Many #Twitter Users Are Riding Out The Controversy

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than a million users have reportedly left the Twitter app since owner Elon Musk took over, but for some the decision to log off for good isn’t easy.

Love it or hate it, Twitter has been a major stage for political unrest, pop culture pinnacles, social justice movements, and community engagement. Now, users who’ve found a home on the app are debating what’s next. Many have decided to leave in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, but that’s not an easy decision for everyone. Host Kai Wright talks with George M. Johnson, best-selling author of the novel "All Boys Aren’t Blue," who’s made a revolutionary space for themself on Twitter. Plus, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah joins to tell us why she’s not ready to deactivate her account just yet. Read more of Karen’s thoughts in her opinion piece, Why I’m not leaving Twitter.

Companion listening for this episode:

Digital Life Is A Moral Mess (8/11/2022)

A listener voicemail sends the show’s Senior Digital Producer Kousha Navidar on a search for moral clarity with philosopher, Dr. Christopher Robichaud. Plus, Shirin Ghaffary, senior reporter at Recode and co-host of the podcast Land of The Giants, shares the story of Facebook, and why it has been so hard for them to respond to the damage their technology has created.

“Notes from America” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on notesfromamerica.org or on WNYC’s YouTube channel.

We want to hear from you! Connect with us on Instagram and Twitter @noteswithkai or email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you have any opinions on the potential exodus of people from Twitter?
0:07.0	I think that as long as Twitter is kind of the biggest platform of that nature, then people
0:12.7	probably won't need in masses, you know.
0:15.4	I'm probably going to delete my fake account that I don't use anyway to take a stand.
0:20.0	I mean, I think it sucks that they let Trump back on there, but Twitter is full of news,
0:23.4	dude, and it's like, I get to be a different person on there.
0:25.6	It's a place for me to spy on my ex-girlfriends and on my current ones.
0:29.6	Next month.
0:31.6	I had Twitter when I was a lot younger in middle school and high school, and I used it
0:36.6	just to follow people I didn't really know, and I don't know.
0:40.6	I think I still get that same kind of community feel from Instagram and other forms of social
0:44.6	media too.
0:45.6	The way that it's been going with the new CEO, I think I'm just going to go ahead and
0:49.6	fully go to TikTok.
0:55.6	It's notes from America, I'm Kai Wright, and friends, I'm old enough to remember the
1:12.6	world before Twitter.
1:14.3	To remember that political conversation could get pretty nasty and toxic without the
1:18.7	help of social media, and to remember how flat so much of the public conversation felt,
1:25.1	having been filtered through the shared assumptions of its overly white, overly straight, overly
1:30.1	upper middle class gatekeepers.
1:32.8	But also, I'm old enough to remember how reluctant I was to join a party that pretty quickly
1:38.0	felt like an awful lot of shouting, and by people who'd later convinced that they wish
	...

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