I believe a group took a look at how viral topics and memes emerged on twitter and simply having something like 50-100 people participate in your hashtag or ret

I believe a group took a look at how viral topics and memes emerged on twitter and simply having something like 50-100 people participate in your hashtag or retweet some content was enough to land you on trending. Their conclusion was that twitter disproportionately represents reality. Wish I could recall where I read this but it definitely made its way through HN in the last year or two. And anecdotally we see people de-platformed and/or removed from their work because some company’s hr department got wind of a twitter stink and the company made the calculation that the feelings of a few people on twitter are so meaningful that it warrants terminating some employee. Unless that employee was seriously not pulling their weight, there no way appeasing those people on twitter is more valuable than the work your employee is doing and the cost of hiring a new one. Take that boing guy retired military who was removed from his position because of a 15yr old post about how he disagreed with putting women in combat roles for biological reasons… Point is people’s reality is shaped by what trends on the internet and what trends on the internet is at global scale when you run a global platform/community. This global context is good in some regards e.g. the proliferation of cultural exchange and appropriation but can also be somewhat of a nightmare to manage when trying to solve logistical problems like moderating content or writing laws. I am dubious we should be entertaining “local” politics on global platforms e.g. twitter. Seems like an impedance mismatch to me.