{"id":11366,"date":"2012-08-09T20:10:17","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T00:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=11366"},"modified":"2012-08-10T11:07:03","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T15:07:03","slug":"race-class-app-net-the-beginning-of-white-flight-from-facebook-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/08\/09\/race-class-app-net-the-beginning-of-white-flight-from-facebook-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Race, Class, App.net: The Beginning of ‘White Flight’ from Facebook & Twitter?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
White flight happens both online and offline. What is it with some white people?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recently mentions of a new \u201creal-time social feed\u201d called App.net have been creeping into my Twitter feed. Just as the quietly simmering Diaspora<\/a> <\/strong>and the running joke that is G+<\/a> <\/strong>were geared to seize on collective Facebook malaise, it seems App.net is trying to seize on some degree of unrest<\/a> among Twitter users before taking on Facebook<\/a> as well. In this case, App.net promises that \u201cusers and developers [will] come first, not advertisers<\/a>\u201d; in an era of \u201cif it\u2019s free, you\u2019re the product\u201d\u2014remember that the much love\/hated Facebook \u201c[is] free and always will be<\/a>\u201d\u2014App.net proposes to offer a Twitter-like social feed (and eventually a \u201cpowerful ecosystem based on 3rd-party developer built \u2018apps\u2019\u201d) on a paid membership basis instead.<\/p>\n

At first, this struck me as a reasonable enough idea; I\u2019m pretty much always willing to pay for the upgraded version of an app or service rather than be bombarded with ads<\/strong> (though in this case, my particular Twitter client and the AdBlock Plus add-on have already solved the problems of \u201cpromoted tweets\u201d and Facebook ads). Yet it turns out App.net will not be an advertising- or promotion-free environment just because App.net itself won\u2019t derive revenue from ads; the company has no plans to \u201crestrict commercial messages from appearing on the service,\u201d and instead suggests that users\u2014who have \u201ccomplete control<\/a> over the kinds of messages they see\u201d\u2014simply unfollow accounts that post annoying messages. App.net describes this as \u201cthe beauty of a follow model,\u201d but I\u2019m skeptical; for instance, the \u201cfollow model\u201d does not seem to have stopped spammers on Twitter, and unlike App.net\u2019s founder Dalton Caldwell<\/a>, I\u2019m not convinced a $50 pay wall will keep spammers away. Still, I liked the idea of my information (\u201cmy information\u201d) not being sold to marketers,<\/strong> so I kept reading.<\/p>\n

When I got to the $50 price point (pre-paid) of joining App.net for a year, however, I started to see the service a bit differently<\/strong>. I realize that any app or service charging at least $4.17 per month (and there are a lot of them) also costs at least $50 per year, but that actually isn\u2019t the point here; the point is the stratifying effect of asking for $50 upfront instead of asking for $4.17 every month.<\/strong> Was this stratifying effect intentional, or an oversight? Some clicking around indicates that it\u2019s probably intentional, with one interview article stating that the $50 pre-paid membership cost is \u201creally more of a \u2018are you serious<\/a>\u2019 fee.\u201d<\/strong> Caldwell believes that \u201cTwitter could have been something more, and perhaps better, than what it has become,\u201d and so has set out to build a service not for the masses, \u201cbut for the hacker masses<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Newsflash: People of Color use Twitter!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The \u201chacker masses\u201d are, of course, a much less diverse crowd than are the \u2018regular\u2019 masses.<\/strong> Recall that Twitter\u2019s original \u2018early adopter\u2019 user base in 2007 was the so-called digerati, who are largely affluent white men with connections to the tech industry; recall as well that in 2012, \u201cit\u2019s a black Twitterverse; white people only live in it<\/a>.\u201d \u201cHow Black People Use Twitter<\/a>\u201d got a lot of attention on Slate.com two years ago (despite describing how only some<\/em> Black users use Twitter), and let\u2019s not forget how many Arab-region users joined Twitter during last year\u2019s Arab Spring<\/a>. Meanwhile, those \u201ckeen and savvy\u201d early adopters now complain because services like Twitter and Facebook \u201chaven\u2019t developed with us<\/em><\/a>\u201d <\/em>[emphasis in original], and Caldwell himself sees K-Mart ads in his feed<\/a> as just another sign of Twitter\u2019s appalling degradation and debasement. OMG it\u2019s the end of the world: K-mart shoppers and people of color found Twitter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Uh-oh, Grandma’s on Facebook.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m now wondering if App.net doesn\u2019t mark the beginning of \u201cwhite flight\u201d from Twitter and Facebook<\/strong>, just as danah boyd (@zephoria<\/a>) has argued that Facebook was<\/a> the \u201cwhite flight<\/a>\u201d from Myspace<\/a> before that. Both sites have certainly grown beyond their early-adopter user bases: Twitter had 500 million users<\/a> as of February 2012, and with 955 million users<\/a> [pdf] as of June 2012, \u201ceveryone\u201d is supposedly on Facebook; your mom<\/a> is on<\/a> Facebook<\/a> <\/strong>(hell, my mom\u2019s on Twitter, too), and there\u2019s even a growing chance<\/a> your grandma<\/a> is on Facebook<\/a> (though I admit that mine isn\u2019t<\/a>). Facebook has become so quotidian\u2014some would even say pedestrian\u2014that as Laura Portwood-Stacer (@lportwoodstacer<\/a>) argues, not <\/a><\/em>being on Facebook<\/a> has become the new, cool status marker (esp for affluent white tech people). Given all the cultural and economic capital there is to be gained from participating in social media, however, it wouldn\u2019t be surprising if some people who are \u2018too cool\u2019 for Facebook and Twitter are not yet too cool for social networking sites in general<\/strong>, especially sites you need $50, $100, or $1000 upfront<\/a> to join. In fact, App.net is betting there are at least 10,000<\/a> people willing to pay $50, to start.<\/p>\n

