Social Media Philosophy
TL/DR: Check in with your values. Control your content & connections.
Social media can be many things. A useful tool, a vital connection. An addiction, an echo chamber. An opportunity generator. A time suck. As we’ve all learned, though, the companies who make billions (or lose them) are not static. And while we may feel entitled to the services they provide, often for free, they are not a public utility. They are for-profit corporations, and they’re going to protect their bottom line. Sometimes their decisions will align with our needs, and sometimes they will diverge.
As of this writing, Elon Musk is a few weeks into his, er, eventful ownership of Twitter. A decade ago, I tried the platform, didn’t get it, and canceled my account. After encouragement from some smart and savvy Facebook friends, though, I gave it another try, and over time it became a valuable tool. I learned how to use it to get work, and shared my strategies with participants in my courses at narrator.life.
When it comes to Twitter, I’m at a fork in the road, and I’ve been here before.
In the early days of my narration career, Facebook and its groups were my water cooler and I checked in and posted daily. I made real and lasting friendships there, and earlier this month attended the wedding of one of my oldest Facebook friends.
That platform started to get really wonky a few years back, though. The groups I was in got big, impersonal, and in some cases combative and unpleasant. The interface became less and less appealing around the time they encouraged users to create and monetize fan groups, something I just didn’t have much interest in. It seems every time I log in to post something to my narrator page, it’s jumping up and down asking me don’t I want to do this or that? No, I just want to post this thing and go on with my day. Ugh.
And then I started to read articles about the people who actually moderate content on Facebook and other sites. All day they look at the posts we flag, and it takes a toll. That really weighed on me. I locked myself out of Facebook for a couple of months one summer to break the spell. When I signed back on, I pictured myself sitting with Zuckerberg showing him photos and telling him about my life, and it was pretty good aversion therapy, let me tell you.
Back to Musk. You might say nothing has changed where Twitter is concerned, but now that it is no longer a publicly traded company but rather privately owned by Musk, our use of Twitter benefits him. He is beholden to no one. No worries about PTSD for his content moderation staff, since they’ve mostly been fired. He has broken labor laws in the US and the EU. He sacked the human rights division. He gave an amnesty to accounts of those who were banned for endangering the physical safety of those they harassed, threatened, doxxed.
I have been peeking at the platform in recent days in the way we rubberneck in traffic jams. It’s so awful; what happened now? And also to see where the book community seems to be heading—authors enjoy Twitter because it’s not image-based, which makes sense. I tried Mastodon, meh. It’s currently a tie between hive and tumblr, but there’s part of me that wonders…why replace it with anything at all? Why not just reclaim my time, the mental space, some peace?
Getting back to the title of this piece, it’s time to lay out a philosophy that can guide us at these forks in the road.
First, Values and values. Step away from the computer and smartphone and really ask yourself, how does my use of any social media platform comport with both my personal ethics (Values) and the priorities I set for my business (values)?
The ethics question could include your stance on hate speech, human rights, equitable access, tenor of political / social justice related speech, and how a company makes and uses its profits.
The values question could have to do with freedom, money, security, building community, having a leadership role, enjoying a creative outlet, and having control of your content.
Once you’ve grounded yourself in a bigger picture, consider this question:
What would happen if you didn’t use any social media at all, or used it differently? What if you took care to hold onto your content and your connections more directly?
For content: a blog, a substack, an email newsletter are all examples of ways to accumulate your content in once place. For connections, we can be more intentional about staying in touch via good old fashioned 1:1 email (I love Cloze to help me keep track of important contacts and conversations).
Once you have a home for your content and connections, you can simply use whatever social media platform aligns with your values to get the word out about your latest news, musings, events with a link back to your business hub. If a platform changes in a way you don’t like, you can simply stop using it rather than fretting about how much content, how many connections would be lost.
As far as Twitter goes, this article by Jelani Cobb resonated with me. I think it’s highly likely that Elon won’t be invited to my New Year’s party.
Edited to add: my good friend Tanya Eby was thinking about these same things and wrote a blog post about it that is well worth your time.