Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Twitter and the rise and fall of information republics

In the spring of 1995 I was logging into Gopher, reading the CIA Area Handbook series archives, and using Usenet and Talk to communicate with people on the other side of the world. The period between 1995 and 2000 was a wide-open era when phrases like “information wants to be free” were asserted as mantras. Many of us believed on some level we were going to witness a flowering of a new “republic of letters” as the global mind emerged.

As someone involved in the blog-era of the 2000s, in particular the golden age between 2002 and 2006, some of that optimism persisted despite the .com crash. We are going to “fact-check” the press. The “Army of Davids”. It was a time and place when heterodoxy was tolerated, and “thinking out loud” was expected.

Sitting here in 2020 the vision was naive, wildly optimistic, and wrong-headed. In 2020 the massive information flows on the internet consist of:

porn, to which people masturbate
– social media, which facilitates gossip
– streaming video, which replaces television
– and e-commerce, which sends us packages of consumer goods

In the series which began with Ender’s Game the child geniuses manipulate the world through their eloquence on Usenet. This was plausible in the 1990s, and even somewhat anachronistically in the world of blogs. Today Peter Wiggin would be a teenage porn addict with dark obsessions, and Valentine Wiggin would have an OnlyFans with a low price point (because she’s compassionate).

To use an ancient framing the internet is not an extension of our noblest intentions, but our basest urges. There is far too much Rousseau. Just do what comes naturally.

The intellectual efflorescences of the past, the Golden Age of Athens, the House of Wisdom, and the Aristotelian Renaissance, to name a few, were I believe matters of contingency and fashion. That is, particular social and cultural forces come together to generate surplus amenable to intellectual leisure, and society or the rulers provide intellectuals patronage. These older intellectual subcultures were frail, a thin skein atop the real work of these societies as one of primary production, their “protection” (the men with swords), as well as the priestly classes which regulated social affairs.

Europe’s economic explosion and technology such as the printing press allowed for the emergence of an intellectual culture without a premodern parallel after 1600. But I do not believe that this is just a matter of economics. Elite European society valued science as an avocation. The fusion of science and engineering eventually made it indispensable.

The technology of the internet should have made this even better. Supercharged it. But I do not believe that is the case. Christopher Beckwith’s Warriors of the Cloisters has convinced me that the particular structure of the written text can matter a great deal in forwarding arguments and understanding. Though YouTube videos can be informative and engaging, they are often unstructured and their information density is low. The same with podcasts.

Twitter is text. But it too lacks structure. Tweet-storms/threads are always inferior to writing in paragraphs.

The platform is invaluable as a means to obtain information. And I have had many interesting conversations on Twitter. But as someone with many followers, the replies can be overwhelming. Many are not smart, because most people are not smart. Additionally, over the last few years, it has become obvious that the low barrier to entry means that those who will have little to add nevertheless will add, and, massive positive feedback loops can be generated as information bubbles emerge. Over time Twitter has begun to feel much like social life in one’s early teens. Too early to imagine one’s career or be involved in a serious relationship, but a time when hormones are flowing and new enthusiasms are taking hold. The reign of the Mean Girls.

Where do we go from here? Though Twitter will persist in its niches (e.g., it’s great for delivering “breaking news”), many will slowly become passive consumers due to the toxicity of the typical conversationalist (additionally, there are pretty clearly governments who are purchasing troll armies in bulk to try and shape conversations).

Many of us are moving to private channels of various sorts. But this is not a full replacement for Twitter. The blog is fine, as far as it goes, but several years ago friends of mine convinced me to start a newsletter. I have only used it for very rare announcements. In the next few weeks, I will debut a paid newsletter service. These are all the rage now, and I will try and combine more polished essays along with bloggy observations. My blogs will not go away, and I will continue to blog. This will be the place where my reviews of papers and such things will continue. But I am curious about the less cacophonous “captive audience” of a newsletter.

The ultimate goal is slowly pull myself out of the vast, thin, and toxic, soup of Twitter.

