I'm going back to MySpace: Today So Far

KUOW is following NPR's lead and is ditching Twitter after its latest move to mislabel the public radio network.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for April 13, 2023.

On Monday, I noted that NPR was recently tagged as "state-affiliated media" and also "government-funded media" on Twitter. These labels spurred quite a controversy. On Wednesday, NPR quit Twitter. As of last night, so has KUOW.

This is from KUOW’s President and CEO Caryn G. Mathes.

“We believe Twitter’s false, misleading and inconsistent application of labels undermines the platform’s credibility. We are worried that our continued engagement on this platform will erode public trust. So, we’re following NPR’s lead. As of today, KUOW has made the decision to indefinitely pause activity on Twitter.

KUOW’s mission is to create and serve a more informed public. Historically, Twitter has been an important tool for real-time information dissemination — a way to get trusted news out to our local community in real-time. However, the recent decision-making at Twitter has made it clear that an active presence on the platform no longer supports our mission.”

Read KUOW's full statement here.

NPR's Twitter page will remain up, it just won't use it.

This situation offers a moment for us all to reflect on our social media lives, the news we consume, and how it all interacts.

A quick refresher on the NPR-Twitter drama

After Twitter initially labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media," a tag used for propaganda news organizations run by countries like China or Russia, NPR pushed back. A dialogue was opened between Twitter’s owner Elon Musk and NPR officials. You could tell NPR was irate about the whole situation because it chose to use this photo of Musk in its reporting. Musk asked how NPR was run and where it got funding. NPR pointed out that it is a non-profit. Less than 1% of its funding comes from one agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Less than 1%. Twitter responded by relabeling NPR as "government-funded media." By Twitter’s logic, any company that has ever received a grant, subsidy, or perhaps even a tax break could be labelled as “government funded.”

Also, under this logic, Elon Musk and his companies should carry the same label. Tesla has received billions in federal and state subsidies in recent years.

When it appeared that Tesla would hit a limit on federal subsidies in 2017, California passed legislation to offer its own subsidy for EV manufacturers, to Tesla's delight. As Business Insider has reported, Musk’s SolarCity company has received nearly $498 million in government grants. The state of New York also put up $750 million to help build a plant for SolarCity in Buffalo. The state of Nevada has been giving Tesla $1.3 billion in tax breaks. Texas gave SpaceX $15 million in economic development subsidies. The Department of Energy once loaned Tesla $465 million. And earlier this year, the Biden administration worked out a $7.5 billion subsidy aimed at Tesla’s network of charging stations.

That’s just a quick roundup. There are plenty more subsidies, loans, tax credits, and other funding Musk’s companies have received over the years. Add up that incomplete list and you get more than $10 billion in government money handed over to Musk. NPR’s budget this year is $300 million (and frankly, it’s facing massive budget gaps and layoffs).

To be fair, Congress started NPR in 1970 in a move to promote public radio in the USA. Much of this was done via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is run by the federal government. Perhaps some of the confusion is rooted in this history. Since then, however, NPR has evolved, which goes back to the fact it is a nonprofit supported mostly by corporate underwriting and memberships. It also receives fees from member stations (KUOW, KNKX, KEXP, etc.), which are largely supported by donations, and to a smaller extent, funding from various government programs and grants.

The label “government funded” is misleading. It gives the impression that NPR pays the bills entirely with money handed down from the government. This is akin to Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that is operated under the Department of Defense. Or Voice of America, a news service that is funded by the federal government. Today, VOA has a “government funded” tag on Twitter; Stars and Stripes does not. The label also gives the impression that any president or Congress member can call up NPR to tweak a headline, or order them to fix the hyphen for a compound modifier in a lead story on NPR's website. That doesn’t happen. Even this newsletter, a product of a public radio station, has to rely on Bill Radke and a handful of readers (you know who you are) to point out all my typos.

A social media lesson

We all owe Tom an apology. You remember Tom, that guy from MySpace. Years ago, MySpace was the major player in social media. Facebook and Twitter changed that. Tom, I’m sorry. MySpace offered a basic, to-the-point social media option, and I was tempted by the enticing, sensational, dopamine-inducing clicks that Facebook and Twitter were offering. I stayed there despite all the bullying and “do your research” comments that flew past my feed. You were good to me, MySpace. Take me back.

I'm personally still on Twitter, however, this week, I opened a new MySpace page. I’m going back, despite the fact I have no idea how it works now. It still lets me feature a favorite song on my cover page, but I admit that I have no clue what modern MySpace is supposed to be. I’m hoping that this confusion will help keep the ills of other social media at bay. Even better, for those like me, seeking a basic, non-drama social media, I am recommending spacehey, which I also signed up for this week — all the MySpace fun as it was presented in 2005, before the rise of social clickbait. Perhaps by going back to some basics, we can learn to cultivate honorable, responsible news, and dialogue, without government-funded industry leaders hijacking our attention.

Credibility, the news, and you

Twitter's misleading labels not only harm the credibility of news organizations, it harms the credibility of Twitter, or whatever the version of “credibility” is in Twitterland. Let's be honest. Twitter seems to produce a couple of perspectives. You either feel it’s a tool for dialogue and the exchange of ideas, or it’s the intellectual equivalent of kindergartners knocking over each other’s toy blocks and then crying over who did it first.

Given those perspectives, you have to scratch your head and wonder if Musk is intentionally crashing Twitter into the ground. Its value has dramatically declined ever since he took over. Musk has banned journalists (temporarily) from Twitter. And Twitter has shut down any tweets with links to Substack (which it views as a competitor). Not so much the free speech vibe Musk has touted in the past. Twitter was never perfect, but these moves are like taking your slightly dented car that makes an annoying squealing sound to Musk's Demolition Yard.

Newspapers, radio, and even TV news have always had to practice some level of moderation and disclosure in an effort to provide the most pertinent, transparent information. Yes, there have been those who have abused this power, and yes, things happened, like when NBC hired J. Fred Muggs, a chimpanzee, to host the Today Show. But the general idea among those who took the job seriously was to responsibly deliver information you needed. Social media has no such motivation or responsibility. The goal isn’t to inform, it’s to capture your attention and hold it. It will favor the post that gets the most engagement, and if that doesn’t do the trick, perhaps something angry, perhaps something curious, perhaps something sad, and if none of that works, perhaps a classic clip of J. Fred Muggs.

Don't expect social media companies to adopt responsible moderation policies any time soon, whether or not they are run by government-funded CEOs. Maybe Twitter will change course in the future, in which case we can have another conversation. In the meantime, don't expect any of us to stop using social media. It's a part of our daily lives from here on out. So for now, it's best that we all take up this responsibility, guard our own attention, and practice smart clicking. I'll see you on MySpace.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

RadioActive’s Micah Riggio lives with Abdul Nasir, and has this story of how his family hosts refugees like Abdul as they begin new lives in Seattle. (Micah Riggio / KUOW RadioActive)

DID YOU KNOW?

The fish swimming in the deepest depths of the ocean (that we know about) is an unknown species of snailfish. Japanese scientists recently filmed the fish swimming more than 27,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench. Researchers have been studying these deep-diving fish for about a decade.

The previous record for a fish found at the deepest depth was also a snailfish. That fish was seen 26,831 feet down in the Mariana Trench in 2017. There are hundreds of species of snailfish in the sea. They all look a bit different than other fish. Snailfish don't have scales. Instead, they have a sort of gelatinous skin, and appear more like a tadpole.

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