A few years ago, the historic arrest of a former US president — especially one as polarizing and bombastic as Donald Trump — would have been a moment for Twitter. The platform is known as the first place people go to find and comment on breaking news with witty commentary and unfiltered reactions.
But on Tuesday, the reaction to Trump’s accusation on the social media platform was a bit of a dream.
“When Trump got Covid in October 2020, people were glued to Twitter and clinging to every moment and the schadenfreude was off the charts,” writer and activist Chip Goines said in a text. Now, Goines said, the reaction was “disappointing” and “muted.”
There were several factors at play. For one thing, people care less about Trump than they did when he was president, and the arrest was visually dull and low on drama. Also, Trump himself wasn’t tweeting. But there’s no denying that Twitter as an app has lost some of its magic as the most happening place to be during a major breaking news moment, and that Trump has lost his luster as the de facto king of the networks social media, Twitter being its main platform. of choice
Data from media intelligence firm Zignal Labs shows how discussion of Trump’s arrest paled in comparison to other major news cycles involving the former president. In the 24 hours after each event, people tweeted about Trump nearly twice as much when he had Covid in 2020, and three and a half times as much after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to Zignal Labs.
Tuesday evening, as was Trump addressing his arrest in a speech at Mar-a-Lago, the event didn’t even make it to the top three US Twitter hashtags. (They were about the movie Barbie, rapper Roddy Rich, and Super Mario.) Only one of the 10 most popular hashtags in the U.S. was even related to Trump’s arrest, and it wasn’t about Trump but a comment from the CNN commentator. From Jones made when talking about the arrest of the former president.
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One of the main reasons why Twitter isn’t happening as much as it would have been in the past: It’s become harder to find breaking news because of the changes made to Twitter under its new owner, Elon Musk. Some writers have stopped using the platform as much or left entirely because of Musk’s openly hostile policy toward the media, and the app’s design no longer distinguishes between verified journalists and people paying for a check mark In addition, Musk fired the Twitter curation team that was responsible for releasing valuable information during fast-paced moments like Trump’s arrest.
All of this shows how it has become much harder to find and share reputable news in the five months since Musk took over Twitter.
The decrease in the presence of journalists on the platform has a lot to do with it. Musk has personally pushed them out by doing things like suspending prominent journalists and relaxing them anti-harassment rules which can often be addressed to members of the media. Some journalists have left the platform entirely, and others are “quietly leaving” by staying on Twitter but tweeting much less frequently. That means less banter from Twitter users who have historically contributed heavily to big news moments like these.
For those who still spend a lot of time on Twitter trying to engage with the news, it can be harder to separate the signal from the noise. This is by design.
Many users have complained that Twitter’s For You tab, which is now the app’s default home page, shows less relevant content than before. Last week, platform reported that Twitter is also manually boosting the accounts of certain VIP users, including Ben Shapiro, LeBron James and Musk himself. In the future, this problem could get even worse as Twitter only plans to recommend paid accounts in the For You tab.
“In the past, during breaking news moments, there was much more of a ‘Random wins the Internet’ atmosphere where you saw stuff from people you don’t follow,” wrote Jason Goldman, Twitter’s vice president of product from 2007 to 2010. .in a text. “That’s always been the value of Twitter in live events is its ability to get things from the edges. I haven’t seen much from the edges.”
Another big change that makes it harder to follow the news on Twitter: There’s no longer a hand-picked cure in the trends tab where you can go to find popular hashtags about current events or topics. That’s what Twitter is about curation team did. They would sift through the most interesting tweets on a given topic, verify that they were accurate, and summarize the most interesting ones. But shortly after taking over, Musk eliminated that team. The trending tab is still there, but it’s a spin-off of its old self, which is mostly based on automated ranking that is often not that good.
Some advanced users are working around the design flaws by selecting their own detailed lists of accounts to follow and viewing only those accounts. But the changes are turning off some of Twitter’s most avid users, who used to thrive on the platform’s efficiency in showcasing interesting tweets and conversations.
“Twitter as a breaking news platform for news junkies like me is terribly broken right now,” Goines said.
And then there’s the problem of Trump’s lack of Twitter presence. Despite regaining the power to tweet in late November when Musk lifted the suspension, Trump, in an unusual sign of self-restraint, has yet to take a look at the platform.
Part of that could be because Trump has an exclusivity contract that requires him to post on social media on his own social media app, Truth Social, six hours before posting elsewhere. But there’s a big loophole in that deal: Trump can post anything he wants related to “political messaging” or fundraising, according to SEC filings. So it’s a bit of a mystery why Trump isn’t tweeting up a storm during this huge moment of personal and legal crisis.
In any case, without Trump tweeting on the platform, the conversation about him on Twitter dies down. As we previously reported, much of this conversation involves other users reacting to their tweets. Trump’s tweets irritated his base and acted as a setback for his critics. Without him to instigate, Twitter is much quieter.
Inevitably, it’s worth noting that beyond the recent Twitter woes and Trump’s relative absence, the former president’s arrest didn’t spark much chatter on Twitter because people aren’t all that excited about Trump anymore.
In real life, the protests in support of Trump were muted: According to some reports, members of the media outnumbered actual supporters outside his New York court appearance on Tuesday. Many of Trump’s most fervent supporters have also toned down their rhetoric after seeing the consequences of those who took it too far with January 6. according to some researchers of extremism.
The arrest was also not as visually dramatic as people imagined it might be. It was nothing like the fake AI images hallucinating visions of Trump in handcuffs or running from police. Instead, Trump struck a deal with authorities to have a relatively civilized detention: surrender, proceedings behind closed doors and no mugshots.
Some political analysts said the lack of conversation is because the charges themselves were not as substantive as some had hoped.
“From what I’ve seen on Twitter, there’s been very little build-up from the left that seems to indicate skepticism about the charges,” Eric Wilson, a political technologist who has worked with Republican campaigns, said in an email Tuesday. “I think if we had learned something new today, it would have fueled the conversation.”
The boring conversations about Trump’s arrest weren’t limited to Twitter. Even on CNN, people made fun of the fact that so little was said that the anchors resorted to commenting on the existence of “many doors” in court.
So you could argue that part of the reason Twitter wasn’t dramatic on Tuesday was that the event itself wasn’t quite the show people were expecting.
But in the glory days of Twitter, it didn’t take long to stir up a firestorm of Trump chatter (remember his tweet “covfefe”?).
Now, even a historic and unprecedented event like a former US president being indicted on multiple felony charges prompted only a slight flurry of activity on Twitter, rather than the roar of comments you might expect. It certainly seems like a sign of significant decline, both in Twitter’s relevance and that of the former reality TV host who was the main character of the app for so many years.
A version of this story was first published in the tech newsletter Vox. Register here so you don’t miss the next one!
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