Back in May, I created an account to follow right-wing users because I wanted to understand how it was possible to paint 2 sides on issues like science/human rights. It turns out we’re having completely different conversations, and the constant theme in theirs is fear. (thread)

It disturbs me every time I scroll through the feed, to see a black mirror of my usual feed where every meme and righteous mic drop has its conservative counterpart. The twitter algorithms push up different headlines even from the same news sources that I follow on both accounts,

adding a passive atmosphere of confirmation bias while scrolling. The fact that Twitter exists to find likeminded communities - film twitter, comedy twitter, sports twitter - has led us to the point that liberal & conservative twitter are just having conversations with themselves

What struck me about the George Floyd protests was that people - specifically non-Black people - were actually working to engage their conservative relatives in conversation. It moved the needle - for a moment. It’s already shifting back -

- and how could it not, when these are the voices flooding their feeds 24/7? If we want things to change, we need to find a way to sustain that momentum. Check in regularly, develop a relationship, keep having hard conversations. Otherwise we’re all just talking to ourselves.