[milkwurm]

I have too much history on here so I am making a new tumblr to interact w new friends!!!! It’s bugs-having-fun which is my handle (albeit with _ not -) on IG and twitter : ) this is all in case twitter truly goes down for the count 

[milkwurm]

wait jk I don’t know how to use tumblr anymore idk how to follow people back cause it’s just an alt… let’s see… 

[milkwurm]

>:) I figured it out... bugs-having-fun it is 

[milkwurm]

I have too much history on here so I am making a new tumblr to interact w new friends!!!! It’s bugs-having-fun which is my handle (albeit with _ not -) on IG and twitter : ) this is all in case twitter truly goes down for the count 

[milkwurm]

wait jk I don’t know how to use tumblr anymore idk how to follow people back cause it’s just an alt... let’s see... 

[milkwurm]

I have too much history on here so I am making a new tumblr to interact w new friends!!!! It’s bugs-having-fun which is my handle (albeit with _ not -) on IG and twitter : ) this is all in case twitter truly goes down for the count 

[frogus-deactivated20231111]

the entire point of life is to be silly, kind, and really weird btw.

[jareckiworld]

Anna Trochim — Hot Summer  (oil on canvas, 2020)

[sandmandaddy69]

Andrej Dugin

[preciousweb]

[warriormale]

When fighter spar, they bond. 

Train and fight!

WarriorMale

[milkwurm]

Therapist forgot the name of the guy I’ve been casually seeing since July because he hasn’t been giving me any problems 

[milkwurm]

What’s UP girls gays and theys 

[baklavalovr]

HOOKED RUG WITH HEARTS AND TWO CATS, 1940-50 / Rare Antique American Flags

[happyheidi]

Black cats in paintings 🐈‍⬛ x

by eva fialka, vanessa stockard alisapaints

[stickyfrogs]

An Exceptionally Brave Emerald-Green Pancake has had a Lovely Time on the Hand today!

[nevver]

Look through any window, Alexander Massouras

[robxhelm]

[lucky-number-8]

A small selection of World of Wearable Arts entries (1986 - 1997). An annual competition held in Aotearoa (New Zealand), showcasing explorations in textile art, crafts and kitsch experimentalism.

[powerburial]

[milkwurm]

So true

[milkwurm]

Why putting people’s tweets in your news articles is weird

Yesterday, The Verge wrote an article that centered around tweets my manager at work made about Worldle. The tweets were public, my manager is a straight white man with just over 1,000 followers. I think there are two separate things going on here: 1. The Verge often does really lazy reporting that is basically just them writing articles about other news articles with minimal additional reporting, which is kind of what happened here, but the source material was a tweet thread; and, 2. putting people’s tweets in your news articles is weird, especially if you don’t give them a heads up or ask for their permission. I’m really only going to discuss 2 because 1 is more about The Verge and like Who Owns Knowledge which I don’t really care about and am not equipped to elaborate on. 

Here are some reasons why it is weird:

The internet conflates the normative definition of public with the practical definition of public; this means certain people (mostly people who don’t use social media for, well, social interactions) are convinced that the mere public accessibility of a tweet or post means there is no expectation of privacy at all, that if you post from a public account you should be ready for the entire world to see that post. However, this is completely at odds with how most people who use the internet for social reasons understand the practical definition of public: technically they are “in public” when they write things, but they can generally predict their audience based on who follows them and their experience of how their posts propagate the platform. A lot of people go by pseudonyms online because of this understanding, which is to say, people are not stupid and they understand that technically their public tweets could reach a much wider audience, but they also want the benefit of reaching new people who would make good friends. I also personally don’t think people should have to close themselves off to meeting new people just because there are freaks or journalists trawling twitter looking for newsworthy ideas. 

