Important lines of research are how to raise public awareness
and public understanding of science and technology. Also, learning how
the public feels and knows about science generally as well as individual
subjects, such as genetic engineering, or bioethics. Research by Matthew Nisbet
highlights several challenges in science communication, including the
paradox that scientific success can create either trust or distrust in
experts in different populations and that attitudes of trust are shaped
by mostly socioeconomic rather than religious or ideological
differences. A 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center found varying levels of trust in science by country, political leanings, and other factors.
Bodmer report
The publication of the Royal Society's' report The Public Understanding of Science (or Bodmer Report) in 1985 is widely held to be the birth of the Public Understanding of Science movement in Britain. The report led to the founding of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science and a cultural change in the attitude of scientists to outreach activities.
Models of engagement
Contextualist model
In the 1990s, a new perspective emerged in the field with the classic study of Cumbrian Sheep Farmers' interaction with the Nuclear scientists in England. Brian Wynne
demonstrated how the experts were ignorant or disinterested in taking
into account the lay knowledge of the sheep farmers while conducting
field experiments on the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear fallout on the sheep in the region. Because of this shortcoming from the side of the scientists, local
farmers lost their trust in them. The experts were unaware of the local
environmental conditions and the behaviour of sheep and this has
eventually led to the failure of their experimental models. Following
this study, scholars have studies similar micro-sociological contexts of
expert-lay interaction and proposed that the context of knowledge
communication is important to understand public engagement with science.
Instead of large scale public opinion surveys, researchers proposed
studies informed by sociology of scientific knowledge
(SSK). The contextualist model focuses on the social impediments in the
bidirectional flow of scientific knowledge between experts and
laypersons/communities.
Deliberative model
Scholars like Sheila Jasanoff have advanced the debate around public engagement with science by leveraging the theory of deliberative democracy
to analyze the public deliberation of and participation in science
through various institutional forms. Proponents of greater public
deliberation argue it is a basic condition for decision making in
democratic societies, even on science and technology issues. There are also attempts to develop more inclusive participatory models
of technological governance in the form of consensus conferences, citizen juries, extended peer reviews, and deliberative mapping.
Civic science model
Some scholars have identified a new era of "post-normal science"
(PNS) in which many scientific discoveries carry high stakes if risks
are estimated incorrectly within a broader social context that has a
high degree of uncertainty. This PNS era requires a new approach to public engagement efforts and
requires a reevaluation of the underlying assumptions of "public
engagement", especially with emerging science and technology issues,
like CRISPR gene editing, that have the potential to become "wicked problems". These "wicked" issues often require regulatory and policy decisions
that have no single correct solution and often involve numerous interest
groups – none of whom are clearly positioned to decide and resolve the
problem. Policy and regulatory decisions around these scientific issues
are inherently political and must balance trade-offs between the
scientific research, perceptions of risk, societal needs, and ethical
values. While scientists can provide factual answers to research questions and
mathematical estimates of risk, many considerations surrounding these
wicked science and technology issues have no factual answer. The
unidirectional deficit model
of simply educating the public on theses issues is insufficient to
address these complex questions, and some scholars have proposed
scientists adopt a culture of civic science: "broad public engagement
with issues that arise at the many intersections between science and
society." An emphasis is placed on developing an iterative engagement model that
actively seeks to incorporate groups who stand to be adversely effected
by a new technology and conducting this engagement away from universities so that it can be done on the public's terms with the public's terms. Other scholars have emphasized that this model of public engagement
requires that the public be able to influence science, not merely be
engaged by it, up to the point of being able to say "no" to research
that does not align with the broader public's values. Under the civic science model, there are five key lessons for scientists committed to public engagement:
Establish why you want to engage with the public and clearly identify your goals.
Seek out and engage with a broad, diverse range of groups and perspectives and center engagement on listening to these groups.
Work cooperatively with groups to establish common definitions to
avoid the perception that researchers are being disingenuous by relying
on semantic differences between expert and lay interpretations of
vocabulary to ensure the public "supports" their position.
Working to tilt public debates in favor of the priorities and values
of researchers will not lead to consistent "best" decisions because
wicked science and technology problems will have different
considerations and perspectives depending on the application and
cultural context.
Meaningfully engage as early as possible; engagement must begin
early enough in the research process that the public's views can shape
both the research and implementation of findings
Public understanding of science
Social scientists use various metrics to measure public understanding of science, including:
Factual knowledge
The
key assumptions is that the more individual pieces of information a
person is able to retrieve, the more that person is considered to have
learned.
Examples of measurement:
Recognition: Answering a specific question by selecting the correct answer out a list
Cued recall: Answering a specific question without a list of choices
Free recall: After exposure to information, the study participant produces a list of as much of the information as they can remember
Self-reported knowledge, perceived knowledge, or perceived familiarity
The key assumption is that emphasizes the value of knowledge of one's knowledge.
Examples of measurement:
Scaled survey responses to questions such as, "How well informed you would say you are about this topic?", this can be also used to assess perceived knowledge before and after events
Structural knowledge
The nature of connections among different pieces of information in memory. The key assumption is that the use of elaboration increases the likelihood of remembering information.
Examples of measurement:
Asking study participants to assess relationships among
concepts. For example, participants free recall concepts onto the first
row and column of a matrix, then indicate whether the concepts are
related to each other by placing an "X" in the cell if they are not.
Participants then rank the remaining open cells by their relatedness
from 1 (only very weakly) to 7 (very strongly related).
Study participants answer questions designed to measure elaboration
involved in a task, such as, "I tried to relate the ideas I read about
to my own past experiences."
Trust and credibility
People
may trust science or scientists to different degrees, or may find
specific scientists or specific research to be more or less credible.
These factors can be related to how science can be used to advance
knowledge, and may also be related to how science is communicated, with
trust formation playing a central role.
Examples of measurement:
The 21-item Trust in Science and Scientists Inventory, which
measures agreement/disagreement with statements like, "We can trust
scientists to share their discoveries even if we don't like their
findings."
