to you: I’m pissed. I spent a good part of last night devoting much too much headspace to Twitter. And tonight — well — tonight, it’s gotten worse. And, like I said, I’m pissed. Mostly at myself, though.

See, I’m mad that I trusted someone who’s proven over and over that he cannot be trusted. I took him at his word. And, even though I disagree with him more often than not, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he would practice what he preached. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. Twitter is his now, and he can do whatever he wants with it. We’re just going to have to live with the consequences.

I don’t know that I have any larger point to make here tonight. I just wanted to leave myself this reminder: Twitter is gone; stop expecting anything different. I think that may be a good reminder for others, as well. It’s definitely a shocking wake-up call for the reporters who were trying their best to use the service while they reported on the service. But we all need to rethink our information diets without Twitter in it. And that’s hard to even wrap my head around.

Sure, I get push notifications and listen to far too many podcasts. But there was something special about getting news from Twitter. I’ve been trying to figure out why those other sources aren’t doing it for me, and I think I finally figured it out this week: Those other apps have their own editors-in-chief, deciding which stories to cover and how. But with Twitter, I played that role. I could keep up with headlines, whether local or global, but I could also dig much deeper on niche topics, like why a Pavement B-side is so popular on Spotify. 

The more I talk about “the glory days of Twitter,” the more I start feeling like that star athlete in high school who just can’t resist reliving his glory days, no matter how many years ago they were. But make no mistake, the changes at Twitter will have some pretty big consequences on how, who, and where our news comes from. We found ways to stay informed before Twitter. And we’ll figure out a way without it. But this liminal period, where voices are amplified and suppressed based on the whims of a fragile, probably increasingly unstable, narcissistic megalomaniac, should have us questioning why we allow this much power to be held in such questionable hands.

See you tomorrow?

14 December 2022

I start tonight frustrated. Not because today saw the end of a great underdog story at the World Cup. No, it’s about the tedious and capricious changes Twitter implemented just because its owner can’t handle the public scrutiny the platform he now owns thrives on. So, he’s made another snap-judgment change. One which benefits only him. Without regard to the broader implications of its rushed implementation.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. At this point, these kinds of seemingly arbitrary decisions have become de rigueur. Yet, here I sit, mouth agape, staring into a screen, reading about how ham-fistedly this has been rolled out. I don’t want to dwell on this too long, because I already hate how much mental space Twitter continues to occupy in my mind, but as I read about the new location-sharing policy, and its enforcement, I thought about a blog post I wrote ages ago the day of the Boston Marathon bombing. 

There’s an idea in that collection of words and reactions that is as naïve as it is novel when we look back on it today. But using eyewitness Tweets has been the bread and butter on countless news stories over the years, even if we didn’t know what we were reading about at the time. 

Making real-time, location-based information a potential violation of the new Twitter policies is going to hamper the first-drafting of history we’ve come to rely on from the service. But, like I said, this should no longer be a surprise. I’m just having a hard time coming to grips with the idea that Twitter isn’t what Twitter was. Yes, I’m not Tweeting any more. And, yes, I’m using it very infrequently. But when a news story breaks, I still search the desktop site for news. And I get immediately reminded of how much we’ve lost, not the least of which was the amazing work the Curation team did to put Tweets into context so we could quickly understand what we knew about a story, and why we knew it.

I will miss Twitter for a long, long time. Even if I find another service which meets my news needs. But until then, the loss is just so pronounced. Nothing lasts forever, obviously, but I wasn’t ready for Twitter to be taken from me. Not like this.

See you tomorrow?

09 December 2022

I was so looking forward to writing tonight's post after viewing two unbelievable World Cup quarterfinal matches today. I wanted to talk about Brazil going home. The tenacity of the Croatians. My hatred of penalty kicks. And then I’d probably struggle to not spew a book-length number of words about the monumental match between The Netherlands and Argentina. But that all changed when I headed out with the dog for our last walk of the evening. I grabbed my coat, and the leash, cued up my evening podcasts in my headphones and headed out the door. Not halfway down the block, I was stopped in my tracks by the hourly NPR News podcast update reporting that Grant Wahl has died. 

