The Twitter Boycott Isn't Effective. We Need More Than 'Intent' to Support Women

Reach out to users who exist outside of your tribe

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On April 9, there is a boycott of Twitter.

According to Amnesty International, every 30 seconds, a woman is abused on Twitter. That’s horrifying, especially when one considers that there is a correlation between online behavior and what people do IRL. This has got to change, and certainly Twitter should step up and do something.  

Guess what? They’re not—hence the boycott. Heidi Moore’s Twitter feed suggested that a community boycott of Twitter by women users (and allies) would impact Twitter’s revenue model and inspire them to take action.  

The cause is righteous, but it’s clear this boycott will have zero impact on Twitter’s bottom line.  

First, Twitter has 187 million “monetizable daily users.” For a one-day boycott to have a chance of making any material impact on Twitter revenue would require a lot of participation.

Second, Twitter’s ad-revenue model is based not on users interacting with tweets, but merely on looking at them. So a boycott that asks users merely to withhold interactions (no likes, comments or shares) instead of actually staying off the platform isn’t so much a meaningful boycott as it is a performance.  

Things need to change. And a user boycott isn’t the way to achieve it. Claiming that the intent of the boycott is to hurt Twitter’s income is either naive or disingenuous.  

Given that the people pushing the boycott are blue-checked Twitter users with large followings (which skew to the media sector), it will get attention. Shining a light on this statistic may cause reporters to ask Twitter why they aren’t making their platform safer, which would generate continued agitation on the platform or inspire conversations with the brands that advertise on Twitter. This much is surely a win and an absolute benefit of agitating from within the media tribe. 

Which brings me to human behavior online. When we are online, we signal who we are: This is what I like. These are the things I believe. This is the tribe I’m in. We build and amplify and communicate in our tribe. While we know that the wider world of the social platform is large, we exist in the world of our tribe. The rest of the platform fades from view and awareness.  

Other tribes that populate the platform are no more aware of your tribe than you are of theirs. Which is why if you really want to create a boycott of users on a social platform, you need to actively reach out to those users who exist outside of your tribe. You need to reach out to the influencers in the communities you aren’t a part of. Given the number of women tweeting from marginalized communities, academic communities and loads of other communities, this doesn’t seem to have been done. Successful boycotts take organization and sustained effort. (Oh, and it also helps if the person promoting the boycott actually participates.)