Scientist-specific measures of agreement, such as "I would trust scientific information if I knew it came from this author."
Mixed use of measures
While
some studies purport that factual and perceived knowledge can be viewed
as the same construct, a 2012 study investigating public knowledge of
nanotechnology supports separating their use in communications research,
as they "do not reflect the same underlying knowledge structures". Correlations between them were found to be low and they were not
predicted by the same factors. For example different types of science
media use, television versus online, predicted different constructs.
Factual knowledge has been shown to be empirically distinct from structural knowledge.
Project example
Government and private-led campaigns and events, such as Dana Foundation's "Brain Awareness Week", are becoming a strong focus of programmes which try to promote public awareness of science.
The UK PAWS Foundation dramatically went as far as establishing a
Drama Fund with the BBC in 1994. The purpose was to encourage and
support the creation of new drama for television, drawing on the world
of science and technology.
The Vega Science Trust was set up in 1994 to promote science through the media of television
and the internet with the aim of giving scientists a platform from which
to communicate to the general public.
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument, an argument for the existence of God.
In broad terms, the watchmaker analogy states that just as it is
readily observed that a watch (e.g., a pocket watch) did not coe to be
accidentally or on its own but rather through the intentional handiwork
of a skilled watchmaker, it is also readily observed that nature did not
come to be accidentally or on its own but through the intentional
handiwork of an intelligent designer. The watchmaker analogy originated
in natural theology and is often used to argue for the concept of intelligent design. The analogy states that a design implies a designer, by an intelligent designer, i.e., a creator deity. The watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. The original analogy played a prominent role in natural theology and
the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for
the existence of God of the universe, in both Christianity and Deism. Prior to Paley, however, Sir Isaac Newton, René Descartes, and others from the time of the Scientific Revolution
had each believed "that the physical laws he [each] had uncovered
revealed the mechanical perfection of the workings of the universe to be
akin to a watch, wherein the watchmaker is God."
The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's book on natural selection put forward an alternative explanation to the watchmaker analogy, for complexity and adaptation. In the 19th century, deists, who championed the watchmaker analogy, held that Darwin's theory fit with "the principle of uniformitarianism—the idea that all processes in the world occur now as they have in the past" and that deistic evolution "provided an explanatory framework for understanding species variation in a mechanical universe."
When evolutionary biology began being taught in American high schools in the 1960s, Christian fundamentalists
used versions of the argument to dispute the concepts of evolution and
natural selection, and there was renewed interest in the watchmaker
argument. Evolutionary biologistRichard Dawkins referred to the analogy in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker when explaining the mechanism of evolution. Others, however, consider the watchmaker analogy to be compatible with evolutionary creation, opining that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
History
Ancient predecessor
In the second century Epictetus argued that, by analogy to the way a sword is made by a craftsman to fit with a scabbard, so human genitals
and the desire of humans to fit them together suggest a type of design
or craftsmanship of the human form. Epictetus attributed this design to a
type of Providence woven into the fabric of the universe, rather than to a personal monotheistic god.
Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution
"nurtured a growing awareness" that "there were universal laws of
nature at work that ordered the movement of the world and its parts." Amos Yong writes that in "astronomy, the Copernican revolution regarding the heliocentrism of the solar system, Johannes Kepler's
(1571–1630) three laws of planetary motion, and Isaac Newton's
(1642–1727) law of universal gravitation—laws of gravitation and of
motion, and notions of absolute space and time—all combined to establish
the regularities of heavenly and earthly bodies".
Simultaneously, the development of machine technology and the emergence of the mechanical philosophy encouraged mechanical imagery unlikely to have come to the fore in previous ages.
With such a backdrop, "deists suggested the watchmaker analogy:
just as watches are set in motion by watchmakers, after which they
operate according to their pre-established mechanisms, so also was the
world begun by God as creator, after which it and all its parts have
operated according to their pre-established natural laws. With these
laws perfectly in place, events have unfolded according to the
prescribed plan." For Sir Isaac Newton, "the regular motion of the planets made it reasonable to believe in the continued existence of God". Newton also upheld the idea that "like a watchmaker, God was forced to
intervene in the universe and tinker with the mechanism from time to
time to ensure that it continued operating in good working order".
Similarly to Newton, René Descartes
(1596–1650) speculated on "the cosmos as a great time machine operating
according to fixed laws, a watch created and wound up by the great
watchmaker".
Watches and timepieces have been used as examples of complicated technology in philosophical discussions. For example, Cicero, Voltaire and René Descartes all used timepieces in arguments regarding purpose. The watchmaker analogy, as described here, was used by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle in 1686, but was most famously formulated by Paley.
In crossing a heath, suppose I
pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be
there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the
contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy
to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch
upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be
in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given,
that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. ...
There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an
artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we
find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and
designed its use. ... Every indication of contrivance, every
manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works
of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater
or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.
— William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
Paley went on to argue that the complex structures of living things
and the remarkable adaptations of plants and animals required an
intelligent designer. He believed the natural world was the creation of
God and showed the nature of the creator. According to Paley, God had
carefully designed "even the most humble and insignificant organisms"
and all of their minute features (such as the wings and antennae of earwigs). He believed, therefore, that God must care even more for humanity.
Paley recognised that there is great suffering in nature and
nature appears to be indifferent to pain. His way of reconciling that
with his belief in a benevolent God was to assume that life had more pleasure than pain.
As a side note, a charge of wholesale plagiarism from this book was brought against Paley in The Athenaeum
for 1848, but the famous illustration of the watch was not peculiar to
Nieuwentyt and had been used by many others before either Paley or
Nieuwentyt. But the charge of plagiarism was based on more similarities.
For example, Nieuwentyt wrote "in the middle of a Sandy down, or in a
desart [sic] and solitary Place, where few People are used to pass, any one should find a Watch ..."