At the moment, I think the only thing that’s clear to me is how stunned I am. For U.S. soccer fans, I think that feeling is pretty prevalent. Wahl was one of us, an advocate for a game we loved that struggled for years to gain a secure foothold in the imaginations of most of our otherwise sports-obsessed population. He reported with passion and curiosity in equal amounts. And he did it on his own terms, even after getting canned by Sports Illustrated in 2020. 

Since venturing out on his own, he still brought the same integrity and reporting to us, despite having to provide all the support infrastructure for it himself. I only met him once, after a disastrous EURO 2012 Final in Kyiv. I was still licking my wounds after seeing Spain completely dismantle my Italians, 4 – 0, but he was eager to talk to another American who had made his way to Ukraine to feed his passion for The Beautiful Game. What I remember most about our conversation was how quickly he put me at ease, not having to prove his stature or his credentials; just two guys talking about witnessing the game they loved in an unfamiliar land. Again. And how often we had both done that. 

Now, this isn’t the time or place to talk about the merits of parasocial relationships, but when you’ve been following someone for years, through podcasts, newsletters, and a publicly shared soccer calendar, you develop a familiarness that is unlike most other relationships you have with people you only know online. These mediums, and the number of ways we can connect, leads to a closeness and intimacy that’s hard to describe. You are part of a community of two, but it’s unidirectional. When that relationship ends, though, the pain is real. Even if it feels a little … I’m struggling for the right word … silly? It’s a loss, for sure. But not one which you’ll feel as acutely as his family, friends, and colleagues. But you mourn nonetheless.

With all that is wrong about this World Cup, Grant Wahl was everything that was right. He balanced his love and knowledge of the beautiful game with the critical, unflinching eye that’s so needed in today’s game in an attempt to hold officials accountable. During what has been — in my opinion — one of the most fascinating tournaments ever held, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that he won’t see how it will end. The coverage, and our understanding of it, will be much lesser for it. 

See you tomorrow?

05 December 2022

Tonight, I’ve been trying to rebuild the news consumption engine that Twitter used to be for me. A few weeks ago, I created an account on Post. Mainly, it was to make sure I could squat on my username. At the time, usernames had to be four characters long. So, instead of @F6x like my Twitter handle, I leaned into the Post. branding with @F6x. on Post.

Ages ago when I joined Twitter, it was the Wild West. I didn’t know who to follow, outside of a few friends who had introduced me to the service in the first place. Thankfully, I have some pretty smart friends. And they have smart friends. And by just looking through who they were following, I found a core group of people and accounts who made my Twitter experience immediately valuable. Getting value out of those first few days, as I’ve mentioned before, is a fundamental reason I came back day after day. And now, I’m having to start that process all over again. 

I took a few moments this evening to look through the accounts some people I trust are following. It’s a very manual process, and I tend to gravitate toward journalists and news organizations, but I think I’m getting somewhere. The tediousness, however, reminds me of writing about finding quality Twitter accounts to follow all those years ago. At this point, I’ve resigned myself to trying to get my news fix from Post., but trying to find community elsewhere. Conflating the two may be a mistake, anyway. I’m pretty sure all the context shifting was bad for my brain. But even as I try to rebuild my own personal news service, I’m finding I miss a handful of features I helped build at Twitter, specifically Bookmarks and Lists. But for now, I’ll take what I can get.

I know I’m a long way from being able to trust another platform with most of my information diet. And a great deal of my identity. But I think the harsh reality of having so much emotional investment in a company has been a hard lesson that I should have learned a while ago. Nevertheless, I’ll keep trying to scratch my news and information itch with a combination of podcasts and Posts. Maybe I’ll even start keeping a wish list of how we can all help make news consumption sustainable and edifying for both those creating it and those consuming it. 

See you tomorrow?

08 November 2022

Tonight, as I sit watching election results roll in, I am feeling an unfamiliar feeling: hope. I don’t think everything is going to change for the better, and I know that we still have a lot of problems in this country, but I see that there is a way for everyday Americans to use their voices to keep this republic. 

