The follow-but-mute antipattern
By @edent
· Social Media twitter · 8 comments · 350 words · read ~354 times.
I received a rather distraught DM from a Twitter friend last week. They were upset that I was following an account which did nothing but spew out racist bile all day long. Did this mean that I endorsed their hateful views.
I was confused. I didn't recognise the specific account, and didn't recall seeing any of their tweets - but I was following them. How? Why? Was it a hack? I did a little digging, and finally it twigged...
The account belonged to someone I met at an industry event several years ago. In a fit of mutual back-slapping, we'd followed each other on Twitter. It quickly became apparent that he only ever tweeted about his beloved football team. I felt a bit rude unfollowing him so quickly, so I muted him. I do this occasionally - it is polite to follow some people, but that doesn't mean I have to read whatever nonsense they say.
Follow-But-Mute.
Once I realised what had happened, I quickly blocked the prick. But it got me thinking about some of my own behaviour on social media.
There are signals we send just by virtue of existing in public. I hit like on my friends' videos - but I don't always watch them to the end. A mate releases a podcast, so they get retweeted even if I don't actually listen to them. I follow people out of politeness and immediately mute them. If I see someone I find distasteful has followed me, I kick them. A swift block-and-unblock means they stop following me, but don't get notified.
But now I'm wondering if this is all a bit of an antipattern. Do I really need to signal to the world who I follow and who follows me? Would social media be calmer if people weren't chasing for interaction numbers?
Or am I being paranoid? Are people really scouring the history of my favourites to use against me?
This is the peril of the panopticon.
I've definitely done this. Follow people out of politeness then end up muting.
But... I follow over 5k people. The algo means I really only see a tiny fraction of those in my feed. Are you seriously expecting me to know what every one is saying and unfollow if problematic?
I don't go around looking at people's following lists, but if I had an interaction with a new person and saw "followed by edent and 20 others" in their profile I'd probably treat them slightly differently to "not followed by anyone you know"
I think following lists should be private for this reason tbh.
The only time I look at who someone is being followed by is when they are a well known bigot such as JKRowling.
If I see a mutual supporting them I will assume they either share their beliefs or at least find them acceptable.
IMO follows should be hidden.
@edent we used to call this “Kreis-Hygiene” / “Circle-Hygiene” going back to G+ when we “circled” friends. It’s like teeth brushing but with followings. It has to be done on occasion. Especially over the last year 🙁 This is not only to sort out far right voters or Covid deniers. Often it’s also to find out that a dear account went silent and moved on and the note about it was simply missed. Nobody re-reads yesterdays news.
Yeah, that's unhealthy. Without curation, quality suffers, even to the detriment of your own output with blind RTs.
I don't see how following someone is the same as endorsing them. I follow lots of people I disagree with. It doesn't mean that I'm signaling to the world that I agree or endorse their views. It's healthy to expose yourself to differing viewpoints.