Where should libraries go if Twitter becomes a wasteland?

Elon Musk has bought Twitter, he’s all but guaranteed to make terrible decisions about how to run it, and high-profile users are already leaving the platform due to the already-significant increase in hate-speech and misinformation. Of course this has wider implications for the world at large, but where does it leave libraries seeking to connect with users on the platform? Should we stay, or find a new home?

tl;dr - in a way it doesn’t matter what we want to do, we have to follow the lead of our communites. If they stay put then so should we; if they fragment then it becomes a lot more complicated.

Should we simply leave Twitter on principle?

A quick disclaimer is that I’m focusing on organisational accounts here. When it comes to us as individuals, there’s certainly an argument that we should be getting out - but this post is about libraries, not librarians.

Ultimately, my view is that libraries leaving Twitter on principle is self-defeating and too selective. Facebook is so incredibly problematic and has been for at least a decade, so if we’re leaving Twitter we should probably be leaving FB, right? And they own Instagram so we should leave that too. Which means we’re left with TikTok, which is hardly a bed of ethical roses and is especially problematic around data.

So do we leave all of them on principle? You could certainly make a case for it - but I don’t think most of us will because it would destroy our ability to interact with our communities. So if the answer is ‘no we’re not leaving all of them,’ then leaving just Twitter seems like a misstep: if you’ll forgive the extended metaphor, it’s like cutting off your unethical nose to spite your face, when the cheeks, eyes, chin and mouth are equally guilty.

What are the alternatives? Is Mastodon an option?

There are a few alternatives to Twitter and sadly I’m yet to see any of them as a truly workable solution. The one currently garnering most attention due to a record number of downloads and new members is Mastodon, which is very Twitter-like indeed. Visually and functionally it’s very similar to Twitter but the problem is, we’re not REALLY on Twitter because of the functionality; we’re there because our communities are.

Unlike Twitter’s single giant network, Mastodon is spread across several different servers with different subgroups. There are regional spaces, queer-friendly spaces, climate-activist spaces - and they all stress they welcome everyone (e.g. you don’t have to be from New Zealand to join the mastadon.nz space). The issue with this diffuse approach is no one group is especially big: so there are 5,000 people on the Australian community server at the the time of writing, versus 3.7 million Australians on Twitter. You can interact with people on different servers, but the way it’s set up we could put an enormous effort into Mastadon but not influence enough people in any one place to see any tangible rewards. However I’ve set up an account for myself @nedpotter@mas.to get to know the platform in case it becomes a viable option for the library later.

The same goes for Discord, another platform often cited as a Twitter alternative in recent days - it focuses on several smaller communities, rather than one massive one. This makes it all but impossible to use efficiently as a library.

As things stand, I don’t see a viable alternative to Twitter. That may change, and it will vary according to sector - so for example if a LOAD of health professionals join Mastodon, it could become a useful platform for Health Libraries to have a presence on. But right now, it isn’t.

If we’re staying, what should we do differently?

One of the key things you can do if you haven’t already is mute more. Go to Settings and Support > Settings and privacy > Privacy and Safety > Mute and block and finally Muted notifications. On the resulting screen you can mute default-profile-pic accounts, or unconfirmed accounts, meaning you’ll be less exposed to mass-produced trolling or bots.

Ticking a few of these will probably help

You can of course mute individual words and block accounts too, or even Lock your account - from a comms point of view though that’s a pretty drastic step to take for an organisational account.

One other thing to note is don’t conduct any kind of sensitive conversation via DMs. You can’t trust Twitter with your data, so don’t DM your users and ask for anything you or they wouldn’t want to Twitter to know - just DM them and tell them you’ll be in touch via email instead…

[Hey while you’re in Settings, why not also take the opportunity to revoke access to third-party apps that don’t need access anymore. It’s good practice to do this on a regular basis anyway. And if you’ve got the patience for it, check out this guide for getting rid of a lot really annoying things about the way your Twitter timeline currently works - no more suggested posts, woohoo!]

Should libraries pay $20 a month for the blue tick?

Hell no.

So what happens next?

The slightly frustrating truth is our next steps as organisations has to be: wait. We have to wait and see what our communities do, and be guided by them. If they move en masse, we can move with them. If they don’t, we should probably stay where we are.

In the meantime it’s worth considering things by sector.

• If you’re a law library, pharma library, or other special library, you can potentially use LinkedIn to connect with almost every relevant person in your potential audience, and ditch Twitter if you truly wish to

• If you’re a school library you can definitely get by without Twitter if you choose to

• If you’re a Health Library or an Academic Library keep an eye on the conversations your audience are having on where they might go - Mastadon may become an option worth investigating in time, you never know

• If you’re a public library… I just can’t see any sort of alternative on the horizon for now. At least Facebook is the really key platform in that sector!