Joseph Butler
William Paley taught the works of Joseph Butler
and appears to have built on Butler's 1736 design arguments of
inferring a designer from evidence of design. Butler noted:
"As the manifold Appearances of Design and of final Causes, in the
Constitution of the World, prove it to be the Work of an intelligent
Mind ... The appearances of Design and of final Causes in the constitution of nature as really prove this acting agent to be an intelligent Designer... ten thousand Instances of Design, cannot but prove a Designer.".
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau also mentioned the watchmaker theory. He wrote the following in his 1762 book, Emile:
I am like a man who sees the works of a watch for the first time; he is
never weary of admiring the mechanism, though he does not know the use
of the instrument and has never seen its face. I do not know what this
is for, says he, but I see that each part of it is fitted to the rest, I
admire the workman in the details of his work, and I am quite certain
that all these wheels only work together in this fashion for some common
end which I cannot perceive. Let us compare the special ends, the
means, the ordered relations of every kind, then let us listen to the
inner voice of feeling; what healthy mind can reject its evidence?
Unless the eyes are blinded by prejudices, can they fail to see that the
visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence? What
sophisms must be brought together before we fail to understand the
harmony of existence and the wonderful co-operation of every part for
the maintenance of the rest?
Criticism
David Hume
Before Paley published his book, David Hume
(1711–1776) had already put forward a number of philosophical
criticisms of the watch analogy, and to some extent anticipated the
concept of natural selection. His criticisms can be separated into three major distinctions.
His first objection is that we have no experience of
world-making. Hume highlighted the fact that everything we claim to know
the cause of, we have derived the inductions from previous experiences
of similar objects being created or seen the object itself being created
ourselves. For example, with a watch, we know it has to be created by a
watchmaker because we can observe it being made and compare it to the
making of other similar watches or objects to deduce they have alike
causes in their creation. However, he argues that we have no experience
of the universe's creation or any other universe's creations to compare
our own universe to and never will; therefore, it would be illogical to
infer that our universe has been created by an intelligent designer in
the same way that a watch has.[citation needed]
The second criticism that Hume offers is about the form of the
argument as an analogy in itself. An analogical argument claims that
because object X (a watch) is like object Y (the universe) in one
respect, both are therefore probably alike in another, hidden, respect
(their cause, having to be created by an intelligent designer). He
points out that for an argument from analogy to be successful, the two
things that are being compared have to have an adequate number of
similarities that are relevant to the respect that are analogised. For
example, a kitten and a lion may be very similar in many respects, but
just because a lion makes a "roar", it would not be correct to infer a
kitten also "roars", the similarities between the two objects being not
enough and the degree of relevance to what sound they make being not
relevant enough. Hume then argues that the universe and a watch also do
not have enough relevant or close similarities to infer that they were
both created the same way. For example, the universe is made of organic
natural material, but the watch is made of artificial mechanic
materials. He claims that in the same respect, the universe could be
argued to be more analogous to something more organic such as a
vegetable (which we can observe for ourselves does not need a 'designer'
or a 'watchmaker' to be created). Although he admits the analogy of a
universe to a vegetable to seem ridiculous, he says that it is just as
ridiculous to analogize the universe with a watch.
The third criticism that Hume offers is that even if the argument
did give evidence for a designer; it still gives no evidence for the
traditional 'omnipotent', 'benevolent' (all-powerful and all-loving) God
of traditional Christian theism. One of the main assumptions of Paley's
argument is that 'like effects have like causes'; or that machines
(like the watch) and the universe have similar features of design and so
both also have the same cause of their existence: they must both have
an intelligent designer. However, Hume points out that what Paley does
not comprehend is to what extent 'like causes' extend: how similar the
creation of a universe is to the creation of a watch. Instead, Paley
moves straight to the conclusion that this designer of the universe is
the 'God' he believes in of traditional Christianity. Hume, however
takes the idea of 'like causes' and points out some potential
absurdities in how far the 'likeness' of these causes could extend to if
the argument were taken further as to explain this. One example that he
uses is how a machine or a watch is usually designed by a whole team of
people rather than just one person. Surely, if we are analogizing the
two in this way, it would point to there being a group of gods who
created the universe, not just a single being. Another example he uses
is that complex machines are usually the result of many years of trial
and error with every new machine being an improved version of the last.
Also by analogy of the two, would that not hint that the universe could
also have been just one of many of God's 'trials' and that there are
much better universes out there? However, if that were taken to be true,
surely the 'creator' of it all would not be 'all loving' and 'all
powerful' if they had to carry out the process of 'trial and error' when
creating the universe?
Hume also points out there is still a possibility that the
universe could have been created by random chance but still show
evidence of design as the universe is eternal and would have an infinite
amount of time to be able to form a universe so complex and ordered as
our own. He called that the 'Epicurean hypothesis'. It argued that when
the universe was first created, the universe was random and chaotic, but
if the universe is eternal, over an unlimited period of time, natural
forces could have naturally 'evolved' by random particles coming
together over time into the incredibly ordered system we can observe
today without the need of an intelligent designer as an explanation.
The last objection that he makes draws on the widely discussed problem of evil.
He argues that all the daily unnecessary suffering that goes on
everywhere within the world is yet another factor that pulls away from
the idea that God is an 'omnipotent' 'benevolent' being.
When Darwin completed his studies of theology at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1831, he read Paley's Natural Theology and believed that the work gave rational proof of the existence of God. That was because living beings showed complexity and were exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world.
Subsequently, on the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin found that nature was not so beneficent, and the distribution of species did not support ideas of divine creation. In 1838, shortly after his return, Darwin conceived his theory that natural selection,
rather than divine design, was the best explanation for gradual change
in populations over many generations. He published the theory in On the Origin of Species in 1859, and in later editions, he noted responses that he had received:
It can hardly be supposed that a
false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the
theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above
specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method
of arguing; but it is a method used in judging of the common events of
life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers ...
