Besides Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube, Twitter is the most popular social media. Twitter, however, is also one of the most hated social platforms. It’s a known place where anger thrives, and its users are always outraged, angry, and toxic.
According to Statista, there are 2,900 million Facebook users worldwide. On the contrary, Twitter has 206 million users worldwide (source).
Even though Twitter has few users compared to Facebook, it sets the social talking point and news trends. From here, it spreads to other social platforms.
Twitter is primarily used by news media, politicians, governments, executives, celebrities, and businesses. Facebook sets personal talking points, whereas Twitter leads global corporate and government talking points.
Twitters’ Working Mechanism is Different:
On Reddit, similar-minded people can create Reddit Communities and share and exchange ideas. There are various communities such as books, technology, news, pets, cats, cars, etc. People join communities that interest them and avoid those they don’t like. The Reddit communities are contained, and toxicity doesn’t spill over to other communities.
There is also an upvote-downvote system. Therefore, any comment and posts can be upvoted and downvoted by Reddit users. Thus anything unpopular gets downvoted, and others can’t notice it anymore. On the other hand, a good comment gets a lot of upvotes.
Facebook works somewhat similarly. There are Groups and Brand Pages. People join Facebook Groups that interest them and avoid those Groups that they dislike.
On the contrary, there are no groups, pages, or communities concept on Twitter. Anything user posts are public and open to see for every Twitter user. Anyone can interact, comment, and share others’ tweets.
As Twitter users share the same common Feed, it becomes toxic and thus hated by many users.
Some people criticize others but get defensive and can’t handle it when others criticize them. Virtue signaling and mob mentality are rampant on Twitter.
Twitter Algorithm Drives Anger:
Anger thrives on Twitter. Whether a tweet will get more exposure depends on engagement. The more likes, shares, and comments a tweet has, the more it spreads by the Twitter Algorithm. Because of this constant anger and outrage, Twitter is hated by everyone.
Character counts limit every Twitter post. As a result, a proper discussion doesn’t occur on this platform. Replies can only be short comments which prevent well-informed dialogue.
Anonymity brings the worst out of people. Vitriolic and outrageous comments are rampant. Thus, anyone who Tweets anything on Twitter will get some form of pushback from others; whether this pushback is justified or not is irrelevant. It makes the original poster hate Twitter.
No two people will agree on everything. There will always be some ideological differences. But Twitter places all types of ideology in one single place. Both Democrats and Republicans, Whites and People of Color, straight or LGBTQ+ community members, share the same Twitter Feed. Thus exchanges between entirely different ideological groups are easy and always push people to the extreme.
There are a lot of artists, poets, engineers, and doctors on Twitter. But their posts don’t garner attention.
Negativity Spreads Faster on Twitter:
It’s well known that negativity spreads more than positive news. A piece of negative information gets more engagement than uplifting news. Thus, the former spreads faster. As a result, it seems Twitter is filled with negative, adversarial, bitter, vitriolic, and toxic posts. It’s why everyone hates Twitter.
Love propagates love, whereas anger propagates anger.
Whenever a tweet gets a lot of likes and shares, it emboldens the original poster’s ideology and belief. Many famous persons and celebrities have millions of followers. Thus, anything that a famous person says gets popular rapidly. However, opposing views by anyone is seen as aggression. This type of scenario creates a perpetual Twitter fight. It breeds toxicity, and many hate Twitter for this reason.
Twitter Policy is Broken:
The Twitter policy is hypocritical. They implement their policy only to move forward with their ideology. They regularly ban users if someone says anything that doesn’t align with most people’s doctrine. Sometimes, the banning decision seems arbitrary.
One political group gets routine suspension and ban, whereas other political groups get a pass on the same issue. One politician gets banned, but a leader from another country gets a pass even with more severe tweets. These arbitrary policies and activities make people hate Twitter.
Nowadays, Twitter acts as an online news media. People visit Twitter for the latest and updated news. It’s because anything new will get posted here first.
Anonymity is Easy on Twitter:
In the real world, people don’t say whatever they like. There are consequences for horrible public behavior. Other people will confront an unruly person.
On Twitter, however, people can hide their identities. And there are almost no consequences for being mean to others. Anger-driven replies are easy to tweet, but there’s no repercussions. Sometimes, people feel justified for being terrible to another human being. Many similar-minded people will also support this attitude on Twitter.
No one is safe on Twitter. Any reply will get counter-responses. Thus it makes everyone angry, and consequently, they start to hate Twitter.
Single Feed:
Twitter holds all the tweets under a single feed. Thus, it’s expected that people will get many unrelated posts on their Feed. For example, many don’t like Korean Pop, also known as KPOP. But sometimes, many users will notice that sometimes Twitter is riddled with BTS-related tweets. This type of takeover by a single group also makes many angry thus, they start to hate Twitter.
However, not everyone hates Twitter. Many people actively use and engage on this platform. But it requires being careful and not engaging with toxic people. For example, politicians use Twitter to convey their political messages. It’s a medium to disseminate and garner immediate attention on critical social issues.
Bottom Line:
Over the years, Twitter has become a toxic place. It’s a place where people are constantly arguing with each other. There’s no middle ground on this platform; it’s always in the two extreme positions. Moreover, nuanced ideas are often misunderstood and create outrage on this platform.
Twitter management has failed to fix all these issues over the years, and thus Twitter is one of the most hated social media platforms on earth.
