From the “media war” in the US election, we can see new opportunities for Web3 social media platforms

Author : @Web3Mario

Abstract : The US election has come to an end. Trump swept the United States with overwhelming momentum and made a strong comeback. In my previous article, I have already discussed the political and economic plans of both sides and their impact on the future cryptocurrency market in a very complete manner. There are also many articles describing related views, so I will not repeat them. In addition to paying attention to the election dynamics during this period, the author also felt and observed a relatively microscopic phenomenon. Some of the thoughts I found very interesting, so I summarized them and shared them with you. In general, in this US election, the "media war" between the two sides will greatly weaken the credibility of mainstream media and X social media, and Web3 social media platforms may be able to usher in new development opportunities. On the one hand, it comes from the need for Democratic Party followers to cultivate new and controllable propaganda channels, which brings convenience to related competitors in terms of financing channels. On the other hand, it comes from Musk's rule. X will become increasingly authoritarian, and this "Dark MAGA" will inevitably lean towards conservatism on many cultural issues, such as abortion, immigration, LGBTQ multiculturalism, etc. The dictator's preferences will greatly affect the logic of the recommendation algorithm in X, so the trend of user loss that stands on the opposite side is inevitable. X's self-destruction will help related competitors to reshape more competitive product differentiation, thereby reducing the difficulty of promotion.

The poll results are extremely distorted. The US mainstream media's credibility has been greatly damaged by the two-faced stance on Harris. The Democratic Party needs to find a new propaganda front.

In the period before the election, I believe everyone had some uncertainty about the results of this election, especially in the days leading up to the election, Harris's election situation seemed to surpass Trump. The author is no exception. In the previous article, I predicted that this election would be an extremely tense process, so the results might not be confirmed until the last batch of votes were counted, so the whole cycle might last for a while. But in fact, Trump's election situation can be described as overwhelming, sweeping almost all swing states, and maintaining a leading position throughout the entire counting process.

So how did this vacillation come about? The main reason comes from the final push of the so-called "mainstream media" in the United States. We know that for a long time in the past, the mainstream media has been the traditional propaganda position of the American establishment represented by the Democratic Party. These so-called "mainstream media" cover a variety of forms such as television, newspapers, and online platforms. They often play a key role in guiding public opinion on major events at home and abroad. In fact, these media are not neutral in their political preferences. Most of them are 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 they seem to have reached a consensus on "anti-Trump". The only representative mainstream media that really stand on Trump's side are Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

In the days leading up to the election, most of the content you can see from these media channels is biased towards Harris, including accounts of unexpected incidents during the campaign, dynamic poll results, and even creating Harris's advantage in early votes. This information will naturally affect the judgment of these mainstream media subscribers, and they believe that there is a possibility of a reversal in the election. However, the results are naturally very different. In addition, the mainstream media has readjusted its support for Harris's campaign. We know that in this election, the Democratic Party has experienced a change of leadership. After the Trump shooting, Biden's election situation plummeted. At that time, before Obama, Pelosi and other bigwigs made clear statements, the mainstream media had a lot of complaints about Harris's succession to the election, including doubts about his past political achievements, etc., but after the successful integration of the party, all questioning voices disappeared completely, and Harris was fully supported. From the perspective of the election, this is naturally good for the Democratic Party, but it also reflects that the so-called mainstream media has completely abandoned the neutrality and fairness of the media, and is more for the interests behind it. Therefore, the final election results clearly show that the American people have become disgusted with this and are unmoved. Therefore, I believe that the credibility of the mainstream media has suffered a great blow in this election.

We know that in elected politics, whoever controls the media has the initiative. They can not only influence the ideology of potential voters by weaving information cocoons, but also discredit political opponents or interfere with the implementation of policies through fake news. Against the backdrop of declining credibility of mainstream media in the United States, the Democratic Party, represented by the American establishment, urgently needs to find a "Plan B" to make up for its own shortcomings in internal propaganda. The interest groups behind the Democratic Party are not short of capital related to technology and global business. Therefore, it is relatively convenient to support a social media platform that they can control and is beneficial to themselves, which also brings convenience to related products in financing and resource acquisition.

With the privatization of Twitter, Musk has in fact become the "dictator" of X, and his ideology is bound to cause users to question the neutrality of X.

This election proved that the social media platforms driven by self-media represented by X are highly efficient in information dissemination and public opinion guidance. But in fact, X is also a loser in this media war, because throughout the election process, the information cocoon woven by X for users through recommendation algorithms has greatly influenced users' political preferences. Its fairness is bound to be questioned even more after this election.

We know that the reason why Trump was able to win the election in his first term was not only because of the Democratic candidate Hillary's "email gate" self-explosion, but also because of his influence on Twitter. In four years, he sent more than 36,000 tweets and had 88 million followers. However, after the Capitol Hill incident in 2002, Twitter announced a "permanent ban" on Trump, and the microphone was turned off. Immediately after Twitter, Facebook and YouTube also took measures to ban Trump from speaking on their social platforms; giant technology companies Google, Apple and Amazon removed Parler, an application widely used by Trump supporters, and stopped providing related network services to Parler.