If anyone else has advice, guidance, or thoughts on what you might do with your library’s social media presences, let me know in a comment below. Good luck out there, everyone.

Should librarians be travelling to the United States?

There’s been plenty of debate in the academic community over whether or not people should boycott the US under the current administration. The Guardian has a piece on it, Inside Higher Ed has a longer piece on it – American Libraries Magazine references the academic boycott but adds nothing about librarians doing the same thing. I’ve not seen much on this topic from an information-professional point of view. Maybe that’s just because we don’t travel around as much as academics – but seeing as the current US Government will, if there’s no kind of intervention in the meantime, probably be in charge for at least 8 years (Trump is tweeting about ‘voter fraud’ not because any part of him believes it’s an issue, but because it needs to be seen as an issue to justify what he does next – and what he does next will inevitably make it harder to get rid of him, via voting reforms) then it’s bound to come up for a bunch of librarians at some point.

I had accepted an invitation to give a keynote at a library conference in the US this year. It was arranged a long time ago, before Trump was voted in. Since his first week in office I’ve been agonising over what to do about this. I really want to go and do the talk. I’ve found a way to do the talk without breaking my ‘no more than 2 nights away from the kids’ rule. I know some info pros have done so many keynotes that they no longer get worked up about them, but I’ve done three keynotes in my life and still find it incredibly exciting; it was a huge honour to be asked. I’ve worked with the organistion running the conference and I love working with them, have loved interacting with their members. And when a country is under increasingly fascist rule from a President the majority didn’t vote for, you don’t want to turn your back and leave them isolated – you want to stand with them and support them. I wanted to go and talk with a group of librarians who, in all probability, feel exactly the same way about the current political happenings as I do.

However. Trump’s presidency is, in my view, the worst thing to happen to the world in my lifetime. I am so sick of looking at groups of extraordinarily wealthy middle-aged white men sitting around celebrating signing away the rights, prospects, livelihood, health and future of anyone who isn't essentially just like them. Pretty much everything the current administration has done since taking over is abhorrent. So to visit the country for work would seem like a tacit acceptance or legitimising of the regime. Somewhat analogous to visiting South Africa under apartheid. And in all honesty, I’ve been worried about getting in. Applying for a visa is complicated enough, but I’ve now read countless reports of people either getting turned away or interrogated at length, having their phones confiscated, and so on, including an author who was entering on the exact visa I’d be coming in on, to do more or less the exact same thing I’d be doing. So all in all, I felt conflicted.

I asked a handful of people I really respect, both inside and outside librarianship, what they’d do. They pretty much all said I should go (except for two people, one of whom, Myron, wrote this piece about it). There are lots of compelling arguments for going, not least standing with the librarians in the US. Going into Trump’s domain and speaking out against him from within. Plus the thing that came up time and again was: nothing good comes from NOT going.

The Guardian piece linked above puts it like this: “The crucial question to be answered is: what would such an action achieve?” The thing is, I don’t agree that this IS the crucial question. The crucial question is, is it the right thing to do? I'm usually quite pragmatic but it’s not JUST about cause and effect. Do the right thing because it’s right, not because of the impact it may have. And for me, the crucial aspect of the crucial question is really this: should I as a white non-Muslim man use the accidental privilege of being born in the right place to visit a country that others can’t get in to? And the answer is, no I should not. I cannot. Were it not for the travel ban I think I’d be persuaded by the arguments for going, but as it is, in the same way I wouldn’t avail myself of a business or eatery that wouldn’t serve others based on their skin colour or religion, neither can I enter a country others can’t.

Laura Woods wrote a great piece comparing US conferences with UK conferences, which chimed with a lot of my experiences. At the end she says “I would not judge a fellow professional for deciding to travel to the US” and that’s how I feel too, but I can’t quite get to the bottom of why I wouldn’t judge someone… I know that if people have to go for work – as in, they’re expected to go by their employer, rather than my situation where I’d be going in my own time – then it’s totally understandable to still go. And I know US Conferences are, as Laura details in the post, basically amazing, and hugely enriching experiences. I'd hate for new professionals to miss out on the amazing ECCA award from the SLA that I benefitted from back in 2011.

So, I don't feel like I have the answers here. I know there's a line for me personally in my particular circumstances, and the current US administration have put me way past that line. But I don't feel it's all so clear-cut as to be able to declare 'none of us should be travelling to the US', by any means. I hope that at the very least, every info pro with an opportunity to visit the US has the conversation with themselves over what to do, and I hope they find it easier to find the right answer than I did… And if, like I did, you find yourself wrestling with the ridiculousness of reducing a global catastrophe to your own moral dilemmas around travel, don’t be too hard on yourself – we all have to deal with these things as they impact on us, whilst acknowledging that of course they impact on millions of others to a far greater extent.