'There's More Black People Over There': False Equivalences in Platform Distribution and Gimmicks of Platform Capitalism

A point that might be one of grievance of a lost space never truly owned by Black people but still run by it tends to pop up on my "Following" feed on Bluesky once a month. I don't see such conversations on places like Threads — it's really an insular space of "you see what the algorithm determines worthy of attention". It comes from a variation of folks but routinely from folks who seem to long for a space that no longer exists. Yes - Twitter, now X - the company still exists, but there's a heavily undocumented[1] shift in the entity that was once Black Twitter and how the next option for many was the once-dubbed P92 project, known as Threads to many today. A friend and expert, Dr. Meredith Clark, notes when speaking to the University of Virginia, defined Black Twitter as: a network of culturally connected communicators using the platform to draw attention to issues of concern to [B]lack communities. It’s the culture that we grew up with. It’s the culture that we experienced in our…