X: his mark

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2023 (790 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For me, X no longer marks the spot. I had gotten used to the bluebird of Twitterness. It was a symbol that good things could still be said on a platform recently flooded with nastiness after its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, removed its content rules and sacked the gatekeepers.

I hadn’t been paying much attention to Musk’s gutting of Twitter, until one day — thanks to an “update” — the blue bird was replaced by a black X.

Ironies abound. Illiterates since writing began have used an X, as the customary symbol to replace the signature they can’t write on legal documents. (Peter Denton, his mark: X)

While initial character limits meant Twitter was more inclined to pithy statements than extended commentary — a sort of intellectual haiku — writing in threads allowed more content. It was public discourse on a global scale, easy to access and with the potential to reach a wide audience.

Yet a global audience of people thinking (and writing) on important issues of the day is inherently threatening to authoritarian governments and billionaires alike. Independent thinking and writing go hand in hand; allow the transition to some technology that enables ideas to be spread quickly and widely, and that threat multiplies exponentially.

Scholars have often reflected on how the invention of printing from movable type in the 15^th century drove the Renaissance and the Reformation, establishing the foundations of early modern European thought, culture, and what we now recognize as science.

But that thinking required words, written words that could be multiplied in number, time and distance from their point of origin. This is the stuff of revolution: without the words, you can’t think the thoughts. But if you can’t also spread the word, then the original thoughts wither and die — and so does the revolution.

There were a number of times, since Twitter launched in 2006, when it fed the revolution. Harder (if not impossible) to block than other social media like Facebook, Twitter (and its Chinese microblog counterpart, Weibo) enabled communication outside official channels.

I watched events unfold on the streets of Arab Spring, witnessed atrocities in Sudan, joined with #BlackLivesMatter protesters in the U.S. — everywhere there was a cellphone camera, unedited video could be shared with the world outside.

But video literacy is at least as dangerous as textual literacy. Once people can see for themselves what is going on, they are given the choice to think for themselves, too, rather than being forced to accept the official story because that is all they can get.

So Musk bought Twitter — not to enhance his fortunes, but to tank the platform. No doubt oligarchs and dictators the world over breathed a sigh of relief, as Twitter imploded. I haven’t cancelled out, yet, though my leaving will not change anything. I have few followers, post only a few tweets, and follow only a few accounts myself — a Twitter minimalist.

But I listen, and watch, and learn — or at least I used to. When the garbage dumped by the cyber minions of tyranny (religious, racial, economic, or political) outweighs whatever positive commentary is left, I too will depart for other spaces, too, leaving “X” to make my mark elsewhere.

As I mourned the bluebird of Twitterness, however, another threat to thinking and freedom lurched onto my screen. I had my first encounters with Chat GPT (or an AI buddy) in student assignments.

It was not hard to spot. When someone with appalling written English suddenly improves to flowing sentences and big words, used correctly, it’s either AI-generated text or evidence of divine intervention.

It’s also hard — or impossible — to prove, past the reasonable doubt required in an allegation of academic misconduct. Now, I always put some quirky element in assignments, to make it harder to buy a ready-made answer, so I could award poor marks just for not following instructions.

It made me think, however. When students are trained to value high marks over what they learn, anything goes. And, when low marks and critical commentary are viewed as personal attacks to begin with, accusations of plagiarism are risky business.

So, I moralize about how they are cheating themselves by not doing their own work — and some will listen, because it is true. For the rest, I am going to take a lesson from those computerized systems, when I wonder if the author was electronic:

They will have to prove “I am not a robot” by finding some way to convince me they wrote the assignment.

Otherwise, going forward, X now marks the bot.

Peter Denton is an activist, writer and scholar.