CIO Insights: A radical misunderstanding of soft power

In the 19th century, it was said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire."

The country's military dominated on land and at sea. It had lost one colony in the Americas, but was rapidly gaining another in India. In the wake of the Opium Wars, the government was even able to force a trade deal onto China. It was the very definition of hard power.

But it was Britain's soft power that shaped the world we know today far more than its military might. Merchants travelled where armies could not, bringing British goods - and ideas and culture - with them. It's part of the reason why English is the world's second language (well, that and Hollywood).

Even today, post-Brexit, the UK still exerts a healthy amount of soft power around the world. London remains a leading global financial centre and the gateway to the European continent; British culture, in the form of literature, music and TV, is recognised around the world; and 'an English education' is seen as aspirational from America to Asia.

That's why today, I'd like to talk about Twitter.

Like the UK, Twitter enjoys a tremendous amount of soft power. With more than 230 million users, it's the medium for global conversation. Politicians use it to steer towards their desired outcomes, and it's even been used to shape protests and rebellions - across the Middle East in 2011, and in Iran more recently.

But it isn't just the reach of Twitter's website - the network effect - that gives it its power. Free access to its API, one of the very few social media platforms to allow this, has been a huge boost in the platform's spread.

Ready access to Twitter data made it a major source for researchers and academics to study social trends, disinformation and responses to natural disasters and wars, among other topics. Analytical data from the API has been the basis of countless research papers.

By turning off that spigot in a short-term grab for cash, Elon Musk has demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of soft power. Twitter has a leading role in the global conversation not just because of the network effect, but because of the accessibility of its data.

Charging for API access will limit Twitter's use in research, and alternatives certainly exist. Its main competitor, Mastodon, doesn't just offer a free API, but an open source one.

And it's not just research. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bots relied on the Twitter API because it was free. Now many bot creators have said they, too, will move to Mastodon.

Effectively, Musk is trying to turn soft power ("Twitter shapes global conversation") into hard power ("I can control who sees the conversation"). But history shows the trend inexorably moves the other way.

Don't believe me? You might not live in the British Empire, but you've certainly heard of the BBC.