As COVID-19 began to sweep the globe last spring, Twitter has experienced phenomenal expansion with much of the planet’s population confined at home, helping the platform recover from a seven-year drop in the volume of daily tweets. How did the platform’s adjustments around the 2020 presidential election, its expansion, and its Donald Trump ban make it lose users?
Although Twitter itself does not post detailed usage statistics, it is imaginable to estimate its expansion from the daily random pattern that has up to 1% of all tweets, which is strongly correlated with its actual expansion. shows the estimated number of tweets consistent with the day on Twitter from January 1, 2012 to January 5, 2021 (spaces are days without data).
From its peak in July 2013, Twitter was in decline for several years until the end of 2018, but had started to grow slowly in 2019. Then, in the area for two weeks in mid-March 2020, when lockouts swept the world. , the platform grew through almost a hundred million tweets in line with the day, returning to its July 2013 figures.
The chronology below is closer to the era from January 1, 2020 to January 5, 2021, with this phenomenal growth appearing. Although the blockades have eased around this year’s previous global, Twitter’s use has not declined, with remarkable resistance. On January 20, Twitter’s daily volume increased through another 50 million tweets a day as all eyes were on the US election. The U. S. , then suddenly dropped about 70 million tweets a day almost overnight, October 21-22, and only began to recover on December 17. What could this strange anomaly be?
Turns out the answer was Twitter’s attempt to combat electoral misinformation. On October 20, the corporation announced a series of global changes, the vital maxim of which was the rise of “friction” to retweet. The message will be presented with a text box asking them to upload their own comment to the message, in the hope that this will inspire everyone not only to why they magnify a Tweet, but also to increase the likelihood that others will upload theirs. thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation. “
Other adjustments included restricting recommendations and trend visibility, but were canceled shortly after the election. It was not until December 16 that the corporation nevertheless cancelled its retweet adjustments, resulting in 20% relief on retweets. In reversing those settings, Twitter stated that “this update has slowed down the spread of misleading data due to general relief in the amount of sharing on the service. “
The fact that such a small change in sharing behavior can lead to such a significant drop in Twitter’s overall daily volume, erasing all its pandemic expansion in a day without getting married, reinforces the fragility of social platforms. Effortless percentage of our mind and magnify everything we see through impulse. Twitter’s delight shows that making the sharing procedure more considered is incompatible with expansion, which is why platforms have been so reluctant to make radical adjustments to combat the spread of lies.
Moreover, the fact that none of Twitter’s settings have had a significant effect on incorrect information alone without serious side effects on the platform in general reinforces the fact that there are few “quick solutions” to social media problems.
How did Twitter evolve the pandemic?
For less than 1% ten years ago, about 10% of all daily tweets have been broadcast through a verified user or a retweet of a verified user message, showing how the site has become an amplification service for elite calls. Retweet adjustments have reduced that number to about 8% in the weeks after the election, which seems to have a disproportionate effect on the elite’s voices.
Before the replacement of the retweet on Twitter, just over all the daily tweets were retweets, while a third of the daily tweets were replies and 80% spoke of some other user. In other words, Twitter today is less of a verbal ex-replace and more amplification and advertising service. where users reach percentages of each other’s minds and get to know them, hoping to get attention.
George Floyd’s protests have led to a brief accumulation of retweets, i. e. retweets of verified users and user mentions, but a minimization of responses, reinforcing the platform’s role as an amplification tool. However, the early days of the pandemic did not show such accumulation in retweets of verified accounts, suggesting that their role in amplifying public aptitude messages as blockages spread is more limited.
The percentage of tweets containing exact geographic coordinates continued to decline, to less than 0. 1% of all tweets, while English tweets still account for about 55% to 60% of daily tweets. The influx of new users attracted to the platform at the beginning of the pandemic has remained, the average age of a Twitter account actively posting remains 2. 2 to 2. 7 years. After Twitter replaced its retweet behavior, the average age of the tweet users’ account was reduced to about a hundred days, suggesting that long-term users were more affected by the change.
Earlier this month, Twitter would possibly have banned its top prominent user, Donald Trump. In the weeks that follow, his tweets faded from television news, but contrary to some predictions, even the overall loss of all his social media accounts shook television slightly. fixation on it, which still stands at around 10% -15% of the total days of use this year.
In the wake of Trump’s ban, many have wondered if the company may lose one of its top prominent users. At the time of his ban, Trump had 90 million subscribers, while Twitter reported only 187 million monetizeable daily users overall. In addition, its 90 million subscribers were incredibly active on the platform. While Trump’s media star has not yet faltered, did Twitter’s expansion end with Trump’s loss?
The answer is that Trump’s ban is not even perceived as a failure in Twitter’s expansion this year, which continued incessantly after its ban, which in turn suggests that Twitter may feel more emboldened to silence other prominent voices, knowing that this will have no effect. have an effect on its expansion.
Ultimately, that a relationship of mutual dependence, Trump can still dominate the media landscape 3 weeks after his Twitter ban, when it also turns out that Trump was also not as vital to Twitter’s future.
Kalev Leetaru, a member of the RealClear Media team, is a senior researcher at George Washington University’s Cyber Center.