19 thoughts on “Twitter and the rise and fall of information republics

  1. I consider myself a living atavism of that golden age of the Internet in 2000, but that is precisely why I am too used to one of its essential values: everything should be free. 😉

  2. I think the internet was a great improvement for those people which were still largely raised without it. Like I read books in my youth I honestly wouldn’t have if being born later. Simply because I searched for answers in books, which are easier, yet less complete, to get from the internet. Even if you do compare opinions and results, you don’t evolve the mindset you would have from reading a large number of books in your youth and early adulthood. Me, like many others, oftentimes prefer the shortest path to a result. I still read books regularly, but far less than in the past, but the base for evaluating what I consume online, was laid by years of research in books.

    The generation before me had the disadvantage of not being able to fully or not use the internet at all, but the generation after me being born in a virtual reality in which they being manipulated from early youth into adulthood, without ever looking out of the bubble. There are of course individual exceptions, not all people are that easy to trick, but talking about the majority, they end up as the superficial generation which knows nothing else than what their peer groups get and tell them from using the internet bubble.

    Censorship increases, they cleanse the WWW from dissent to the societal mainstream and this will get very ugly. At some point we are approaching 1984 on steroids, with your “smart” toaster and refrigerator controlling your daily routine and behaviour. If people point their fingers on China, I don’t see anything much better in the West, just that the leadership is even more confused, less logical and not doing the best for its own people and the greater whole. The recent crises, financial debacles and “political awakenings” made this all to clear. Yet if its about censorship and surveillance, the West just lags behind, but there is little substantial difference.

    And for those people which think they “don’t have evil messages”, so they won’t ever fall victim to censorship and persecution, think about it twice, because “what’s evil” to the priests in media and “science”, or the rulers in the financial oligarchy, can, like we have seen, change within months. What’s ok today might be banned tomorrow and at some point people get punished for what was ok yesterday but isn’t now. That’s absolutely important to notice, because it means that any kind of justice and law being annulled by societal ostracism and persecution. People won’t say what’s allowed today because they will be afraid of what’s being banned tomorrow, so its even easier to make the next step because people censor themselves already. This is a truly vicious cycle and right now I don’t see how to stop it.

  3. While reading this fine post, I was reminded of some of the writing of Morris Berman, who, if I recall correctly, was plumbing similar depths in a number of his books in the aughts. I am thinking particularly of ‘The Twilight of American Culture’ I remember being struck by his vision of a “‘a new monastic individual’—a person who, much like the medieval monk, is willing to retreat from conventional society in order to preserve its literary and historical treasures”.
    https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-American-Culture-Morris-Berman-ebook-dp-B005SH4L9Q/dp/B005SH4L9Q/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

  4. The phenomena of information bubbles, people with little expertise dominating conversations simply by being loud, and massive feedback loops, were also true of Usenet to a very great extent, at least by the late 1990s. I remember even the classical music discussion groups being like this.

    Twitter has lowered the barrier, to be sure, the signal-to-noise ratio is far worse than anything I remember from Usenet, and there are bots. Plus Twitter has the added bonus of a popularity-contest system layered on top. But I think the phenomena on display are, at core, still the same.

  5. @Joe: The main difference is the “real public” attention these actions got. The classic print, radio and TV mass media jumped in, favouring some voices, scrunched others. Political parties and even the state pay much more attention and interfere as well. So the main problem is its no longer theoretical debates on the internet on an issue, but people which say something which will be favoured or punished by other instances. Twitter made this worse with this short messages which have no substance and being spread far and wide, with instant attention and campaign modes.
    There are single individuals “doing campaigns” by being pushed by the establishment and mass media, while there are whole organisations and large communities, which were much more dominant in the past, can be largely ignored and lose their share on the “social media” front. Its so much more biased and without the major communication channels you are unable to achieve anything like a large campaign – which means dependence from private companies for public interests and communication in an unprecedented way.
    Simple put, the establishment saw a free space evolving on its own and didn’t like it, so they brought the hounds in and begin to cleanse the party, while strengthening those voices they want to hear. Its all much more rigged and manipulated now than what it was even just 5 years ago, that’s the main difference.
    People should only be allowed to find and participate in those bubbles the established powers prefer, with dissenting voices, regardless from where they are coming from, being crushed or at least marginalised. Basically the surplus of freedom the early internet created will be turned into the opposite: Even more control and surveillance than ever.

