Tracy and I wouldn't have devoted as much time and energy to hashtag activism in general and #p2 in particularly if we didn't understand what's at stake here. “Twitter *is* a strategy” and “Cognitive evolution and revolution” go into detail on my view that it's a unique opportunity to counter the straight, white, male, and geographical privilege of the blogosphere and broader progressive movement.

In politics, a grass-roots movement is only as powerful as the number in the group.

One of the significant things about social network technologies is that they can act as significant amplifiers: relatively-small, tightly-networked groups can accomplish a lot quickly via distributed organizations. Voces Contra las FARC and Join the Impact are two great examples of this. Right now, Twitter is the hottest buzz-creation place online, so the effect is magnified. #p2 is already close to big enough that it can have a major impact. True, all other things being equal bigger is better … however focusing too much on size at the expense of other issues like effective communications and diversity is a recipe for failure.

In terms of your tag truths, I think you're presenting them as a lot more absolute than the reality. Tracy and I have participated in and written about most of the major hashtag activism campaigns, and hashtag behavior is a lot more complex than you're describing. A hashtag has strong tribe-like elements, and tribe leaders and influential members can very definitely shape its evolution. “Building engaged communities that act” from the #p2 wiki is a summary from a few months ago, and “Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists” on the Seminal has more recent discussion. “

The magnitude 9.0 Twitter Twisting Tempest this weekend has been over the idea that if a tag is not promoted, appended, or otherwise used in a manner consistent with, and agreed upon, by the originating community, all actions are hostile power grabs intending to rob the originating community of their voice and control.

I think that's overstating the situation. For example Xaipe and others started using #p2 in a way that was different than our original intent and made some great arguments expanding the group's focus. In the end their view carried the day — incuding convincing me. Nobody saw this as a power grab.

By contrast, people saw Shoq as suggesting that we change the direction of #p2 in a way that was directly counter to Tracy's and my original goals and the preferences of most long-term members. He also attacked and mocked various members, and derided #p2's history and technology. p2info's anti-diversity logo and his explicit disaffiliation with p2pt0 similarly created an atmosphere of hostility. So yeah, it came off to most people as an attempted power grab.

As long as antagonists intervene to hijack the agenda, no work can be done. It’s as simple as that. We don’t have time to do anything but get the work done.

Alas, with a goal of countering white, male, etc. privilege #p2 should continue to expect antagonists to intervene. And like any political discussion online, we should expect trolling: from conservatives, libertarians, and progressives. We'll just need to find effective ways of minimizing the time, energy, and disruption from this. Skittles and infowar: #pman, disinformation, and trolls has a short list techniques that have worked for various Twitter-based activism campaigns.

jon

Not a new idea, of course. And I'd sure as hell use a different account.

I agree with you that Progressives aren't going to be hurt by this for a couple of reasons. First, the vast majority of Progressives are focused on progressive goals, not the politics of tech and twitter. Second, no matter how much bickering we may do as a group, when it comes to uniting around a goal, progressives shine.

As to the 'hashtag movement', my own preference is that track would be restored and we could do away with the # sign and simply add the designator without chomping through any of our 140 characters. I'm also certain there will be a trendline toward spam and noise in the stream, which is why Steve's post is so right on about people being the greatest value, rather than terms, for track purposes, since tracking high-quality voices is likely to enable discovery of more high-quality people.

Thanks for your thoughts, they're much appreciated.

As someone who wasn't emotionally involved in the evolution of the tag, I found myself more than a little irritated with the power grab going on over the weekend. A tag is a tag is tag unless it becomes recognized by the Twitterverse as a whole. Those uninvolved with it or who aren't following someone that has been are going to use it as they see without hunting down the wiki explanation (which they would no doubt look in the Twitter Fan Wiki if they did look).

I don't think the hashtag “movement” is actually going to be hurt by this infighting. I think it's more that those that are doing the infighting are going to find themselves irrelevant because their followers are going to tune them out by either unfollowing them or putting them in the “fourth” column in Tweetdeck. And the tag is still going to be used by Progressives to tag what they feel is a Progressive issue tweet and, probably soon, by Conservatives to poke at Progressives (just like we did to them with #tcot). I, as someone who has recently adopted #p2 and believes in Progressive causes, will continue to use the tag my way while not listening to squabbling egos. The best thing about Twitter is the unfollow option.

And I completely disagree that this post is going to undermine Progressives. How is that possible? By explaining something that hundreds of people have been witnessing in their Twitter streams anyway? The progressive movement is stronger than a petty argument over a hashtag and some people need to remember that. The other side of the political aisle has tried to lock-step approach and look where that's gotten them.

Thanks for writing what needed to be said.

I know there are some who say that publishing this post somehow undermines progressives as a group. I disagree. I think it speaks to our strengths as a grass-roots, bottom-up group of diverse people. At the same time, we're imperfect and human. That's all there too.