Greetings fellow denizens of Twitter,
I’m Astra Taylor, a filmmaker, musician, activist, and writer. A few years ago I wrote a book called The People’s Platform, which looks at how the internet’s dominant, advertiser-driven business model concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few at the expense of the rest of us. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has referred to the company as “the people’s news network”; sadly, that’s not really the case given its conventional corporate structure, but it could be true.
Two weeks from today, Twitter shareholders will vote on whether the company should study making it a real people’s platform. Between now and then, we need to make a lot of noise and show them that the people who make Twitter valuable want it to be run another way.
This week, the hashtag is #WeAreTwitter. We’re going to stir up questions including:
- What future for Twitter would we like to build?
- How would we deal with spam and abuse?
- Who should Twitter serve, advertisers or users?
- How might we attract responsible revenue to support our platform?
Help get #WeAreTwitter trending by sharing your vision in a tweet!
Next week, the hashtag will be #BuyTwitter. We’re going to take our righteous noise to the shareholders themselves.
See you on Twitter,
@astradisastra
P.S., if you haven’t yet, explore the beautiful new website at buytwitter.org, and read the shareholder proposal there, too!