I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the
religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how
transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery
ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also
attacked by Leibnitz, "as subversive of natural, and inferentially of
revealed, religion." A celebrated author and divine has written to me
that "he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a
conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms
capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe
that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by
the action of His laws."
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
Darwin reviewed the implications of this finding in his autobiography:
Although I did not think much about
the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my
life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been
driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which
formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural
selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for
instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by
an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be
no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action
of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
— Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. With the original omissions restored.
The idea that nature was governed by laws was already common, and in 1833, William Whewell as a proponent of the natural theology
that Paley had inspired had written that "with regard to the material
world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are
brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted
in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws." Darwin, who spoke of the "fixed laws" concurred with Whewell, writing in his second edition of On The Origin of Species:
There is grandeur in this view of
life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has
gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
are being, evolved.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1860)
By the time that Darwin published his theory, theologians of liberal Christianity
were already supporting such ideas, and by the late 19th century, their
modernist approach was predominant in theology. In science, evolution theory incorporating Darwin's natural selection became completely accepted.
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
argues that the watch analogy conflates the complexity that arises from
living organisms that are able to reproduce themselves (and may become
more complex over time) with the complexity of inanimate objects, unable
to pass on any reproductive changes (such as the multitude of parts
manufactured in a watch). The comparison breaks down because of this
important distinction.
In a BBC Horizon episode, also entitled The Blind Watchmaker,
Dawkins described Paley's argument as being "as mistaken as it is
elegant". In both contexts, he saw Paley as having made an incorrect
proposal as to a certain problem's solution, but Dawkins did not
disrespect him. In his essay The Big Bang, Steven Pinker
discusses Dawkins's coverage of Paley's argument, adding: "Biologists
today do not disagree with Paley's laying out of the problem. They
disagree only with his solution."
In his book The God Delusion,
Dawkins argues that rather than luck, the evolution of human life is
the result of natural selection. He suggests that it is fallacious to
view "coming about by chance" and "coming about by design" as the only
possibilities, with natural selection being the alternative to the
existence of an intelligent designer. By amassing a large number of
small changes, the theory of natural selection allows for a seemingly
impossible end product to be produced.
In addition, he argues that the watchmaker's creation of the
watch implies that the watchmaker must be more complex than the watch.
Design is top-down, someone or something more complex designs something
less complex. To follow the line upwards demands that the watch was
designed by a (necessarily more complex) watchmaker, the watchmaker must
have been created by a more complex being than himself. So the question
becomes who designed the designer? Dawkins argues that (a) this line
continues ad infinitum, and (b) it does not explain anything. Evolution,
on the other hand, takes a bottom-up approach; it explains how more
complexity can arise gradually by building on or combining lesser
complexity.
Richerson and Boyd
Biologist Peter Richerson and anthropologist Robert Boyd
offer an oblique criticism by arguing that watches were not "hopeful
monsters created by single inventors," but were created by watchmakers
building up their skills in a cumulative fashion over time, each
contributing to a watch-making tradition from which any individual
watchmaker draws their designs.
Contemporary usage
In the early 20th century, the modernist theology of higher criticism was contested in the United States by Biblical literalists, who campaigned successfully against the teaching of evolution and began calling themselves creationists in the 1920s. When teaching of evolution was reintroduced into public schools in the 1960s, they adopted what they called creation science that had a central concept of design in similar terms to Paley's argument. That idea was then relabeled intelligent design,
which presents the same analogy as an argument against evolution by
natural selection without explicitly stating that the "intelligent
designer" was God. The argument from the complexity of biological
organisms was now presented as the irreducible complexity argument, the most notable proponent of which was Michael Behe, and, leveraging off the verbiage of information theory, the specified complexity argument, the most notable proponent of which was William Dembski.
The watchmaker analogy was referenced in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. Throughout the trial, Paley was mentioned several times. The defense's expert witness John Haught noted that both intelligent design and the watchmaker analogy are "reformulations" of the same theological argument. On day 21 of the trial, Mr. Harvey walked Dr. Minnich through a
modernized version of Paley's argument, substituting a cell phone for
the watch. In his ruling, the judge stated that the use of the argument from design
by intelligent design proponents "is merely a restatement of the
Reverend William Paley's argument applied at the cell level," adding "Minnich, Behe, and Paley reach the same conclusion, that
complex organisms must have been designed using the same reasoning,
except that Professors Behe and Minnich refuse to identify the designer,
whereas Paley inferred from the presence of design that it was God."
The judge ruled that such an inductive argument is not accepted as
science because it is unfalsifiable.
The fine-tuned universe is the hypothesis that, because "life as we know it" could not exist if the constants of nature – such as the electron charge or the gravitational constant – had been even slightly different, the universe must be tuned specifically for life. In practice, this hypothesis is formulated in terms of dimensionless physical constants.
History
In 1913, chemistLawrence Joseph Henderson wrote The Fitness of the Environment,
one of the first books to explore fine tuning in the universe.
Henderson discusses the importance of water and the environment to
living things, pointing out that life as it exists on Earth depends
entirely on Earth's very specific environmental conditions, especially
the prevalence and properties of water.
In 1961, physicist Robert H. Dicke argued that certain forces in physics, such as gravity and electromagnetism, must be perfectly fine-tuned for life to exist in the universe.
Astronomer Fred Hoyle
argued for a fine-tuned universe: "From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I
have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of [...] and your
fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to
be. [...] A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and
biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in
nature." In his 1983 book The Intelligent Universe, Hoyle wrote, "The list of anthropic properties, apparent accidents of a
non-biological nature without which carbon-based and hence human life
could not exist, is large and impressive."
Belief in the fine-tuned universe led to the expectation that the Large Hadron Collider would produce evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, but by 2012 it had not produced evidence for supersymmetry at the energy scales it was able to probe.
