CNN —
Black Twitter is mourning the possible end of the influential community they found on Twitter more than a decade ago, but users are split between finding a new app or staying put.
“I’m not ready to go because I feel like that’s the case with a lot of things. Black people bring culture, community and love and so much energy and spirit and soul to whatever places we inhabit, and then someone else comes in and totally disrupts the energy and we leave, and they benefit from what we built,” Eunique Jones Gibson, an avid Twitter user and CEO of the marketing company Culture Brands, told CNN.
Gibson, like numerous other Black users, has bonded with strangers and elevated movements like “Black Lives Matter” and “Bring Back Our Girls” while using Black Twitter – the subset of the social media platform where Black people have conversations about everything from culture to race to identity. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October, the future of Black Twitter has led to debate among scholars and its users.
“We all see ourselves in this predicament where we’re now, like, ‘Dang, we built this up and now it belongs to someone who doesn’t share our same values,” Gibson said.
André Brock, a professor of Black digital studies at Georgia Tech who has studied Black Twitter, said Black users may not leave the platform, at least for some time.
Elon Musk says he will begin restoring previously banned Twitter accounts next week
“We’re going to live wherever we are, even if the circumstances aren’t perfect for us, but when have they ever (been)?” Brock told CNN, adding that the social media platform has been the go-to for Black users for more than a decade.
But Brock said the collective voice that represents Black Twitter will continue to be “Black as loudly and exuberantly as possible” no matter where it lives.
Charlton Mcllwain, a professor New York University and author of “Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter,” said Black Twitter does its own thinking, and Musk won’t change it. However, McIlwain says Musk could alter the platform to make it difficult to find each other or amplify other users’ tweets, or create a hostile environment.
“Amplifying the voices of White supremacist users and transforming the platform into a haven for anti-Black racism or racism targeting other identities could also negatively impact Black Twitter by creating an environment that users deem simply too hostile to be worth it,” McIllwain said.
While users are still deciding what to do after recent changes on Twitter – like the restoration of previously banned accounts and the upcoming roll out of a new verification system – civil rights organizations like the NAACP have called on companies to pause all advertising on the social media platform.
“Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, racial slurs have spiked, and conspiracy theories have spread,” the NAACP said in a statement.