(taps sign) Nobody owes you a listening ear

The complaints about social network echo chambers miss the point, and privilege the advantages online trolls already enjoy

I am so rarely right at predictions that I’ll just take this opportunity to do a victory lap about my bet on Bluesky being the best long-term place for Twitter exiles. Since the U.S. presidential election, Bluesky has seen a huge spike in new accounts as folks finally decided to check out of the Nazi gymnasium that Twitter has become. The app is adding 1 million users a day and has gone from around 12 million users in early November to about 23 million.

I’ve been writing about what I call the Great Fracture for over a year now. The underlying premise is that Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter was going to force an all-at-once, then slowly, then all-at-once-again exodus from his shiny old social platform because of the rules he planned to implement. And we’ve seen just exactly that. An initial loss, then Twitter treading water for a year, then after the election a huge surge fueled by his advocacy for Trump alongside some shady use of Twitter’s internal algorithm that amplified pro-Trump users and white supremacist accounts.

We have hit an inflection point now. It’s not just that Bluesky is adding users at huge numbers, but it’s also finally pulling over creators and artists, sectors of the influential #BlackTwitter sub channel, and sports Twitter. It’s this mix of creatives and pop culture conversation that always gave Twitter the juice, and now these folks have had enough and are migrating to Bluesky. I was never worried about Threads’ initial surge as an alternative, because while its network effects as a Meta product gave it a big initial user base, it has been so badly mismanaged that it never felt vital or useful (and I suspect Meta’s brand image worked against it here too).

And now despite having roughly 1/20 of the user accounts Threads has, it appears Bluesky is winning in the one metric that matters for social media economics: daily active users.

It’s impressive.

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But with growth comes the obvious next step, which is the concern trolling thinkpieces from Very Serious People wringing hands over the possibility that Bluesky’s user base plus its robust blocking tools have potential to create a left-wing echo chamber.

Quelle horreur.

This piece from The Globe & Mail is a representative but not particularly unique argument you see everywhere on Twitter and in U.S. major media opinion pages. It argues Bluesky can’t “broaden our horizons” for reasons that aren’t fully spelled-out beyond some guessing, and also doesn’t articulate what part of that horizon invigorated white nationalists occupy.

But the flight to Bluesky is a concern, not because X is the superior platform, but because at a moment when persuasion and communication are vital, Mr. Trump’s loudest and most influential critics are building an echo chamber.

Really.

There are a few things I’d point out, some of which are obvious and some that are less so.

First, you will rarely read these types of pieces and find them lecturing the opposite crowd. Elon’s policies allowed trolls to become amplified in the algorithm and moved to the top of a user’s replies merely because these folks pay $8 a month. This had the predictable effect of elevating trolls and drowning out other kind of discourse (I predicted this a while back too). You will be hard pressed to find a major publication publishing a piece that scolds trolls for driving people off a site. That is just How Things Are, a type of internet boys-will-be-boys vibe that I find insufferable. It’s a bit rich to expect people to absorb all the abuse a platform has to offer and not criticize the toxic behavior driving folks off the platform. I mean, major media’s worry about Fox News or conservative talk radio isn’t to criticize fans of those outlets but rather worry about losing that part of the audience. They don’t criticize that audience for finding a conservative information safe space even though those folks are very much in information silos. Thus, I’d modestly propose a major media outlet accept a pitch from someone wanting to make this argument. I’ll even write the headline for you: “People are fleeing Twitter? Sounds like a you problem.”

Second, think about what is being proposed here: you must stick around and be abused For Democracy. I loved Twitter at its best and made my mark as a scholar studying and using that space, but what finally drove me off for good despite all I’d built there was an incident in 2023 where I made a random remark about how sad it was that a certain individual was leaving the platform due to abuse. It got spotted by the toxic Heritage Foundation account, amplified, and suddenly I had trolls raining down comments on me accusing of all manner of Communism, pedophilia, general assholery, being a liberal brainwashing professor, etc. I am not talking a few comments. It got up to several thousand in the span of two hours, all activated by one single influential right wing media account that released the hounds. I knew that day I was done there, but I’d seen smaller doses of that already and even some harassment that probably wasn’t a real threat but got my blood pressure and temperature going because it felt that way. What’s being asked in pieces like the above is something we’d never ask of a person in real life. Stay with your abuser, take their concerns seriously, get beat up for a while and try to see the silver lining. It’s a ridiculous argument that I’m surprised to see even in an era where people lack shame.

Third, the idea of a social network as a town square is dead and was probably foolish all along. The first decade of social media saw networks grow large and vast as we added everyone we knew from our strong-tie and weak-tie networks. But the reorganization happening since Elon’s Twitter play is a fracturing into all types of networks. Facebook remains The New York Times of social media, a product that is for a general audience and tries to be as inoffensive and conservative as possible to not drive users away. But these smaller splinter Twitter alts allow audiences to organize in ways that make sense to them. Bluesky is not a liberal echo chamber at the product level, but unlike Twitter the platform gives you the tools to build one if you like (and also gives conservatives the chance to build like-minded networks). Or you can build something diverse. Or you can just follow it for interests you have in art, sports, or other venues that aren’t overtly about politics. Customizable social networks allow us to organize our information relationships in ways that make sense to us and aid our own goals. Mass discussion is a cacophony; we check into information sources based on our needs. One of Bluesky’s benefits is you can build your own kind of social network that meets your need rather than subject yourself to the firehose of humanity’s worst impulses. Smaller, more-curated town squares that allow for smaller organizing or larger conversations. Or both. It’s up to you.