Motivation
Physicist Paul Davies
said: "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists
that the Universe is in several respects 'fine-tuned' for life. But the
conclusion is not so much that the Universe is fine-tuned for life;
rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that
life requires". He also said that "'anthropic' reasoning fails to distinguish between minimally biophilic
universes, in which life is permitted, but only marginally possible,
and optimally biophilic universes, in which life flourishes because biogenesis occurs frequently". Among scientists who find the evidence persuasive, a variety of natural explanations have been proposed, such as the existence of multiple universes introducing a survivorship bias under the anthropic principle.
The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that a small
change in several of the physical constants would make the universe
radically different. Stephen Hawking
observed: "The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain
many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the
electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ...
The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have
been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life".
For example, if the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger than it is (i.e. if the coupling constant representing its strength were 2% larger) while the other constants were left unchanged, diprotons would be stable; according to Davies, hydrogen would fuse into them instead of deuterium and helium. This would drastically alter the physics of stars,
and presumably preclude the existence of life similar to what we
observe on Earth. The diproton's existence would short-circuit the slow
fusion of hydrogen into deuterium. Hydrogen would fuse so easily that it
is likely that all the universe's hydrogen would be consumed in the
first few minutes after the Big Bang. This "diproton argument" is disputed by other physicists, who calculate
that as long as the increase in strength is less than 50%, stellar
fusion could occur despite the existence of stable diprotons.
The precise formulation of the idea is made difficult by the fact
that it is not yet known how many independent physical constants there
are. The Standard Model of particle physics has 25 freely adjustable parameters and general relativity has one more, the cosmological constant, which is known to be nonzero but profoundly small in value. Because physicists have not developed an empirically successful theory of quantum gravity, there is no known way to combine quantum mechanics, on which the standard model depends, and general relativity.
Without knowledge of this more complete theory suspected to
underlie the standard model, it is impossible to definitively count the
number of truly independent physical constants. In some candidate
theories, the number of independent physical constants may be as small
as one. For example, the cosmological constant may be a fundamental
constant but attempts have also been made to calculate it from other
constants, and according to the author of one such calculation, "the
small value of the cosmological constant is telling us that a remarkably
precise and totally unexpected relation exists among all the parameters
of the Standard Model of particle physics, the bare cosmological constant and unknown physics".
N, the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force between a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist. If it were large enough, they would repel them so violently that larger atoms would never be generated.
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force. If ε
were 0.006, a proton could not bond to a neutron, and only hydrogen
could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to
Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the
hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang.
Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen
remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less
than about 50%.
Omega (Ω), commonly known as the density parameter,
is the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the
universe. It is the ratio of the mass density of the universe to the
"critical density" and is approximately 1. If gravity were too strong
compared with dark energy and the initial cosmic expansion rate, the
universe would have collapsed before life could have evolved. If gravity
were too weak, no stars would have formed.
Lambda (Λ), commonly known as the cosmological constant, describes the ratio of the density of dark energy
to the critical energy density of the universe, given certain
reasonable assumptions such as that dark energy density is a constant.
In terms of Planck units, and as a natural dimensionless value, Λ is on the order of 10−122. This is so small that it has no significant effect on cosmic structures
that are smaller than a billion light-years across. A slightly larger
value of the cosmological constant would have caused space to expand rapidly enough that stars and other astronomical structures would not be able to form.
Q, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, is around 10−5.
If it is too small, no stars can form. If it is too large, no stars can
survive because the universe is too violent, according to Rees.
D, the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime, is 3. Rees claims that life could not exist if there were 2 or 4 spatial dimensions. Rees argues this does not preclude the existence of ten-dimensional strings.
Max Tegmark
argued that if there is more than one time dimension, then physical
systems' behavior could not be predicted reliably from knowledge of the
relevant partial differential equations. In such a universe, intelligent life capable of manipulating technology could not emerge. Moreover, protons and electrons
would be unstable and could decay into particles having greater mass
than themselves. This is not a problem if the particles have a
sufficiently low temperature.
An older example is the Hoyle state, the third-lowest energy state of the carbon-12 nucleus, with an energy of 7.656 MeV above the ground level. According to one calculation, if the state's energy level were lower
than 7.3 or greater than 7.9 MeV, insufficient carbon would exist to
support life. To explain the universe's abundance of carbon, the Hoyle
state must be further tuned to a value between 7.596 and 7.716 MeV. A
similar calculation, focusing on the underlying fundamental constants
that give rise to various energy levels, concludes that the strong force
must be tuned to a precision of at least 0.5%, and the electromagnetic
force to a precision of at least 4%, to prevent either carbon production
or oxygen production from dropping significantly.
Explanations
Some explanations of fine-tuning are naturalistic. First, the fine-tuning might be an illusion: more fundamental physics
may explain the apparent fine-tuning in physical parameters in the
current understanding by constraining the values those parameters are
likely to take. As Lawrence Krauss
put it, "certain quantities have seemed inexplicable and fine-tuned,
and once we understand them, they don't seem to be so fine-tuned. We
have to have some historical perspective". Victor J. Stenger has shown that random selection of physical parameters can still produce universes capable of harboring life. Some argue it is possible that a final fundamental theory of everything will explain the underlying causes of the apparent fine-tuning in every parameter.
Still, as modern cosmology developed, various hypotheses not presuming hidden order have been proposed. One is a multiverse, where fundamental physical constants are postulated to have different values outside of the known universe. On this hypothesis, separate parts of reality would have wildly
different characteristics. In such scenarios, the appearance of
fine-tuning is explained as a consequence of the weak anthropic principle and selection bias, specifically survivorship bias.
Only those universes with fundamental constants hospitable to life,
such as on Earth, could contain life forms capable of observing the
universe who can contemplate the question of fine-tuning. Zhi-Wei Wang and Samuel L. Braunstein argue that the apparent fine-tuning of fundamental constants could be due to the lack of understanding of these constants.
If the universe is just one of many (possibly infinitely many)
universes, each with different physical phenomena and constants, it is
unsurprising that there is a universe hospitable to intelligent life.