  6. It was not just a Reconquista by the establishment concerning societal and political issues, but also commercially. Look back at the freedom and uncontrolled growth in the early days of the WWW and how everything was cut back, brought back to the major companies and their commercial products and interests. The establishment is regaining control over the people and actually gaining even more control. These “funny” political movements which being now used to introduce control, censorship and bans being just the tool to do and justify it in this sphere. Without the support “from above” they would be nothing. Once its being established, these control instruments can be directed against anyone. Like usual, “the revolution will eat its children”. This will not result in a “Hippie’s dream”, that’s for sure.

  7. I’m in for the newsletter. By the way “Many are not smart, because most people are not smart.” Absolutely. It’s only Monday morning, and the number of people that have done stupid things that could be remedied by simply following instructions is astounding to me.

  8. I disagree with much of the analysis presented. Much of social media is good if you seek out good people to follow and engage with. I learn a ton every day. Porn has always been popular. Ecommerce is an improvement.

    One area where I do agree is that there was a naïve expectation that free speech would be honored. Instead we have seen massive purges of both YouTube and Twitter of disapproved political narratives. YouTube used to have a thriving right-wing talk scene, which was quite radical, but everyone has now been banned.

    Ultimately, the tech utopians had the right ideals and ideas. Where they failed was understanding that we don’t really live in a democracy and if you challenge systemtic orthodoxy, you get purged. But that cannot be blamed on tech. That’s a social malaise.

  9. “Ultimately, the tech utopians had the right ideals and ideas. Where they failed was understanding that we don’t really live in a democracy and if you challenge systemtic orthodoxy, you get purged. But that cannot be blamed on tech. That’s a social malaise.”

    Agreed, but that’s like talking about a guy with a gun. Yes, the gun is just an instrument, its the guy pointing on you. Yet its still the instrument which will kill you and makes the difference. The internet was like a gun nobody could fully use and control in the first decades of its existence. That will change: In the near future the very same people which control the financial system and mass media for long will be able to fully instrumentalise this tool at their discretion.
    But what’s really making me angry is not as much that they do it, because they would be stupid not to, but that so many people fail to realise it or react to it. How major companies were blackmailed to cooperate with the PC mob was a shame.
    Yet the majority of people think its their choice, they think its their “free opinion”, when in fact they just repeat like a tape recorder with what they were fed with and the menu being determined by others. Knowing people which work against their very own best interest, its explainable too of course: Most refuse to accept reality because this would create a dissonance for their emotional wellbeing.
    Its not like knowing what’s happening makes you any happier or your life easier, because you are even less likely to go well with accepting bad and destructive choices made by “the elite”, which will hurt you personally, your family, your people and mankind on the longer run very bad. While the majority tries to rationalise it psychologically, like if its really necessary to take that path and make that decision, as if there would be no other choices…

  10. What do you mean by the “Aristotelian Renaissance”? Google doesn’t think that’s a standard term. Maybe the Renaissance of the 12th Century, when Aristotle was translated into Latin? (The other obvious interpretation is the Hellenistic period, but that has a pretty standard name.)

  11. Regarding a paid newsletter, you need to think about expectation setting carefully.

    With Patreon, or a free newsletter, the expectation is you’ll do what you want.

    With a paid newsletter, expectation is it’s your full time job. Or if a fast enough writer, dedicated part time. That is to say, you need to announce ahead of time what content you’ll produce on which days of the week. Then produce that consistent writing each and every week. And if you take vacation, it should be announced in advance. Or you’ll risk burning the goodwill of your audience. People are paying for a job, and they’ll expect you do it or they’ll get publically angry about it.

    Also with a paid newsletter, a subset of your audience will pressure you for partisan political dunks. If you look at the top paid Substacks, you’ll see many are partisan. https://substack.com/discover#top-paid

    Anyway, as a long time reader, I’m just throwing out there that a paid newsletter is a commitment. So great if you want to do it. You’ve proven you have the writing chops, and I have no doubt it will be a success. I’d just suggest you make sure you think through the time commitment first, before you take people’s money. Good luck!

