Is Twitter broken,or is it a “healthier service”?
Bottom Line: There’s a fine line between good and evil (or something like that) in social media these days. It’s a given that the worst elements will make their presence felt and the question becomes what’s next. There are 8,500 Tweets sent per second. What are the odds that at least one of them isn’t deplorable (and no I’m not talking about a Trump voter specifically)? If Twitter does nothing and the content really is over the line – they're the bad guy. If Twitter does something and it’s subjective, they’re the bad guy.
Twitter is now promising a “healthier service.” By healthier they mean that you’re theoretically less likely to be made to deal with hostility on the platform. Twitter’s saying they now remove 38% of objectionable content prior to complaints being made (compared to nearly 0% a year ago). They also are suspending accounts at a rate that’s three times faster than a year ago. This also can explain a couple of trends we’ve recently seen...
Overall Twitter use currently stands at 22% nationally. It’s down for the second straight year in the US after peaking at around 24% in 2017. First there was the purge of the Twitter bot accounts and now we’re rapidly seeing suspended accounts. What we still don’t know is what exactly objectionable content that’ll get removed. What’s the content that’ll get you “shadow banned” or exactly what it takes to become suspended... But hey, it’s “healthier” or so we’re told.
What do you think? Is Twitter healthier? Is it getting better or worse?