The other, more material part of this public-but-for-a-defined-audience concept, is that many people online are part of enclaves — “public” spaces that only accept or are coherent to certain groups, e.g. Black Twitter, communist trans cat girl twitter, my DC-based friend group twitter, etc. Just because these enclaves are technically public does not mean they are for the consumption of people outside the groups they are for, and using these posts for news articles when you are not in the enclave is, in my opinion, exploitative to some degree. It’s exploitative because you are benefitting from essentially eavesdropping on people’s conversations in a way that you could not in-person. It’s one thing to simply observe, and observation is not necessarily even an active process considering how platforms push people’s content onto the feeds of people who don’t follow them. But I think the way that platforms technically work has made a lot of people feel entitled to other people’s lives in a way that would never happen in in-person interactions. If you were at the mall and saw a bunch of teen mall goths hanging out and making a bit of a scene, you might glance and unintentionally overhear their conversation, and you’d probably have a chance to see their fashion. But I think we can all agree it would be objectively weird to stop in front of them and watch them, and honestly maybe even weirder to continue watching them from afar without reciprocal observation. 

The next part of why it is weird to quote people’s tweets is about knowledge, visibility, and consent. Because people have an audience in mind for their posts, they are likely to write for that audience. This is not a bad thing and honestly is the only reason social media is enjoyable. When a journalist embeds a tweet in an article, they are expanding the actual audience far beyond the author’s expected audience. And the author’s expected audience is important and should be respected, as I have just explained about enclaves. But maybe this is just nice in theory — why does it matter if a public tweet gets more public? The reason is because people who intentionally post in enclaves online are likely doing so because some part of their identity makes them particularly vulnerable to harassment. If a journalist quotes a tweet in a story, they are sending more people to that account. If that account is full of vulnerable information meant just for the person’s 100 followers, then that person has to deal with the issue of readjusting their understanding of their audience, and potentially experiencing targeted, scalable harassment. 

WHAT I AM ARGUING FOR is that journalists reach out to and get consent from the people whose tweets they want to use in a story. Some people, like my manager, will be excited about extra publicity! Other people will want you to simply screenshot their tweet and remove their username if you post it. And others may request that you don’t include their tweet or that you don’t write the story at all because it actually could be harmful for them if the information reaches a wider audience. Journalists may not like this because it slows them down — but guess what? I don’t think that is a good argument to rush a piece… as many people in organizing spaces will tell you, “go at the speed of trust.” I think this is important for journalists, who have a very important mission but also can absolutely be unethical in their practices in a way that causes material harm for their subjects. 

Some might say you can’t have your cake and eat it, too — that is, you can’t be in public online and not accept that you might attract people you don’t want to interact with. But if this were the case, you could make a strong argument in favor of agoraphobia. It’s also very victim-blaming, when in reality, it is not that hard to say, actually, it is not good when people act badly towards strangers. We don’t socially accept stalking in-person, and we also don’t want people to be afraid to go in public because they are afraid of harassment. And in fact, harassment is much easier and more scalable online. Some people can easily organize a harassment campaign, flood someone’s inbox with threats, etc. So why should we accept that certain people should just stay out of “public” spaces because other people can’t stop barging in to enclaves? You should be allowed to sit in a public park with your friends and have fun without someone recording you and posting it to their audience, some of whom them come up and start harassing you. And journalists should understand the ethical implications of enclave dynamics when they are putting together a story.     

The thing about all of this is that a lot of journalists ALREADY DO ASK FOR CONSENT TO USE POSTS. Haven’t you ever seen some random suburban mother’s post about some weird weather, and there is a local news station’s twitter account in the replies asking if they can use her photo of it? A lot of people are happy to give consent! But it should absolutely not be assumed, for the same reason people sign media/press releases if they’re interviewed in a public space. We already have so many structures in place for consent to be an expected part of interactions like this, that it is actually wild to me that so many journalists simply embed people’s tweets without notifying them. 

Then there is the question of how this differs from retweets / reblogs / etc. I think 1. it would actually be better if people stopped negatively retweeting shit and taking it out of its original enclave / context because that is what makes sites like twitter insufferable 2. there is something unique about tumblr’s post “riffability” so to speak, which is that I think it is generally constructive, but also done WITHIN ENCLAVES because that is how this website is structured. So maybe it is the act of removing a post from its enclave without consent that I have particular issue with, and news media incorporating tweets is basically guaranteed to do this, whereas retweets / reblogs is not guaranteed to do this.