town square | Legally Sociable

A perceived decline of X/Twitter as a “global town square” has consequences for where or how Americans can gather and deliberate (or just share what they want to say):

If you’re in your 30s or your 40s, and you’ve already built your clout and you’ve made your place in the world and you’re now being told you’re going to have to go start over somewhere else, you probably find that idea profoundly exhausting. But go talk to a 13-year-old. Are they exhausted by the idea that they’ll have to be online? No. They’re thrilled. Ask an 8-year-old what he wants to be when he grows up; he’s going to tell you he wants to be a YouTuber. Don’t sit here and tell me that the social web is over. The social web is being reborn, and I’m sorry that that makes you tired.

The global town square is dead. Long live 45 different global town squares.

Yes, and no one is brave enough to write that maybe it’s a good thing that now there are 16 different places to post. Weren’t we all supposed to be upset that there were these monolithic platforms and that we were all governed by their rules? We had no recourse if a content moderation decision went against us. Weren’t we supposed to be upset about the concentration of power? Well, now we have what we asked for. There is no longer a concentration of power in social networks. And so, instead of saying social networks have no future, I think the more interesting question to ask is: What is the future of these platforms that are being born?

The idea here is that the social media realm is fracturing into a lot of other smaller spheres. This has happened before in other media forms; television went through a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s where the number of channels and content expanded and audiences fractured or in print when texts were rare and controlled and then exploded with the printing press.

The bigger issue might be that it is not like American society has a baseline town square where people could gather and talk if social media fractures. Go back to newspapers? The nightly TV news? The water cooler in an era of work from home? In terms of urban planning, most American communities do not have town squares or civic plazas and if there are central spaces, relatively few people gather there. Civic engagement and participation in voluntary associations has declined. American communities often lack third places, settings between home and work where people might regularly interact.

Something or some setting will likely arise for Americans to share their opinions if social media fails to play this role. But, whether it is a long-term space that hosts robust discussion as opposed to simply sharing thoughts is another matter.

Finding the right spatial metaphor for Twitter might help reveal what the social media platform does best:

In Musk’s mind, “Twitter serves as the de facto public town square,” and as such, it should be a place where people are able to speak their minds. This metaphor seems slightly off, though. Yes, for people like Musk it’s a place to have debates they think are important for humanity; people with millions of followers are often the people who think what they’re saying is most important. But for the rest of Twitter—some 229 million daily users—it’s more like a metropolis. People have neighborhoods they stick to; sometimes they go out and talk with friends, sometimes they watch from their windows, sometimes they talk up strangers in a park. Most of these aren’t the kind of world-changing conversations Musk seems to want to have, but they’re just as vital.

As someone who studies cities and suburbs as well as social media, a few thoughts:

The idea of a “town square” seems quaint in a mass society. At the scale of a society like the United States, is there really a single place where everyone can come together? This may have better fit an earlier era of mass media – such as the opening decades of television – or for particular events – the mass viewership of the Super Bowl – but generally does not apply when a country has over 300 million residents.
A “town square” would seem to fit better in a smaller community or neighborhood. The capacity of a town square would be limited. What would the equivalent be in a big city: a plaza? A main thoroughfare or major park where people gather for rallies or protests?
On social media, many users friend or interact with people they know offline. Twitter is a little different model since you follow people but a sustained follow can lead to understanding the other user more. The platforms are not generally set up to interact with random users nor do many users choose to do that.
The goal of participating in durable social media communities is also what Facebook is pushing these days. Even as the early years of the Internet offered potential to connect with anyone in the world, many users found people with like interests and spent a lot of time there. If this is indeed more like city neighborhoods, what then connects the central plaza or town square to all the neighborhoods? How much flow or interaction is there back and forth?

Legally Sociable

Pleasant Musings on Sociology, McMansions and Housing, Suburbs and Cities, and Miscellaneous Errata.

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