From the 'media war' in the US election, glimpse the new opportunities of Web3 social media platforms

Original author: @Web3 Mario

Summary: The US election is over, and Trump has made a strong comeback with a sweeping victory. In my previous articles, I have extensively discussed the political and economic plans of both sides and their impact on the future cryptocurrency market. There have also been many articles discussing related viewpoints, so I won’t go into detail here. Apart from following the election dynamics during this period, I have also noticed a relatively micro phenomenon, which I find interesting and would like to share with you. Overall, in this US election, the ‘media war’ between the two sides will greatly weaken the credibility of mainstream media and X social media. Web3 social media platforms may seize new development opportunities. On the one hand, this is because Democratic followers need to cultivate new and controllable channels for propaganda, which provides convenience in financing channels for related products. On the other hand, under Musk’s rule, X will become increasingly authoritarian. This ‘Dark MAGA’ figure will inevitably lean towards conservatism on various cultural issues, such as abortion, immigration, LGBTQ diversity, etc. The preferences of the dictator will greatly influence the logic of Algorithm recommendation in X, so it is inevitable that there will be a trend of user loss opposing it. X’s own self-defeating efforts will benefit related competitors in reshaping more competitive product differentiation, thus dropping the difficulty of promotion.

The poll results are extremely distorted, and the Democratic Party needs to find a new propaganda position

In the period before the election, I believe that everyone has more or less had some uncertainty about the outcome of this election, especially in the days leading up to the election, when Harris’s prospects seemed to surpass Trump’s. The author is no exception. In the previous article, it was predicted that this election would be an unusually anxious process, so the results may not be confirmed until the last batch of votes are counted, and the entire cycle may last for a period of time. However, in fact, Trump’s prospects can be described as indestructible, almost sweeping all the swing states, and maintaining the lead throughout the entire vote counting process.

So how does this kind of shake-up come about? The main reason comes from the last effort of the so-called “mainstream media” in the United States. We know that for a long time, the mainstream media has been the traditional propaganda base of the American establishment represented by the Democratic Party. These so-called “mainstream media” cover various forms such as television, newspapers, online platforms, and so on. They often play a crucial role in guiding public opinion on major events at home and abroad. In fact, these media are not neutral in their political preferences, with most of them being staunch supporters of the Democratic Party, such as CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, Yahoo News, Google News, etc. Some of these media claim to be neutral, but when it comes to “anti-Trump,” they seem to have reached a Consensus. The mainstream media that truly stand with Trump are represented mainly by Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

And in the days leading up to the election, the content you can see from these media channels is mostly biased towards Harris, including sudden events during the campaign, dynamic poll results, and even creating an advantage for Harris in early voting. This information naturally influences the judgment of subscribers to these mainstream media outlets and makes them believe that there may be a reversal in the election. However, the actual results are quite different. In addition, there has been a realignment of support for Harris in the mainstream media. We know that in this election, the Democratic Party experienced a change in leadership. After the Trump shooting incident, Biden’s popularity plummeted. At that time, before figures like Obama and Pelosi made their stance clear, the mainstream media had reservations about Harris taking over the election, including doubts about her past achievements. However, after the successful internal consolidation of the party, all the voices of doubt disappeared and the mainstream media fully supported Harris. From an election perspective, this naturally benefits the Democratic Party, but it also reflects that the so-called mainstream media has completely abandoned its neutrality and fairness as a media outlet, and is more serving the interests behind it. Therefore, the final election results clearly indicate that the American people are disgusted by this and are not moved by it, so I believe that the credibility of the mainstream media has been greatly undermined in this election.

We know that, for democratic politics, whoever controls the media has the initiative. Not only can they influence the potential voters’ ideology by weaving information cocoons, they can also smear political opponents or disrupt policy implementation through Fake News. Against the backdrop of declining credibility in mainstream American media, the American establishment represented by the Democratic Party urgently needs to find a ‘Plan B’ to make up for its shortcomings in internal propaganda. Behind the Democratic Party are interest groups including technology and globalization-related capital. Therefore, supporting a social media platform that they can control and that is beneficial to themselves is relatively convenient, which also brings convenience to financing and resource acquisition for related products.

Twitter

The election has proven the efficiency of the self-media-driven social media platform represented by X in information dissemination and public opinion guidance. However, in this media war, X is also a loser because throughout the entire election process, X’s recommended Algorithm has greatly influenced users’ political preferences, and its fairness will inevitably face even greater scrutiny after this election.

We know that the reason why Trump’s first term was successful in running for president, in addition to the self-exposure of Hillary, the Democratic candidate’s “email scandal,” was due to his influence on Twitter, sending out over 36,000 tweets in four years and having 88 million followers. However, after the events at Capitol Hill in 2021, Twitter announced a “permanent ban” on Trump, effectively silencing him. Following Twitter’s lead, Facebook and YouTube also took measures to prohibit Trump from speaking on their social platforms. Tech giants Google, Apple, and Amazon delisted the Parler app widely used by Trump supporters, ceasing to provide related web services for Parler.

