It’s Not Me. It’s the Algorithm

As a Black woman without many Black friends nearby, Twitter gave me a community. Then I was blocked.

“Furisode with a Myriad of Flying Cranes” — Anonymous. Via Artvee.

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Editor's Note: Social media platforms are great places for people to connect and find community, but it's easy to forget that there are other largely unseen participants in these exchanges: the platforms themselves. The engineers on the other side of the screen can fundamentally change our experiences of one another by tweaking the platforms' codes and algorithms. We all know this is how it works, but that can be hard to remember when you suddenly find your posts are ignored or, worse, blocked.

For Ofelia Brooks, the platform formerly known as Twitter was a place to connect with the Black community and relieve the loneliness she felt in her predominately white offline world. But when she was blocked, she realized just how precarious the communities we build online can be. In this beautiful and moving essay, Ofelia describes the joys and devastations of connecting online. — Sara Eckel

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I usually experience Black cultural moments alone. I live in Chicago, while my close friends live in my hometown in California, where I was born and raised, or in New York City, where I pursued higher education and lived in my 20s. Of course, there are plenty of Black people in Chicago, but I’ve struggled to meet them. Now in my late 30s, I live in a mostly white North Side neighborhood with my white husband. I met most of my friends through his friend group or my work in the lily-white legal field. 

But make no mistake: I am very Black and have very Black tastes. I’m an avid consumer of Black culture, but without Black friends to share these interests with, life can get lonely.

When news of Whitney Houston’s death spread in 2012, I cried by myself. When Issa Dee came home to Lawrence’s lone pillow and Best Buy shirt on Insecure in 2016, I gasped in solitude. I watched Black Panther alone in 2018; in 2019, I did the same with Homecoming. 

Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit, and the loneliness that had seemed tolerable for years became unbearable in months.

Late one night during my usual lockdown browsing, an article led me to a tweet by a Black woman writer and podcaster—let’s call her Nancy. Nancy demanded recognition of the importance of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s character Ashley Banks to The Culture. Given my decade-long obsession with Ashley, played by fellow Black Latina actress Tatyana Ali, I felt so seen. I scrolled through the chorus of replies in agreement, nodding along furiously to each one.

I had just watched the Fresh Prince 30th-year reunion episode by myself and longed to connect with Nancy and others. I knew they would share my views that Tatyana Ali seemed to be aging backward and could still sing “Make Up Your Mind,” a fictional single her character released, as if 30 years hadn’t passed. I wanted to say all this on Twitter—and I do mean Twitter; the “X” rebrand was still years away—but I didn’t because I didn’t think I was popular or cool enough to have opinions.

Instead, I sent off a few texts with my opinions to my friends in California, who were eating dinner, and in New York, who were sleeping. Some responded days or weeks later; some didn’t respond at all.

I started poking around and decided to join Twitter, looking for connections in real time. I followed Nancy first.

It was a revelation. In 2020, Twitter was still a Black cultural touchstone. I caught all the references, laughed at the inside jokes, and felt like I was part of something. For the first time in a decade, I didn’t grieve, gasp, or experience cultural moments alone.

One night, while my husband visited his parents out-of-state, I joined a live Twitter session watching that year’s BET Awards. Every “yassss!” and “OK!” that came out of my mouth matched the tweets as ’90s cultural icon after icon performed. 

When a tribute honoring Queen Latifah started, I couldn’t read and agree fast enough. With each guest star rapping Latifah’s hits, I got more excited. When Lil’ Kim took the stage and delivered a nearly perfect rendition of “U.N.I.T.Y.,” I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted in. My first tweet praised Kim’s virtuoso performance. 

Minutes later, my phone buzzed and alerted me that a user had liked my comment. A minute later came another buzz, and then another, and another. I missed the next 20 minutes of the awards show, glued to my iPhone’s screen, commenting on other aspects of the show, thrilled by the stream of likes.

I enjoyed feeling popular. But more importantly, I liked feeling like a part of something. I didn’t have to consume culture on my own anymore. Judging by the number of likes to my Lil’ Kim tweet, I instantly had a community of friends to engage with.

But all good things must come to an end. Or, as I might read in my timeline, Black people can’t have nothing.

One morning, while scrolling, I couldn’t view a tweet from Nancy that someone I followed had replied to. The tweet was apparently unavailable. I went to Nancy’s profile to figure out why. 