Before I return to the issue of App.net\u2019s $50 entry-level membership fee and its stratifying effects, I want to acknowledge that, although race and class are complexly interrelated and intersecting<\/a> axes of oppression<\/a>, they are not the same thing<\/a><\/strong>. One of my pet peeves is when people treat race and class as if they\u2019re interchangeable; for instance, when the Fordham Institute<\/a> talks about the 25 \u201cfastest-gentrifying neighborhoods<\/a>\u201d in America, the author is really referencing US Census data for the 25 zip codes with the largest increases in percentages of white residents. As a transitive verb, \u201cgentrified<\/a>\u201d means \u201crenovated and improved so that it conforms to middle-class taste\u201d; Fordham is therefore using \u2018percentage of white residents\u2019 as a proxy<\/em> for \u2018percentage of middle-class residents\u2019, which inherently perpetuates the stereotypes that white people are middle-class and people of color are poor. Because of this, I find Fordham\u2019s proxy (and others like it) to be ideologically problematic<\/a>, even if an influx of white people does seem to correlate with fewer bodegas<\/a> and more cupcake merchants<\/a>. Plus, when we remember that the adjective meaning of \u201cgentrified\u201d is \u201cmore refined or dignified,\u201d equating \u2018more white\u2019 with \u2018more gentrified\u2019 is just offensive. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Mission, San Francisco: home to both gang violence and gourmet cupcakes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyway, the point here is that when I talk about a possible link between App.net\u2019s class-stratifying $50 backing fee and the beginning of \u2018white flight\u2019 from Facebook, I\u2019m not suggesting a 1:1 correlation between whiteness and affluence, nor am I suggesting that race and class are interchangeable. I am, however, referencing the fondness that some affluent white people have for buying goods and services that help them decrease the visibility<\/a> of poor people and people of color around them.<\/p>\n

If the \u2018white flight\u2019 from Myspace to Facebook was like the post-war migration of white people from urban areas to tract houses in the suburbs, App.net could represent the digital equivalent of white people moving from suburban tract houses to gated communities or urban loft conversions<\/strong>. It contains elements of both white flight (affluent white people distancing themselves from the more diverse user bases of Facebook and Twitter) and gentrification (affluent white people creating a site that conforms to their tastes and has a higher cost of entry), and to me, these things make App.net seem a lot less appealing: I\u2019m happy to escape \u201cbeing the product,\u201d but joining a digital country club holds little appeal.<\/p>\n

In addition to market appeal based subtly<\/a> and not-so-subtly<\/a> on fleeing from the \u2018Others,\u2019 and on utopian rhetoric about fleeing from evil corporations (\u201cOpen. Free. Joy. Wonder. Peace. Perfection<\/a>\u201d), App.net taps into the same neoliberal self-interest on which all privatization ventures depend<\/strong>. Much of the enthusiasm I\u2019ve seen in my own Twitter feed has been from people who are angry about being \u201cthe product<\/a>,\u201d but if there\u2019s a harm to being the product (such that would motivate those who can<\/em> pay to join a different social networking site to do so), shouldn\u2019t we maybe address that harm directly and collectively?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ah, the suburbs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Buying our way out of personal exposure to a problem doesn\u2019t address the problem itself, and it still leaves those who can\u2019t afford to buy their way out exposed<\/strong>. Buying bottled water<\/a> <\/strong>might get your kid away from (say) trichloroethylene<\/a>, but it won\u2019t stop your neighborhood from becoming a leukemia cluster<\/a>; \u2018voting with your dollar\u2019 for App.net instead of Facebook or Twitter might subject you to fewer ads and less data-mining, but it\u2019s not going to affect how Facebook, Google, or anyone else operates<\/a>, nor will it slow the push toward targeted marketing<\/a> in general.<\/p>\n

One might be tempted to argue that \u2018early adopters\u2019 in general tend to be disproportionately white, male, and economically privileged, and that perhaps App.net would\u2014like both Myspace and Facebook\u2014become more diverse over time (especially if the price-point of using their service came down). I tend to think not, given that the \u2018for us, by us\u2019 here is software developers. Or perhaps we shouldn\u2019t expect App.net to have any kind of positive impact on the world; maybe they\u2019re just out to make some money by offering a service for which there seems to be a market. But for those of us who see the appeal or value of a user-centered social networking site, I wonder if this is the best way to go about building one.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

White flight map image from http:\/\/nextstl.com\/urban-living\/colin-gordon-talks-mapping-decline-vacant-land-and-urban-renewal-with-nextstl<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Brown Twitter bird image from http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/technology\/technology\/2010\/08\/how_black_people_use_twitter.single.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Older adults and computer image from http:\/\/socialmediatoday.com\/node\/565360<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Gangs and cupcakes image from http:\/\/missionlocal.org\/2011\/03\/gangs-and-cupcakes\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Suburban family image from http:\/\/suite101.com\/article\/consequences-of-1950s-white-flight-a106675<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently mentions of a new \u201creal-time social feed\u201d called App.net have been creeping into my Twitter feed. Just as the quietly simmering Diaspora and the running joke that is G+ were geared to seize on collective Facebook malaise, it seems App.net is trying to seize on some degree of unrest among Twitter users before taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":11372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[18360,18359,29,2558,942,18361,14,184,466],"class_list":["post-11366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-andrew-szasz","tag-app-net","tag-class","tag-danah-boyd","tag-facebook","tag-people-of-color","tag-race","tag-twitter","tag-white-flight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2012\/08\/white-flight-map.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11366"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11405,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366\/revisions\/11405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}