Some versions of the multiverse hypothesis therefore provide a simple
explanation for any fine-tuning, while the analysis of Wang and Braunstein challenges the view that this universe is unique in its ability to support life.
The multiverse idea has led to considerable research into the anthropic principle and has been of particular interest to particle physicists because theories of everything
do apparently generate large numbers of universes in which the physical
constants vary widely. Although there is no evidence for the existence
of a multiverse, some versions of the theory make predictions of which
some researchers studying M-theory and gravity leaks hope to see some evidence soon. According to Laura Mersini-Houghton, the WMAP cold spot could provide testable empirical evidence of a parallel universe. Variants of this approach include Lee Smolin's notion of cosmological natural selection, the ekpyrotic universe, and the bubble universe theory.
It has been suggested that invoking the multiverse to explain fine-tuning is a form of the inverse gambler's fallacy.
Top-down cosmology
Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog proposed that the universe's initial conditions consisted of a superposition of many possible initial conditions, only a small fraction of which contributed to the conditions seen today. According to the top-down cosmology
theory, the universe's "fine-tuned" physical constants are inevitable,
because the universe "selects" only those histories that led to the
present conditions. In this way, top-down cosmology provides an
anthropic explanation for why this universe allows matter and life
without invoking the multiverse.
Carbon chauvinism
Some
forms of fine-tuning arguments about the formation of life assume that
only carbon-based life forms are possible, an assumption sometimes
called carbon chauvinism. Conceptually, alternative biochemistry or other forms of life are possible.
Simulation hypothesis
The simulation hypothesis
holds that the universe is fine-tuned simply because the more
technologically advanced simulation operator(s) programmed it that way.
No improbability
Graham Priest, Mark Colyvan, Jay L. Garfield,
and others have argued against the presupposition that "the laws of
physics or the boundary conditions of the universe could have been other
than they are".
Some scientists, theologians, and philosophers, as well as certain religious groups, argue that providence or creation are responsible for fine-tuning. Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga
argues that random chance, applied to a single and sole universe, only
raises the question as to why this universe could be so "lucky" as to
have precise conditions that support life at least at some place (the
Earth) and time (within millions of years of the present).
One reaction to these apparent enormous coincidences
is to see them as substantiating the theistic claim that the universe
has been created by a personal God and as offering the material for a
properly restrained theistic argument – hence the fine-tuning argument.
It's as if there are a large number of dials that have to be tuned to
within extremely narrow limits for life to be possible in our universe.
It is extremely unlikely that this should happen by chance, but much
more likely that this should happen if there is such a person as God.
— Alvin Plantinga, "The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum"
William Lane Craig, a philosopher and Christian apologist, cites this fine-tuning of the universe as evidence for the existence of God or some form of intelligence capable of manipulating (or designing) the basic physics that governs the universe. Philosopher and theologian Richard Swinburne reaches the design conclusion using Bayesian probability. Scientist and theologian Alister McGrath observed that the fine-tuning of carbon is even responsible for nature's ability to tune itself to any degree.
The entire biological evolutionary process depends upon
the unusual chemistry of carbon, which allows it to bond to itself, as
well as other elements, creating highly complex molecules that are
stable over prevailing terrestrial temperatures, and are capable of
conveying genetic information (especially DNA). [...] Whereas it might
be argued that nature creates its own fine-tuning, this can only be done
if the primordial constituents of the universe are such that an
evolutionary process can be initiated. The unique chemistry of carbon is
the ultimate foundation of the capacity of nature to tune itself.
Theoretical physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne stated: "Anthropic fine tuning is too remarkable to be dismissed as just a happy accident".
Theologian and philosopher Andrew Loke
argues that there are only five possible categories of hypotheses
concerning fine-tuning and order: (i) chance, (ii) regularity, (iii)
combinations of regularity and chance, (iv) uncaused, and (v) design,
and that only design gives an exclusively logical explanation of order
in the universe. He argues that the Kalam Cosmological Argument strengthens the teleological argument by answering the question "Who designed the Designer?".
Creationist Hugh Ross advances a number of fine-tuning hypotheses. One is the existence of what Ross calls "vital poisons", which are elemental nutrients that are harmful in large quantities but essential for animal life in smaller quantities.
Philosopher and theologian Robin Collins
argues that theism entails the expectation that God would create a
reality structured to allow for scientific discovery to easily happen.
According to Collins, various physical constants such as the fine-structure constant allowing for efficient energy usage, the baryon-to-photon ratio allowing for the cosmic microwave background to be discovered, and the mass of the Higgs boson allowing it to be detected are examples of the laws of physics being fine-tuned for scientific discovery.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
dismisses the theistic argument as "deeply unsatisfying" since it
leaves the existence of God unexplained, with a God capable of
calculating the fine-tuning at least as improbable as the fine-tuning
itself. Against this claim, it has been argued that theism is a simple
hypothesis, allowing theists to deny that God is at least as improbable
as the fine-tuning.
Imagine
a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting
world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me
rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well, must
have been made to have me in it!"
Jack Dorsey first began to develop
his early idea for the social media site Twitter in 2006 while working at early Internet tech company Odeo. After it spun off
in 2007 and expanded rapidly after that, Twitter became a significant
component of global society. It became a key part of politics and
international relations but was also banned or blocked in some
countries.
TXTMob was one of the example services which was used as a model for the service Twitter when it was originally created.
Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Evan Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes.
The decision was also partly due to the fact that the domain
twitter.com was already in use, and it was six months after the launch
of twttr that the crew purchased the domain and changed the name of the
service to Twitter. The developers initially considered "10958" as the service's short code for SMS text messaging, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability".
2006–2007
A sketch, c. 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network
Work on the project which would become Twitter started in February 2006. In March 2006 Dorsey published the first Twitter post: "just setting up my twttr."
Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title:
...we came across the word "twitter", and it was just perfect. The
definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information", and
"chirps from birds". And that's exactly what the product was.
The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor
Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees. The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone,
Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious
Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including
Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.
Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview:
With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging,
but it was hard to define, because it didn't replace anything. There
was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you
figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it
was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social
utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was
Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social
network.
In 2006 Iconfactory
was developing a twitter application called "Twitterrific" and
developer Craig Hockenberry began a search for a shorter way to refer to
"Post a Twitter Update." In 2007 they began using "twit" before Twitter
developer Blaine Cook suggested that "tweet" be used instead.
The use of the hashtag appeared in 2007, introduced by Chris Messina.
Messina struggled to get Twitter executives to adopt his idea but was
eventually successful in convincing Twitter to trial the idea. Messina
drew inspiration from Internet Relay Chat and Jaiku however the way it was implemented on Twitter was unique. Initial reactions to the hashtag were mixed.
2007–2010
The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the
conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy.
"Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant
twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers
in attendance touted it." Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark
"we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"
Elon Musk joined Twitter as a user in 2009. The company experienced rapid initial growth. In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award. On November 29, 2009, Twitter was named the Word of the Year by the Global Language Monitor, declaring it "a new form of social interaction". In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. As of March 2011, that was about 140 million tweets posted daily. As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, in 2009
Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on June 14, 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17, 2010, and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second. The record was set again during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published. When American singer Michael Jackson
died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers crashed after users were
updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate
of 100,000 tweets per hour. The current record as of August 3, 2013, was set in Japan, with 143,199 tweets per second during a television screening of the movie Castle in the Sky (beating the previous record of 33,388, also set by Japan for the television screening of the same movie).
In June 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter for trade infringement and cybersquatting after an unknown user impersonated him and made vulgar posts. The lawsuit was settled, and Twitter introduced "Verified Accounts" later that year. Also in 2009, Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account became the first one with a million followers.
The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010. By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day were
posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has
also hosted over 25 "tweetups",
events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and
speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to
further the outreach goals of NASA.
Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application became the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
In 2010 the Library of Congress
archived all Tweets back to 2006 and began archiving all new tweets.
Only the text of tweets were archived; they do not include videos,
images, or linked content. They switched to archiving tweets on a selected basis similar to their treatment of other media in 2018.
2010–2014
Logo used from 2012 to 2023
From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out
"New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes
included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter
itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images
and clips from a variety of supported websites, including YouTube and Flickr,
and a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as
'@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream, while 'Messages'
and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top of
twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010, the company confirmed that the "New
Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users. In 2019, Twitter
was announced to be the 10th most downloaded mobile app of the decade,
from 2010 to 2019.
Twitter played an important role in the Arab Spring across the Middle East and North Africa.
On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage and phased out the "Old Twitter". However, a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the
previous "retro" homepage was still in use until the issues were
resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20. On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to
feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users
to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home tab, the Connect and Discover tabs were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared to that of Facebook. On February 21, 2012, it was announced that Twitter and Yandex
agreed to a partnership. Yandex, a Russian search engine, finds value
within the partnership due to Twitter's real-time news feeds. Twitter's
director of business development explained that it is important to have
Twitter content where Twitter users go. On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday by announcing that it had 140 million users, a 40% rise from September 2011, who were sending 340 million tweets per day. In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin.
In March 2011, a cobra escaped from the Bronx Zoo;
soon after, a parody Twitter account for the cobra appeared using the
handle "@BronxZoosCobra," which soon amassed a large number of
followers. The snake was on the loose for a week before being recaptured, during which time the account tweeted regularly. This parody account led to increased interest in parody accounts on Twitter in general.
On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the company
blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the
sole symbol of Twitter. On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced monthly active users had increased 42% in the proceeding nine months and now surpassed 200 million.
In December 2012 Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter with the account name "@pontifex." The account answers questions which are posed to it using the hashtag "askpontifex."
On January 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Crashlytics in order to build out its mobile developer products. On April 18, 2013, Twitter launched a music app called Twitter Music for the iPhone. On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr, followed by the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013. As of September 2013,
the company's data showed that 200 million users sent over 400 million
tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices.
In April 2013 the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the Twitter account of the Associated Press. The attack had a significant short-term impact on the stock market.In October they hacked the account of Barack Obama.
During Super Bowl XLVII on February 3, 2013, when the power went out in the Superdome
Mondelez International, Kraft Foods vice president Lisa Mann was asked
to tweet, "You can still dunk in the dark", referring to Oreo cookies. She approved, and as she told Ad Age
in 2020, "literally the world [had] changed when I woke up the next
morning." This became a milestone in the development of commenting daily
on culture.
Twitter went public in 2013 through an initial public offering (IPO). The IPO raised US$1.8 billion.
2014 was a hard year for Twitter with analysts and the market both pessimistic about the company.
In April 2014, Twitter underwent a redesign that made the site
resemble Facebook somewhat, with a profile picture and biography in a
column left to the timeline, and a full-width header image with parallax scrolling effect. That layout was used as the main for the desktop front end until July
2019, undergoing changes over time such as the removal of shortcut
buttons to jump to the previous or next tweet in early 2017, and rounded
profile pictures since June 2017. Twitter still struggled to turn a profit.
In April 2015, the Twitter.com desktop homepage changed. Later in the year it became apparent that growth had slowed.
In September 2016, Twitter shares rose 20% after a report that it had received takeover approaches. Potential buyers were Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Microsoft,Salesforce.com,Verizon, and The Walt Disney Company. Twitter's board of directors were open to a deal, which could have come by the end of 2016. However, no deal was made, with reports in October stating that all the
potential buyers dropped out partly due to concerns over abuse and
harassment on the service.
In 2017 Elon Musk first tweeted his interest in acquiring Twitter. In June 2017, Twitter revamped its dashboard to improve the new user experience. Vine was shut down in 2017.
On April 29, 2018, the first commercial tweet from space was sent by Solstar utilizing solely commercial infrastructure during a New Shepard flight. In May 2018, Twitter announced that tweet replies deemed by an
algorithm to be detractive from the conversation would initially be
hidden and only load by actuating a "Show more replies" element at the
bottom.
