An Epistemic Environmentalist Analysis, From Twitter to X

1. Epistemic Environmentalism

Epistemologists are increasingly interested in epistemic environments. This marks a departure from a very specific case and agent-centred approach to epistemology, which dominated post-Gettier epistemology. The shift of attention on the part of some to epistemic environments fits with a recognition of the influence of the environment on human outcomes, as well as a practical concern to improve those outcomes. Although explanations as to what an epistemic environment is differ, for the purposes of this post, they’ll be understood as the sum of all aspects and factors (social, technological, as well as natural) that bear on epistemic attainment within a determined boundary.

We conceive of epistemic environments as analogous with environments (or geo-environments) as they are typically conceived in green discourse. Environments can sustain various valuable activities and the attainment of various goods, though environments that become polluted or degraded may no longer be able to do so. Epistemic environments, similarly, can sustain valuable activities, such as inquiry, and the attainment of epistemic goods, such as understanding and wisdom. This gives us reason to care about the quality of our epistemic environments, just as we have reason to care about our geo-environments.

This leads to an epistemic environmentalist approach that calls for descriptions of epistemic environments to determine precisely how the various features of that epistemic environment bear on the attainment of epistemic goods. This is essentially empirical work to understand how an epistemic environment works. For example, a particular classroom environment could be examined in order to ascertain how features of that environment, such as the seating arrangement of the classroom, the norms governing teacher-pupil interactions, and the cognitive scaffolding available in that classroom (say, through posters on the walls of the room) influence the attainment of epistemic goods. The next step for an epistemic environmentalist requires determining how the epistemic environment should work. This normative step concerns what goods should be promoted in the examined epistemic environment and what changes can be made to promote the attainment of those epistemic goods. Call these changes positive interventions in an epistemic environment.

Positive environmental interventions are ameliorative interventions — they make the existing epistemic environment better with respect to one or more target epistemic goods, though sometimes improving an epistemic environment in one respect may make it worse in another respect. Such positive environmental interventions can include removing or attempting to mitigate existing environmental “pollutants” (roughly, features of the environment which actively hinder epistemic attainment), as well as introducing new environmental features to optimize epistemic attainment or promote even more epistemic goods. Negative environmental interventions, by contrast, are changes that make the existing epistemic environment worse. Negative interventions can worsen the epistemic environment by aggravating existing epistemic “pollutants” or by introducing new ones. But — of special interest to us here — negative interventions can also include efforts to replace or undo previous positive interventions.

Does this latter kind of negative intervention create new kinds of epistemic environmental hazards, besides re-introducing the ones which the previous positive intervention had sought to mitigate? And what, as epistemic environmentalists, are we to prescribe in such cases? Will further rounds of intervention just make further epistemic problems? And if so, should we even bother pushing for them? Or should we simply learn from epistemic fallout, encourage evacuation from heavily polluted epistemic environments, and seek to do better elsewhere?

2. From Twitter to X

An interesting case study in the effects of compounded (positive-negative) epistemic environmental intervention is the micro-blogging platform now called “X” (formerly Twitter).

In 2009, Twitter implemented a “verification” system that allowed certain users to be visibly marked (their username appended with a “blue check” icon) as being “really them”. In 2022, “X”, under new owner Elon Musk, replaced that system with a new one.  The first verification system (hereafter “Twitter verification”) was an imperfect but, on balance, positive epistemic environmental intervention. It is increasingly clear that its replacement (paid “X verification”) was a negative intervention. What is interesting to us is that X verification not only opened the epistemic environment of the micro-blogging site to epistemic hazards previously (imperfectly) mitigated by Twitter verification, but actually created new ones. X verification was not only a “negative intervention” insofar as it returned the epistemic environment to its pre-ameliorated state; it made things even worse than before.

Though Twitter verification was controversial (the “blue check” signifier was often regarded as an elite and enviable status symbol), it functioned remarkably well in containing some of the epistemic pollution risks widely attributed to social media platforms. Chief among these is epistemic flooding (Anderau 2023) and opacity of information sources and credibility. Because “big name” users (e.g., celebrities, politicians, brands) faced the greatest impersonation risk on a public content-sharing site, the “blue check” symbol was widely associated with large followings on the platform. And to be sure, Twitter verification was implemented in large part to reassure (and attract) the already-famous. Notably, though, many Twitter-verified users were not famous (or even “Twitter famous”) at all: many had follower counts in the triple- or even double-digits, with some not even breaking 50. When one would run into such accounts, frequently one would find that they had outlets like “VICE” and “Buzzfeed News” in their bios. This was because, in addition to “big name” individuals, companies, and organizations, Twitter designated journalists as a primary user bloc in presumptive need of “verified” status. Consequently, many users with bona fide (verifiable) journalistic credentials, despite having otherwise low-profile Twitter presences, had the distinctive “blue check” icon appended to their displayed username.

As an epistemic environmental intervention, this was non-trivial: by 2009, breaking news was already increasingly being transmitted on social media by “on the ground” individuals, rather than through traditional news-media channels by professional newscasters and reporters. By visually identifying journalists as having genuine (verifiable) journalistic credentials, Twitter verification allowed for the (partial) import of pre-existing epistemic norms from traditional television and print journalism. More generally, Twitter verification allowed for more reliable heuristic “sorting” of trustworthy sources. While huge numbers of users testified to different things, the verification feature communicated that a user was someone in a position of epistemic authority (or at least someone likely to have privileged access to information that might contribute to the quality of their testimony.) Twitter verification also better facilitated tracking the testimonial record of a real world actor.    

Then, in 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter. Among other sweeping changes (including renaming the platform to “X”), he implemented “paid verification,” which allowed any user to have the same “blue check” signifier of Twitter verification, so long as they paid a subscription fee. Appearances notwithstanding, this was, in effect, a complete obliteration of Twitter verification. Because anyone with a credit card could verify an account, including bot accounts, X verification no longer allowed for more reliable heuristic “sorting” of trustworthy sources via imported norms from journalism. But because the “blue check” symbol for being “verified” remained the same, and it is still called “verification”, X verification retains superficial continuity with Twitter verification. Consequently, unreliable sources are now presumed (via the original Twitter verification heuristic) to be reliable! Interestingly, the epistemic environmental damage that resulted far exceeded the foreseeable epistemic risks that Twitter verification was originally introduced to mitigate. Epistemically, “X verification” is an environmental disaster.

3. Where to from here?

While philosophers can recommend that states and institutions improve epistemic environments, protect them or mitigate the harm from epistemic pollutants, ultimately states and institutions may see that their interests lie elsewhere. The question as to how to respond to degrading epistemic environments falls to those who inhabit those environments and furnish them with content. Are there enough inhabitants that can work in co-ordination to improve those environments? If not, should they judge that continuing to inhabit and contribute to those environments is still worth it? Or should they abandon such environments?

In the X case, we’ve already seen an answer with many migrating to the Bluesky platform. An epistemic worry with this development is that it may presage a siloing of microbloggers to different platforms according to political persuasion. In other words, there will no longer be a social media platform for users with a wide variety of conflicting beliefs to encounter and discuss their differing ideas.

Picture from Wikipedia