During that time, Trump’s propaganda channels were scarce and had to launch his own social media platform, Truth Social, to cope with this predicament. The reason why many social media companies do this is still for their own interests. We know that a large part of the emerging ‘tech elites’ are born in Silicon Valley, California, which is a stronghold of the Democratic Party. Naturally, there are many related interests. In addition, as the technology industry, including the Internet, usually requires international market support, it advocates globalization while suppressing potential competitors by sponsoring lawmakers who favor strong regulatory policies. These naturally align with the Democratic Party’s ‘big government’ and multilateral cooperation policies. Therefore, under the same background of interests, it is only logical to choose to cooperate in suppressing populist Trump.

However, Musk broke all these barriers and successfully completed the privatization of the listed company Twitter in October 22, after six months, with a total of $44 billion. This means that Musk has unparalleled authority over the company. After the acquisition, the market questioned this operation as a failed attempt for a long time because there seemed to be no investment return. However, considering the current results, his original intention is now very clear. Under the guise of “maintaining freedom of speech,” he evaded the blockade of many Democratic forces, completed the acquisition with the momentum of the world’s richest person, and completed internal integration through massive layoffs. He openly expressed his support for Trump, and I believe many X users will follow. During the entire election stage, any tweets from Musk will easily appear in your recommended list. I believe this must have gone through some processing in the recommendation algorithm.

In this political gamble, Musk is undoubtedly a winner. However, in terms of the overall image of X throughout the election process, it has not become more neutral and fair because of this acquisition, but has simply moved from one extreme to another. Moreover, with X being privatized by Musk, this ‘Dark MAGA’ figure is bound to lean towards conservatism in many cultural issues, such as abortion, immigration, LGBTQ diversity, etc. And its preference will greatly influence the logic of recommending Algorithm in X, so I believe that in the next period of time, it is inevitable that there will be a trend of user loss opposing it, and X’s self-defeating skills will benefit competitors in reshaping more competitive product differentiation, thereby dropping the difficulty of promotion.

Web3

We know that in the Web3 industry, there are also some Decentralization social media platform products, such as Farcaster, Lens, etc. However, I believe that for a long time, these products have not achieved good results in promotion. The most core reason, in my opinion, is that Twitter’s persistent monopoly ensures a scale advantage in the competition for “bulk information”, which is the most important competitive advantage of social media platforms. In simple terms, if there is a lot of diverse and interesting information on Twitter, it will naturally attract user attention. The diversity of information can also enable the platform to better adapt to fast-paced real-time hot topic changes, always having hot topics and heat, which will further stimulate users’ desire to create and keep the entire UGC ecosystem vibrant.

And this monopolistic position naturally forces many brands to choose extremely segmented areas to build their distinctiveness, which naturally makes them dwarfed into toys of subcultural circles. The information precipitated on it is bound to become focused, which greatly drops the core network effect value of social media platforms. When the hotspots of the track are completely worn out, they naturally enter a period of silence, and at this time, the lack of heat will also cause the loss of the attention of users who have been attracted with difficulty. It is not difficult to find this phenomenon in Farcaster and Lens.

So when facing the inevitable user churn of X, how can we better seize this opportunity? I think Web3 social media platforms can start from the following key points:

(1) In the process of promoting related products in the past, it seems that X has been too obsessed with using the wealth effect of Cryptocurrency to attract users, whether it is the so-called ‘content monetization’ or various reward Airdrop logics. In my opinion, these are just scratching the surface. I believe that the biggest advantage of Web3 social media platforms compared to traditional centralized social media platforms is the transparency and fairness of the recommended Algorithm and information storage brought by the technical solution. This is undoubtedly most in line with the core values of freedom of speech for social media platforms. Therefore, in the process of product promotion, it is necessary to always focus on this feature, directly compete with X, instead of attracting Cryptocurrency users first and then seeking to break the circle. X’s centralization creates an opportunity for the product’s operation path. Imagine if the exposure of the ‘Prism Gate’ incident had not occurred, would the BTC system have developed to its current situation? This widespread centralization credit fracture incident is a rare opportunity for Web3 products. In addition, I believe that in terms of product innovation, combining AI modularized recommendation Algorithm is a good direction to consider. By introducing AI functionality, allowing users to customize the recommendation Algorithm, and opening up the Algorithm market or platform, stimulating user-generated content, this design that helps users break through information barriers may win the favor of users.

In event marketing, I believe Web3 social media platforms should be more proactive in supporting the ‘non-MAGA’ values in a more distinctive way, such as relaxing illegal immigration policies, LGBTQ rights advocacy, women’s rights, human rights, anti-authoritarian politics, support for abortion, minority rights, and rights of people of color, etc. Seize relevant social hot topics and make your own platform a channel for voicing opinions, breaking out of the circle. At the same time, actively adopt a top-down promotion strategy. We know that in this election, many celebrities from the entertainment industry, literary circles, and sports circles explicitly supported Harris. Therefore, through resource integration, we strive to attract these celebrities to migrate from X platform to our platform, which will have a multiplier effect on the promotion.