A Brief History of Black Twitter and Black Digital Spaces.
Back Down Memory Lane
In October 2022, Elon Musk concluded his acquisition of the social media site Twitter. This news was received with great division among critics and users. For some, Musk’s acquisition would mark a new era of free speech for the platform. Similarly, opponents of the purchase found cause for alarm as it could mean the removal of specific censoring policies aimed at protecting users. For those unaware, Twitter began in 2006, at a pivotal time when social media apps were still novel, and has since grown to be one of the most trafficked and important websites of our time. Twitter is best known for its microblogging and real-time news and information sharing, from celebrities and brands promoting their products in some sort of viral marketing tactic to news outlets and world leaders breaking stories and updates to world-changing events. More generally, since its inception, Twitter has developed many rich and diverse communities, allowing marginalized groups to find and share their stories, views, and experiences with a larger audience. Still, no digital community has moved the platform to significant heights quite like Black Twitter. But what is Black Twitter?
Before there was a Tom, there was Omar.
In the 1970s, Amiri Baraka, the founder of the Black Arts Movement, published an essay called “Technology & Ethos.” In it, he explores the development of future technologies that are (in his words) “responsive and relevant to the Black mind, body, and spirit.” In his essay, he asks, “How do you communicate with the great masses of Black people?” Fast forward to the dot com boom of the 1990s, and we can see the foundations of this form of communication begin to develop. From its inception, the world wide web was a communication channel. Before sharing your thoughts in 140 characters or less or a 30-second video of your activities (which would’ve taken ages to load back then), people shared there thoughts through blogs and, more specifically, message boards such as Geocities, AOL, and Live Journal. In time, the technology developed to allow for more features resulting in more sophisticated user interactions. One particular site that was pivotal in pushing these communication channels forward, specifically for early black internet settlers, was blackplanet.com. Blackplanet, founded in 1999 by Omar Wasow, was one of the first social media websites designed to engage black users with features that, by today’s standards, are pretty commonplace but were revolutionary for their time, such as custom personal sites with the ability for more customization and posting, liking, and sharing content from other users. Often considered the “grandfather of social media, although it didn’t have the longevity of its successors, Myspace and Facebook, it laid the foundation for what black digital spaces can be. Several years later, in 2006, Twitter launched, the black digital migration was in effect, and the rest is history.
Word on the streets becomes text in a tweet.
So, what is Black Twitter? Black Twitter is a name given to a digital community of black users who engage with each other, primarily via Twitter. By design, Twitter has always been a platform for engagement, but unlike its predecessors and competitors, Twitter's point of emphasis was its real-time posting and sharing. Coupled with the rise and proliferation of internet-accessible mobile devices (smartphones), viewing and sharing information was no longer limited to the confines of a desktop computer. A user to can report a story before the news even knows there’s a story to report. This quality alone has dramatically impacted how we perceive and interact with the world, and for many marginalized groups, this was a revolutionary and disruptive tool that had never existed. For the first time, Black people could “see” each other and be seen like never before. Stories that were once only attainable via elders at home or in barbershops and salons could be shared instantly. For the first time, a mainstream audience witnessed the multi-faceted range of the black experience that had purposefully or inadvertently been hidden from them. Non-black groups got to see Black happiness and authenticity that runs contrary to the narrative they may see in music and movies via hashtags such as #BlackBoyJoy and #BlackGirlMagic; conversely, it also witnessed the disturbing horrors of systemic racism and prejudices that black people experience regularly, from workplace biases to more alarming problems such as missing person cases and police brutality and misconduct via hashtags such as #SayHerName and #justiceForTrayvon and #BlackLivesMatter. For the first time, brands and institutions were forced to be held accountable for their inadequacies and missteps. For the first time, black people could engage in deconstructive and reconstructive dialogs on blackness in and on itself- no longer is blackness a monolith, but rather an umbrella of different black experiences. Black Twitter was and still is the driver of culture and change in the United States and Beyond.
#RIP Twitter?
As of the writing of this article, Twitter is in a strange place. Elon has enacted some dramatic changes to mold the company in the way he deems appropriate in an effort to make Twitter profitable (for those unaware- Twitter has never been able to monetize the application to the point of making it profitable). Some of his actions have included laying off significant portions of the Twitter staff for “efficiency,” placing features behind a subscription paywall, limiting the number of posts a user can see to promote said subscription, and even renaming Twitter to “X.” With such divisive moves, Twitter has unintentionally created an opening for potential competitors to capitalize on the chaos. Meta- formally, Facebook has launched their Twitter competitor, Threads, and a group of former Twitter engineers have started their own social platform, Spill. With all these things happening, many wonder what could happen to Black Twitter. Personally, Black culture is resilient, Twitter is not the voice of the Black digital community known as Black Twitter but rather just the conduit. The Black voice will remain strong, loud, and straightforward. What worries me more is not so much about losing the platform but the content that built it. If this were to be the end of Twitter, and by extension, Black Twitter, I hope the community makes every effort to preserve and archive our story and experiences with the intent to reflect upon it, educate with it, and pass on the lessons and spirit from it to the next generation.