Moderation of terrorism and violent extremism on the platform was
a significant challenge with Twitter suspending more than a million
accounts on terrorism grounds from 2015 to 2018.
In 2018 the tweet size limit was raised from 140 characters to 280 characters. This change was trialed in 2017.
In 2019, Twitter released another redesign of its user interface.
2020–2022
The
two tweets on May 26, 2020, from President Trump that Twitter had
marked "potentially misleading" (inserting the blue warning icon and
"Get the facts..." language) that led to the executive order
Twitter experienced considerable growth during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The platform also was increasingly used for misinformation related to the pandemic. This combination posed a significant challenge to Twitter, as a result they started marking tweets which contained misleading information, and adding links to fact-checks. Twitter was not always successful in marking and/or removing
misinformation and on a number of occasions marked factual information
as misinformation. COVID and Twitter also presented science communicators with a mix of challenges and opportunities.
In May 2020, Twitter moderators marked two tweets from U.S. President Donald Trump as "potentially misleading" and linked to a fact-check. Trump responded by signing an executive order to weaken Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which limits social media sites' liability for content moderation decisions. After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Twitter banned Trump, claiming that he violated "the glorification of violence policy". The ban drew criticism from American conservatives and European leaders, who saw it as an interference on freedom of speech.
In 2020, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian pushed conspiracy theories about the pandemic on Twitter, which is blocked in mainland China but is used as a public diplomacy tool by Chinese officials to promote the Chinese government and defend it from criticism. China's ambassador to South Africa also made these claims on Twitter. In May 2020, Twitter placed fact-check labels on two of the Chinese
government tweets which had falsely suggested that the virus originated
in the US and was brought to China by the Americans. In January 2021, Hua Chunying renewed the conspiracy theory from Zhao that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in the United States from the U.S. military biology laboratory Fort Detrick.
Hua continued to refer to it on Twitter, while asking the government of
the United States to open up Fort Detrick for further investigation to
determine if it is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In April 2021, Twitter announced that it was establishing its African headquarters in Ghana.On June 5, 2021, the Nigerian government issued an indefinite ban
on Twitter usage in the country, citing "misinformation and fake news
spread through it have had real world violent consequences", after the platform removed tweets made by the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Nigeria's ban was criticized by Amnesty International.
In 2021, Twitter began the research phase of Bluesky, an open source decentralized social media protocol where users can choose which algorithmic curation they want. The same year, Twitter also released Twitter Spaces, a social audio feature; "super follows", a way to subscribe to creators for exclusive content; and a beta of "ticketed Spaces", which makes access to certain audio rooms paid. Twitter unveiled a redesign in August 2021, with adjusted colors and a
new Chirp font, which improves the left-alignment of most Western
languages.
In June 2022, Twitter announced a partnership with e-commerce giant Shopify, and its plans to launch a sales channel app for U.S. Shopify merchants.
On August 23, 2022, the contents of a whistleblower complaint by former information security head Peiter Zatko
to the United States Congress were published. Zatko had been fired by
Twitter in January 2022. The complaint alleges that Twitter failed to
disclose several data breaches, had negligent security measures,
violated United States securities regulations, and broke the terms of a previous settlement with the Federal Trade Commission
over the safeguarding of user data. The report also claims that the
Indian government forced Twitter to hire one of its agents to gain
direct access to user data.
Acquisition by Elon Musk
Elon Musk in 2023 at an AI Summit at Bletchley Park
Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of the American social media company Twitter, Inc.
on April 14, 2022, and concluded it on October 27, 2022. Musk had begun
buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming its largest
shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter invited
Musk to join its board of directors,
an offer he initially accepted before declining. On April 14, Musk made
an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter's board
responded with a "poison pill" strategy to resist a hostile takeover
before unanimously accepting Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion on
April 25. Musk stated that he planned to introduce new features to the
platform, make its algorithms open-source, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech, framing the acquisition as the cornerstone of X, an "everything app".
In July, Musk announced his intention to terminate the agreement,
asserting that Twitter had breached their agreement by refusing to
crack down on spambot accounts. The company filed a lawsuit against Musk
in the Delaware Court of Chancery
shortly thereafter, with a trial scheduled for the week of October 17.
Weeks before the trial was set to begin, Musk reversed course,
announcing that he would move forward with the acquisition. The deal
closed on October 28, with Musk immediately becoming Twitter's new owner
and CEO. Twitter was taken private and merged into a new parent company named X Corp. Musk promptly fired several top executives, including previous CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk has since proposed several reforms to Twitter and laid off half of the company's workforce.
Hundreds of employees then resigned from the company after Musk issued
an ultimatum demanding they commit to "extremely hardcore" work. Linda Yaccarino was appointed CEO of X Corp. In July 2023, the Twitter service was rebranded as X.
Reactions to the buyout were mixed, with praise for Musk's
planned reforms and vision for the company, particularly his calls for
greater free speech, but criticism over fears of a potential rise in misinformation and disinformation, harassment, and hate speech on the platform. Within the United States, conservatives have largely supported the acquisition, while many liberals and former Twitter employees have voiced concerns about Musk's intentions. Since becoming owner, Musk has faced backlash for his handling of the company and account suspensions, including the December 2022 suspensions of ten journalists.
Post-acquisition
Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022; Musk acted as CEO of Twitter until June 2023 when he was succeeded by Linda Yaccarino. Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023, and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024. Yaccarino resigned on July 9, 2025.
Now operating as X, the platform closely resembles its predecessor but includes additional features such as long-form texts, account monetization options, audio-video calls, integration with xAI's Grok chatbot, job search, and a repurposing of the platform's verification system as a subscription premium. Several legacy Twitter features were removed from the site after Musk acquired Twitter, including Circles, NFT profile pictures, and the experimental pronouns in profiles feature. Musk's aims included transforming X into a "digital town square" and an "everything app" akin to WeChat.
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