And that brings me back to Twitter. I used to get almost all my breaking news from Twitter. But in recent days, I’ve been trying to find new ways to get the same instant updates for both stories I wanted to follow, but also push notifications about events that were happening all over the world. This week, though, it’s pretty obvious that even if I wanted to use The Bird App like I used to, it’s no longer up for the task.

In past elections, I would typically get push notifications from news apps and Twitter within moments (pun intended) of each other. Tonight, I didn’t get any from Twitter. And that made me so, so sad. The reasons for this are obvious, and it reinforces the mourning I’ve been going through for the loss of the service I’ve come to rely so heavily on for my day-to-day news consumption. 

Rethinking how I get my news — and whether or not there’s really a need to find out about events the minute they happen rather than a few hours later — will be a journey that I’m reluctantly going to have to start. Maybe I’ve already taken some tentative steps tonight; I ended up watching TV!

My news consumption hierarchy tended to be Twitter, podcasts, news apps, public radio, and occasionally TV. Without Twitter in that top spot, I’m worried that I’ll be less informed. But even as I type that, I can rationalize that as most likely untrue. I won’t be less informed, I just won’t be as quickly informed. But first hasn’t always been factual. Maybe I actually need some distance between the instance a breaking alert hits my phone and the time it takes for trained journalists to create stories which will put that alert into proper context before I form an opinion about it.

Could the loss of Twitter actually make me better informed? Maybe. I’m reminded of a post I wrote years ago about how the Boston Marathon bombings played out in Tweets. Context that day would have been greatly appreciated. That probably holds true every day. 

I’m starting to like these posts as forcing functions to question some of the assumptions I had before I started putting them into words. Thanks for, once again, letting me think out loud.

See you tomorrow?

02 November 2022

A couple of events happened today which pointed out what a vital utility Twitter is, and the huge hole in my information ecosystem avoiding it is going to cause for me. 

First, this morning, in the middle of my 10 a.m. meeting, my phone started blaring a Silver Alert. I mentioned what was going on to my teammates, and opened the link to get more information. Instead of landing on an official website or a press release or even an expanded version of the truncated notification, I was taken to the Twitter profile of CHP - Alerts. Now, thankfully, it’s a Verified account. But under Twitter’s new regime, that may only be available for agencies willing to shell out dozens to hundreds of dollars each year for the privilege of reassuring people that they are who they say they are. What a dangerous path this could lead us down.

Imaging trying to find accurate, timely, credible information during a crisis, like fires, earthquakes, or hurricanes, only to have to navigate the throngs of accounts wealthy enough to pay to play in order to get their information prioritized in front of you before that of a public service agency trying to save your life. Now, I’m under no illusion that a for-profit company — whether it’s publicly traded or not — has a responsibility to help ensure your safety just because you’re a citizen of the world. But we’ve grown as reliant on Twitter for timely updates about public safety as we have for memes and hot takes. Those habits are going to be hard to break. And people may be harmed as we retrain our muscles to lean on other information sources. 

The second moment I lamented my loss of The Bird App today was during the SFUSD protest. Did you know that a not insignificant number of San Francisco’s public school teachers and staff have either been underpaid or not paid at all, some for as many as 10 months‽ It’s true, and today, they took to the streets in front of the SFUSD offices to let district officials know that they’ve had enough. 

As I joined them in and around the district headquarters, my first inclination was to Tweet out where I was, what I was doing there, and to encourage others to join us. But how? Without Twitter, I felt muzzled. Sure, we made our case, and we got media attention, but without the power of the platform which helped topple authoritarian governments during the Arab Spring, my impact was limited to a sign, my voice, and the stamina of our feet in the picket line.

I know I’ll get used to not being able to share my every idea instantly on the internet, but right now, that’s an uncomfortable feeling. I’m obviously still able to share my thoughts (you’re obviously reading them now), but they lack the immediacy and urgency that I’m used to. This may ultimately be a good thing, as now I have to take a little more time and effort to put these missives together, but blogging is a skill I haven’t used in quite some time. I hope I stick with it. And I hope you’ll stick with me.

See you tomorrow?