During that period, Trump had a lack of propaganda channels and had to launch his own social media platform, Truth Social, to deal with this dilemma. The reason why a number of social media companies did this was still for profit. We know that a large part of the emerging "tech elite" was born in Silicon Valley in California, and California is a stronghold of the Democratic Party, so there are naturally many related interests. In addition, since the Internet and other technology industries usually need the support of the international market, while supporting globalization, they also support potential competitors by funding legislators who prefer strong regulatory policies. These are naturally in line with the Democratic Party's "big government" and multilateral cooperation policies. Therefore, under the background of the same interests, it is natural to choose to cooperate in suppressing the populist Trump.

However, these were broken by Musk. In October 22, after half a year, he successfully completed the privatization of Twitter, a listed company, for $44 billion, which means that Musk has unparalleled authority over the company. After the acquisition was completed, for a long time, the market questioned whether the operation was a failed attempt because there seemed to be no return on investment. However, combined with the current results, his original intention is also very clear. Under the cover of "maintaining freedom of speech", he avoided the blockade of many Democratic forces, completed the acquisition with the momentum of the world's richest man, and completed internal integration through large-scale layoffs. He made it clear that he supports Trump. I believe that many friends who use X will pay attention to the entire election stage. Any post by Musk will easily appear in your recommendation list. I believe this must have been processed in the recommendation algorithm.

In this political gamble, Musk is undoubtedly a winner. However, in terms of the appearance of X throughout the election process, it did not become more neutral and fair because of this acquisition, but just went from one extreme to another. And as X was privatized by Musk, this "Dark MAGA" is bound to lean towards conservatism on many cultural issues, such as abortion, immigration, LGBTQ multiculturalism, etc. And his preferences will greatly affect the logic of the recommendation algorithm in X. Therefore, I think that in the next period of time, the trend of user loss that stands on the opposite side is inevitable, and X's self-destruction will help related competitors reshape more competitive product differentiation, thereby reducing the difficulty of promotion.

Faced with resource dividends and market dividends, how can Web3 social media platforms better capture this opportunity?

We know that in the Web3 industry, there are also some decentralized social media platform products, such as Farcaster, Lens, etc., but I think that for a long time before, these products did not achieve very good results in promotion. I think the core reason is that Twitter's long-lasting monopoly position ensures that it has scale advantages in the competition for "bulk information", which is the most important competitive embodiment of social media platforms. In layman's terms, there is a lot of information on Twitter, the information is complete, and the information is interesting, which will naturally attract users' attention. The diversity of information can also allow the platform to better adapt to the fast-paced real-time hot changes, and there will always be hot spots and heat, which will further stimulate users' desire to create and keep the entire UGC ecosystem vibrant.

This monopoly position naturally forces many competing products to choose extremely niche areas to build their own differences, which naturally reduces them to toys for subculture circles. The information deposited on them is bound to become focused, which greatly reduces the core network effect value of social media platforms. When the hot spots in the track are exhausted, it will naturally enter a quiet period, and the lack of heat at this time will also cause the attention of users that have been attracted with great difficulty to be lost. We can easily find this phenomenon in Farcaster and Lens.

So how can we better capture this opportunity when facing the inevitable user loss trend of X? I think Web3 social media platforms can start with the following key points:

(1) With more transparent recommendation algorithms and data storage technology features, boldly compete with X in the field of "bulk information": In the past promotion of related products, it seems that they are too obsessed with using the wealth effect of cryptocurrency to attract users, whether it is the so-called "content monetization" or various reward airdrop logic. In my opinion, these are just scratching the surface. I think the biggest advantage of Web3 social media platforms compared to traditional centralized social media platforms is the transparency and fairness of recommendation algorithms and information storage brought by technical solutions. This is undoubtedly the most suitable for social media platforms with freedom of speech as their core value. Therefore, in the process of product promotion, we must always focus on this feature and directly compete with X, rather than attracting cryptocurrency users first and then seeking to break through the circle. The dictatorship of X has created an opportunity for the operation path of this product. Imagine if the "Prism Gate" incident had not been exposed, would the Bitcoin system have developed to its current situation. This large-scale centralized credit collapse event is a rare opportunity for Web3 products to break through. In addition, I think that in terms of product innovation, modular recommendation algorithms combined with AI are a good direction to think about. By introducing AI functions, users can be allowed to customize recommendation algorithms. At the same time, the algorithm market or platform can be opened to stimulate user UGC. This design that helps users break out of the information cocoon may win the favor of users.

(2) Be more aggressive in marketing, grasp hot social events, and actively attract "X vulnerable groups" from top to bottom: In event marketing, I believe that Web3 social media platforms should be more proactive and support "non-MAGA" values in a more clear-cut way, such as relaxing illegal immigration policies, protecting LGBTQ rights, women's rights, human rights, anti-authoritarian politics, supporting abortion, minority rights, and the rights of people of color. Grasp relevant social hot spots and make your own platform a voice channel to break the circle. At the same time, in this process, actively adopt a top-down promotion strategy. We know that in this election, a number of celebrities in the entertainment, literary and artistic, and sports circles have clearly supported Harris. Therefore, through resource integration, we can strive to get a number of big names to migrate from X platform to this platform, which will have a multiplier effect on the promotion effect.