A Theory On how Twitter marginalizes "Black" Chatter
- Medvis Jackson
- Nov 30, 2015
- 3 min read
As an avid and enthusiastic listener of This Week in Start Ups (TWIST), I have twice heard the show’s host, Jason Calacanis offer up information that Twitter purposely determines which trending topics users see in order to, in part, offset the power of black Twitter.
While this practice may no longer be utilized, it stands as yet another short-sighted tactic that the platform is using to make the platform more engaging and attractive.
What exactly is Black Twitter?
Anyone who knows anything about social trends and popular communication should be aware of what “Black Twitter” is.
Wikipedia even discusses this community and segment of users: "Black Twitter is a cultural identity on the Twitter social network focused on issues of interest to the black community, particularly in the United States."
The fact that such a sub-community exists within Twitter is only reflective of the cultural dynamics of America and the historic need for Black communities to develop their own subversive language.
However, this trend of subversion on Twiter began to cause confusion for many users who were unfamiliar with hashtags like #byefelicia and #onfleek which began to trend due to their incredibly popular use.
Jason's Theory of Benign Marginalization
During a conversation with Angela Benton of the NewMe Accelerator (at 27 minutes), Jason Calacanis stated, "I was told that there was an issue inside of Twitter around the black hashtags because there were so many of them and they were so highly ranked."
"White people were like 'I don't understand this...I don't understand what all of these words mean'...I think white people are being 'protected' from black Twitter.”
The black hashtags Jason refers to are those like #byefelicia, #notonedime, #tweetlikedamedash and #chargedup which were trending amongst urban users on Twitter. Meanwhile, many non-black Twitter users were not privy to these hashtags and the conversation around them.
Angela Benton of the NewMe Accelerator discusses Twitters Hashtag Filtering Tactics on TWIST
Calacanis re-surfaced the unconfirmed idea of this practice when speaking with current Andreesen Horowitz analyst and former AgLocal cofounder, Naithan Jones, adding (at 1 hour 1 minute) ”it felt like segregation...like the white people can't understand what's going on and so we just won't show it to them."
While such a tactic may have simply been an innocent way of not alienating users deemed by Twitter to be the “mainstream” of their platform, it does seem a bit unproductive.
While "Mainstream" growth tanks, hashtags like #thanksgivingwithblackfamilies stay on fire (Graph Taken from Techcrunch.com)
Twitter, for years now, has had a growth problem which their "heart instead of a star" icon switch will not help to correct.
In fact, their problem is so bad that it is beginning to seem like less of a problem and more of a reality of the platform's tragic demise.
One would think that the platform would simply try to engage more of their core user demographic and understand their reasons for engagement. After all, black users are said to out index every other user group on Twitter by 12X, according to Naithan Jones in his talk with Jason.
Naithan Jones of Andreesen Horowitz posited that Black Twitter Engagement out performs all other activity in America by 12x. He was also presented with Calacanis' theory of marginalization.
Twitter Needs to Better Understand their High Volume Users
Instead of using a tactic that filters the content of their most active user base and marginalizes cultural expression on the platform, Twitter would benefit from repurposing the incentives of highly engaged users on the platform and present those same incentives to their more "mainstream" user.
The folks at corporate need to make the product fun and social again. In the same way that Adidas (with Run DMC) and Reebok (with G-Unit) breathed life into a dying brand, so too can Twitter.
However, to jumpstart the brand, Twitter must begin to see "Black Twitter" and their other high usage communities as assets and awesome case studies, not liabilities. They must increase and incentivize engagement, not marginalize it.
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Medvis Jackson is a web designer at Hindsite, curator at Kulchah and avid cricket fan. You can follow him @medvisjackson for his random thoughts.
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