  12. Reminds me of a similar forecast we kept getting not even 10 years ago: that the current generation of young people (Gen Z, Zoomers, whatever you like, the people born at the end of the 90s through 6 or 7 years ago) would be incredibly tech savvy, having grown up with the internet and computers in their pocket their entire life. Instead, Silicon Valley and assorted tech companies have invested so much into UX, social media, and making their products as idiot-proof as possible, such that young people (read: college age or younger) today have no idea how any of the programs or software they use work, and would struggle to use anything beyond the most basic features of a Word Processer and would be lost if they had to navigate an old website circa 2003.

  13. Razib: I think you are interesting and you write a lot interesting (to me anyway) essays, so I am happy to throw a few shekels your way.

    But, I really think the way to go to find rational exchanges is through paid for services like ricochet.com.

  14. With a paid newsletter, expectation is it’s your full time job.

    This is right on the money. One thing I noted about the rise of the internet is that people (including I) now expect a lot more content/information for free or at very low costs.

    The other day, I thought about the fact that I used to subscribe to lots of paid reading material even though I was quite poorer – The Economist, The NYT, The WSJ, etc. for general news and lots of academic-, work-, and hobby-related magazines. Now, even though the combined cost of these subscriptions is not even “gum money” to me (I think I spend more money on treats for my dogs), I’ve gotten rid of ALL of those subscriptions and rely on free information on the Internet (I now subscribe to one local newspaper’s online edition).

    So I completely agree with you that people expect A LOT more when they pay, even if the cost is nominal. There is this weird psychological threshold now if one has to break out the credit card (or another method of payment). You can blame that on the Internet.

    By the way, the same goes for video entertainment. My family used to have a Netflix streaming + disk rental plan, but we decided to save a whopping $5 a month and get rid of the disk rental portion since there is more than enough video entertainment via streaming/online. We just said, “Nah, we’ll save $5 and spend it to rent videos online that are not available via “included” streaming” – we haven’t done that once.

  15. I’m ambivalent about people moving to newsletters. On the one hand, the signal to noise ratio on Twitter can be pretty bad, even from field experts. Newsletters would (hopefully) be better polished and more focused on certain topics. On the other hand, it’s nice to have a one-stop shop like a newspaper/magazine. I can hear from Razib, an expert on cattle genetics, and stem cell biologists all in one place. I can even (try to) interact with them. Can you team up with others to make a group blog or eNewspaper? On the gripping hand, I get too many emails as is. I can see newsletters just piling up in my inbox until I get fed up enough to hit unsubscribe.

  16. Couple more points on paid newsletter. The two I read most closely right now are Ben Thompson (for many years), and Byrne Hobart (who has written online for many years, but recently went paid on substack).

    Thompson explicitly provides a posting schedule, including vacation days:
    https://stratechery.com/daily-update/schedule/

    Hobart doesn’t give an explicit schedule on his about page:
    https://diff.substack.com/about

    But in his updates, he says 5 days a week Mon-Fri, with Friday being free.

    The point being as part of your schedule you to decide which posts are free and which are paid.

    Thompson puts his more tactical updates (commentary on latest news) behind the paywall. And then puts his big analysis piece each week out for free. Though Thompson puts interviews behind paywall (recently interviewed Slack CEO). Hobart does almost the opposite of Thompson. His weekly free Friday post is mostly link commentary. While his paid posts are half and half. So today was 1300 words on Y Combinator v college, plus another 1300 words of commentary broken into 5 paragraphs. Each paragraph on a single topic/link. So 2600 words a day!

    I don’t think one or the other is better on what is free v paid, and you can iterate on this. But if you go paid, you need to have a starting point on which kinds of post are behind paywall. And which are free (for marketing reach). And know the rough weekly schedule paying customer will get.

    You can probably tell I’ve given it some thought over the years of going paid myself, especially when I was blogging a lot (circa 2013/2014). In the end I never tried it. Unsure if I could get the audience obviously, but more importantly I’m a slow writer. And if you go solo paid, you gotta generate lots of content on a schedule. So I think it favors quick writers. Which may in fact be a good fit for you, now that I think about it. Anyway. The underlying point here is it’s easy to burn years of audience good will if you launch paid without thinking these kinds of things through. Like I said, you obviously have the chops to do it, as long as the time commitment makes sense, and you are good at expectations on what people get for their money in terms of weekly content.

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