Then Twitter told me: “You’re blocked.”

My heart dropped. How? Why? I never tagged, mentioned, or DM’d Nancy. The only conceivable offense I had committed was liking an absurd number of her tweets.

I Googled furiously, hoping I could be unblocked somehow. I couldn’t. I remembered my analog days of Twitter and went to Nancy’s profile through my internet browser. Buried in her feed was a PSA that she would block any new Twitter accounts that had only a few followers because trolls were harassing her.

I fit that description—I only had a handful of followers. But I wasn’t a troll. I was a Black woman, visibly so, trying to connect to other Black women and non-binary people. And I was blocked.

I turned to my timeline for consolation. But my feed was full of closed replies and DMs, and tweets only visible to mutuals. I returned to loneliness, an outside viewer rather than a participant.

During my brief time on the app, I read many tweets referring to Twitter as a hellscape, so I assumed it wasn’t personal. People—especially Black women and non-binary people—had to protect themselves online. But I had also experienced Twitter as a magical place where Black people found community. It was hard not to take it personally. I was a Black person being denied entry.

I stayed in my feelings while doing some soul—and internet—searching. 

The articles on the toxicity of Twitter and other platforms numbered in the thousands. A 2017 Amnesty International study found that Black women on Twitter were 84% more likely to be targeted for harassment than white women. According to a 2021 report by GLAAD, 64% of LGBTQ+ social media users reported experiencing harassment. Unfortunately, no one has studied the experiences of Black queer and nonbinary people on Twitter, but given how many have quit the platform, surely the numbers were worse.

For every article on toxicity, there was another from Twitter or a top social media site’s headquarters about how they were addressing it. The preferred mechanism: Focus on the users instead of the abusers. 

Top sites implemented anti-abuse tools that put the onus on the users to protect themselves. Take Instagram’s Limits feature, which allows users to limit their interactions when they go viral, or Hidden Words, which filters offensive messages into a folder that users can never view. X implemented similar anti-abuse tools, like allowing users to untag themselves and block users.

After only a couple of years on the apps, even I could tell these tools were doomed. Requiring users to protect themselves from abuse would certainly not stop it.

But Twitter, even before Elon Musk’s takeover, knew this. Twitter executives knew about these problems for years. The podcast “There Are No Girls On the Internet” reported on Twitter doing nothing in 2014 in response to misogynist trolls launching a disinformation campaign against Black feminists. The Anti-Defamation League reported that in 2023 every type of online hate and harassment—from bullying to doxing—increased by nearly every measure and within almost every demographic group from 2022. Unsurprisingly, the numbers were worst for women, LGBTQ+ people and Black people.

It was hard not to see these initiatives as performative at best and intentionally irresponsible at worst. Since Musk took over Twitter and renamed it X, things have gotten worse. The Network Contagion Research Institute found that in the first twelve hours of Musk’s takeover, the use of the n-word increased nearly 500%. Several LGBTQ+ and Black organizations have left the platform due to increased cyberbullying and harassment. And Musk continues to threaten to remove even the window-dressing fixes Twitter implemented in 2021, like the ability to block users.

Twitter/X and other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook could stop abuse easily: ban abusers. Until then, social media will fail at its only purpose: to connect people.

In the end, how could I fault Nancy for blocking me? She didn’t have many options to shield herself from online abuse. Sure, she lost out on one enthusiastic follower, but she gained protection from countless trolls. Twitter was to blame, not Nancy. 

When Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors reflected on 15 tumultuous years on social media, she encouraged users to use the apps responsibly and “hold space for human beings often impacted by social media’s inherent racism, sexism, and capitalism.”

So I’m turning my pain into positivity. I occasionally scan Twitter/X to like and re-tweet Black women and nonbinary people who come across my timeline. I joined Instagram and shower people’s posts with fire and googly-eye emojis whenever they write an article, post a selfie, or get a new job or hairstyle. Even better, I’ve taken some conversations offline and met some of my mutuals IRL at writers’ conferences and concerts, or when passing through each other’s cities.

I want to find a community on Twitter or some other app, and, as Cullors reminds us, I also have a responsibility to build that community.

And to Nancy: I bought your book, subscribed to your podcast, and heart your vacation and out-on-the-town pics on Instagram. (Here’s hoping you don’t mistake me for a troll on that app.)

I’m holding space for you, sis. I hope one day we can connect.

How have algorithm changes effected your social-media experience?