The power we use and the power we give

There was an article posted recently that walked well-worn terrain, arguing for people not to abandon Twitter but, instead, to engage with it. There’s not much point in rehashing the details; the piece was explicitly meant to drive engagement for a new center-left publication (using that latter term in its new, expansive sense). It was, like so much else, a form of advertising.

Nor was it compelling. The central argument was that Twitter — which is no longer the Twitter of five or ten years ago both literally and figuratively — is an important element of the national conversation and that leaving it to the fringe-right and to trolls was ceding important terrain. But this idea that others could swoop in and collectively shift the conversation, beyond imposing an odd job requirement on all of us, misunderstands the nature of the change from Twitter to X. It is owned and directed by a far-right actor who bought it specifically to elevate and amplify right-wing messaging. You might as well argue that people should join the Republican Party in order to redirect it to less extreme terrain; that ship sailed a long time ago and you’re going to encounter some systemic obstacles that are beyond your persuasive powers.

In fact, it is useful and important to look at this question not through the lens of persuasion but the lens of power. Your engagement and your work, not unlike your vote, is a form of power, something you can choose to grant to others. Those others, particularly organizations and companies, accrue that power to use as they see fit.

The immediate question isn’t, say, where you can change zoning laws. It is, instead, building power, even if only incrementally.

Since I left The Washington Post, this question has guided my discussions with people interested in my writing for them. I’ve had numerous offers to write that I have (hopefully respectfully) declined. I’ve done so largely because I am trying to be conscientious about the prior question, to work with and for institutions that are directing their accrued power responsibly. (At the same time, I’m preserving my own power by not simply handing it out willy-nilly but publishing analysis and thoughts on my own website.)

With respect to a friend who works there, this is why I am not publishing on Substack. I’ve had a number of people ask why I don’t simply publish there, letting my pieces pop up in their inboxes and allowing me to potentially generate income. The central answer is that I don’t think Substack uses its power responsibly.

The company has done a good job creating tools that make it easy to publish. A number of well-regarded journalists use those tools and have built their personal brands by doing so. I certainly don’t begrudge them doing so. But they have done so while sharing that growth with Substack, a company that intentionally provides a voice to white nationalist and Nazi propaganda. They have transferred their power to a company that has used it to promote toxic rhetoric in the guise of “having a debate.”

For me, the issue goes beyond that. I spent more than a decade engaging on social media as a representative of The Post, explaining the news and presenting my perspective. I was there as Twitter collapsed into X (he offered with the affected world-weariness of a combat veteran) but even before that — even before Elon Musk’s accelerations — saw how toxicity poisoned efforts at discussion. There’s value to debate and conversation, of course, but that isn’t what’s fostered on Twitter or (in my limited experience) on Substack. Instead, conversation occasionally glimmers through a waterfall of bad-faith, uninformed trolls and attacks. It’s an effort to play a college football game after the crowd has stormed the field.

Even if they worked perfectly, Substack and Twitter/X only accrue power over the long term for Substack and X. If one of Substack’s most popular authors were to be abducted by aliens tomorrow, Substack retains the value she created on the company’s behalf. It benefits institutionally from her using the platform. She helped build its institutional power — which it currently uses, in small part, to ensure Nazis a voice in the discussion.

My intent remains to take a job with an established institution, rather than simply to write for myself. There is value in working for an institution: shared protection from attack; responsibility for others that can prompt caution or useful self-reflection. And while my most recent tenure working for an institution showed how accrued power can be redirected unexpectedly, I still think there is value in helping institutions that are doing good, important work to build their power.

(This question of institutional power is why it’s urgently important for the Democratic Party to convince young people not to register as political independents, but I digress.)

We’ll see how my plan shakes out. Having detailed knowledge of how American politics worked as recently as Jan. 19 seems less useful than it once did, but I’m confident that there’s still some value to it. (Or at least in being able to make charts.) In the meantime, though, I plan to continue to be careful about how the small bit of power I have at my disposal is deployed. If that means that people who are interested in my thoughts have to visit my website or remember how to use an RSS feed, so be it.

Photo: Chevilly Power Station, 1950s. (National Archives)