And a lot of that shouting is helping to create a cesspool of bad thought on the website. Unless your feed is heavily curated, it will soon be full of all the worst ideas mankind has to offer. No wonder racists like it so fucking much.
But it can also be an invaluable source of information. When breaking news happens, it can be incredibly useful - any journo who needs to keep on top of the breaking stuff can find out what's going on, just minutes after it has happened, almost anywhere in the world
It's all about getting the right story from the people on the scene, and it's also used by emergency services to release the very latest information - overworked comms staff often direct inquiring journos to an official feed, telling them that's the first place any new developments will be revealed.
There are some large downsides to all this. For starters, any information from Twitter - even if it does come from a fairly official account - must still always be taken with a huge amount of salt. More than one news editor has been fooled by a photo that is too good to be true, like a shark in a shopping mall, and volcanic and earthquake damage can turn out to be from years ago.
Twitter also becomes almost totally useless when a truly huge world event happens, because the entire medium gets swamped with useless hot takes and snarky comments, and it can take forever to dig through it for the gold. And when things have moved on a little, Twitter's penchant towards throwing up things that happened eight or 20 hours ago means something can look like a new development, when it is actually well out of date.
But even if they have to be incredibly careful, journos can also get a lot out of this weird medium of communication. There is the obvious self-promotional element, where reporters can highlight things they have worked on, get instant feedback and get follow-ups from it all. (They can also be subjected to a shitshow of bullshit from the general public, particularly if it's a female reporter, who take way more shit from social media than their male counterparts, and the block function suddenly becomes your best friend.)
It can also be used to get things through, especially to online editors. Reporters at the scene are expected to do all sorts of stuff, including video and photos but now, they don't have to fuck about with FTP transfers or anything like that, they can just throw it up on their twitter feed, which will be followed back in the office.
Reporters still have to be careful what they put up on their feed, and even with all the 'tweets represent a personal view' disclaimers, one ill-thought out statement can literally end your whole fucking career.
The main purpose of Twitter appears to be giving millions the ability to say ‘I told you so’ in the most irritating way possible, and you've got to keep an eye out for the fucking fascists, but the platform can still be used to great advantage. At least until everybody moves onto the next thing.
- Ron Troupe
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