Fourth, I bristle at the idea that building a specific network of like-minded thinkers is necessarily locking you into an echo chamber. We get information from a lot of different streams and sources, including social media. If social media was truly your only source, perhaps I’d grant the point. But there are news websites, radio sources, television outlets, podcasts, newsletters and all kinds of other ways to get information. The argument against Bluesky assumes way, way too much about a person’s broader media diet. Going back to my talk radio example, if a person who grew up snorting lines of Rush Limbaugh content all day also was only using conservative media in other venues, sure, that’s probably an echo chamber. But if they also were reading their local news or following sources in other places that didn’t ideologically align with their view of the world, then talk radio is just a piece of a diverse media diet. It’s the same with social media. I have some networks that are more diverse for me than others, and I consume a lot of news and argument from a variety of sources. To the extent I encounter a consistent view on Bluesky, it’s countered by the rest of it. People are more complex than a simplistic argument about one network.

Fifth, the argument stresses too much about information use on social networks and not enough about the relationships these networks host. The era of mass-friending created relationship impacts to the information we shared. It infused into existing relationships an awareness that your longtime friend or loved one is nodding in agreement with some awful point of view. The content is bad enough, but it grafts on to social bonds in ways that does long-term damage to those relationships. And that’s just the friend level. In a network full of weak ties (a sociology term that describes casual relationships such as co-workers, school friends, neighbors, etc.), you become intensely aware of not just what information you’re seeing but the kinds of people you’re surrounded by. One of my personal breaking points came a couple years ago when I saw a longtime acquaintance endorse a white supremacist for a local election; I knew at that point not only that I had to remake my network but that I needed to make it healthy for my own sanity. You shouldn’t feel cornered and attacked all the time or feel like you’re the only person in your broad network who has a discernible set of moral principles; it’s a kind of unhealthy relationship setup that will make you withdraw and feel paranoid. Instead, what I’d say here is sometimes people have to form resilient communities with like-minded folks for our own self-care and personal growth. In fact, we do this all the time in the real world, and nobody really calls those echo chambers. What do we think religious institutions are, for example?

Finally, and related to the last point, as someone who has studied social networks and online collective action, I’d point out these spaces of information exchange can be beneficial in building activism when they are more inhered. The U.S. progressive movement is regrouping after a difficult election in November and facing the real possibility (if Trump’s own words are to be believed) that the machinery of government will be used to harass and silence free speech dissent using federal agencies, the courts and military force. And in times like these, I’m reminded of my own reading on the subject that information resilience becomes critical. What I mean by this is that networks of sharing often turn internal to survive what is coming, establishing peer-to-peer relationships and new processes that survive attempts to silence and censor. I think for example of testimonials from the underground information hubs that were built in Cuba during the Fidel Castro’s reign, peer sharing that involved low-tech means such as passing USB drives with PDF publications from house to house in ways that would evade online surveillance. Information finds a way, and we invent new publishing vectors in times of oppression. To the extent that progressives are fleeing the toxicity for safer environs where they can discuss things they’re reading, what they like and what they disagree with, that’s a good thing.

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These scoldings about echo chambers are just another moral panic that presupposes some duty the progressive left has to the marketplace of ideas without asking the same of folks in the center or on the right, let alone of social networks that host these conversations. The conversation has been toxic on Twitter thanks to its incentives and algorithmic gatekeeping process. Who is this town square for? “Everyone” is an answer that creates a show-don’t-tell question; it’s a marketing pitch not rooted in reality.

What Elon has created is an algorithmic propaganda network built for dunking on the non-MAGA crowd, but it’s even worse than that. Whatever ideals of a virtual town square people hold, it’s gone when there are thumbs on the scale for a particular type of abusive user. I’m not even talking conservative vs. liberal anymore, but rather good faith vs. abusive troll. Debate is good. I believe in it. But Elon’s Twitter isn’t a place where genuine good-faith debate is happening at any real scale.

But more to the point? The scolding is coming from people with power. These people already have platforms if they’re writing for publications. One of the funniest things I’ve seen the past week is screen grabs of abusive trolls on Twitter complaining about folks leaving, or complaints from trolls about joining Bluesky to practice their craft there and immediately being auto-blocked out of relevance. Trolls need oxygen to thrive, and they don’t know how to handle being deprived of the attention they crave. It’s arguable that right wing social media itself collapses when there aren’t liberals to troll; it’s a reason why Twitter alternatives like Truth Social never took off, because it’s about the game and not the content. So perhaps The Globe & Mail could ask those folks what they need to do to be heard better, to do some introspection and think about how to be more persuasive if they want their arguments to win the day.

I am jesting somewhat. People sometimes treat the existence of free expression as proof that debate is happening because they conflate free speech with dialogue. But free speech and dialogue are not the same thing. You have a right to speak, but not to be heard. Our norms around free speech are already constructed with some deference to the worst and most caustic voices among us. We do this in part because banning minoritarian speech broadly is bad. Not all minoritarian ideas are wrong. But if there is a logical cultural deference for broadly allowing speech, we don’t have to tilt the scale similarly for dialogue. Dialogue is exchange. It requires good faith arguing. It requires listening and considering, not just speaking. It requires the openness to changing one’s mind based on argument and evidence.

In other words, dialogue is a social enterprise that is built on free speech, and that requires norms and community rules that go far beyond treating free expression as a black box that unlocks all kinds of other social goods. Whether we’re talking about Bluesky or any other social platform, the worrying about echo chambers misses the point that Twitter’s exiles are telling us they want a place with norms and values that create the fertile soil for real dialogue.

Bluesky users are voting with their feet. That isn’t reason to scold those joining this fledgling network, but rather reasons to ask why places like Twitter got so bad that longtime users finally are fleeing.

Jeremy Littau is an associate professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh University. Find him on Bluesky for short-form commentary and analysis about digital media and society.