[Air-L] silos

[Jonathan Sterne, Dr.]

Hi Everyone,

A reminder: the “silo” metaphor is silly.  It implies that silos are bad.  Silos are good.  Otherwise the grain goes everywhere.  I also seem to remember some members of this very organization arguing against the context collapse that large scale social media companies demand as part of their business model.

Another reminder: this organization is much older than Twitter, and many members were able to find people different from themselves online before Twitter existed.

Twitter is always looking to expand my interests, for instance, by serving me celebrity news that I do not want.  I don’t judge others for being interested in that, but it’s not like the “openness” of Twitter is the same openness that democratic theorists talk about.  It’s not.  Sometimes the two overlap but not due solely to the size of Twitter.

That said, of course there are real communities on Twitter, and if I were part of one of those, I would fight to preserve it or mourn its loss if I were leaving.

But a functional online community precisely partakes of a "siloing” [sic] effect people that are decrying.

—Jonathan