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Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

deleted 9y ago
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- 3ioewjkfljdksl 9y ago
  to be fair I think he has kept twitter relevant...
broodbucket 9y ago
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
- Frondo 9y ago
  A smarter guy than either you or me wrote about this kinda thing some time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Where does that quote say anything about censorship? Another option would be to mark comments with fact checks.
- nitinreddy88 9y ago
  Totally agree with you. Twitter should be publishing whatever the user wants to convey (unless its violating any local laws). They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    But should they decide what's right and wrong based on what is objectively right and wrong? I think it's an interesting question. If you build a tool that ends up being used as a platform to spread misinformation and lies, is that ok? Is it ok to censor that kind of thing? Set aside laws and general feelings about censorship. If certain kinds of speech are genuinely harmful to society, and if you can actually objectively define that (I know, very hard if not impossible to do in many/most situations), should you still allow that speech? It's certainly a judgment call, and a lot of people might get that call wrong sometimes or even often. But is it pointless or harmful to try? Think about moderated message boards. No one would take issue with a moderated message board where the moderators act to keep things on-topic and civil. (Hell, HN tries to be that, and IMO does a pretty good job most of the time.) Twitter has chosen, with the exception of things like hate speech and threatening behavior (etc.) to be hands-off. Was that a good choice? I'm not sure. I don't think it's unreasonable to think they could do just as well -- if not better -- if there was moderation of some kind built in.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > Twitter should be publishing whatever the user wants to convey (unless its violating any local laws). That's what they do. > They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion. Well, they could, but they don't and as such they are bigger free speech advocates than you are because you want to restrict what they can do on their website, which is a privately run entity and as such not subject to 'free speech' laws.
    - stale2002 9y ago
      Oh this again. Free speech is an idea, not an amendment. If you censor opposing political views, you are antithetical to the concept and idea of free speech and you should be condemned.
- xname2 9y ago
  I don't think he wants to censor speech. He may suggest to use Twitter as a platform to promote certain kind of speech, with sort of technical means.
- Fede_V 9y ago
  That's not what the quote is saying. First of all, the architecture of a service has important influence on the kind of speech that it will foster: for example, the 140 character limit insures that it's almost impossible to get a nuanced argument across. Second, the broadcasting model of twitter often leads to horrible dogpiles. I am a huge free speech advocate, and I don't like censorship but several key decisions about the architecture of twitter were definitely suboptimal if your goal was building a better town square for the exchange of ideas.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    What exactly are you saying?
    - Fede_V 9y ago
      That Twitter, as it's currently designed, is an excellent platform for sharing cool links (science/ML twitter is fantastic), but it is downright deleterious for any subject where nuance is called for. I think Twitter had a net negative effect on political discussion not because of free speech, but because it rewards bombastic language, point scoring, cheerleading and makes substantial arguments impossible.
      - broodbucket 9y ago
        Twitter is definitely terrible for discussion not just because of the character limit but also because of the echo chambers it creates. I follow a lot of people on both "sides" and they love to make fun of the other through the most low hanging fruit possible. Both sides attack people for liking (or not being totally opposed to) some ideas of the other side. I don't think there's many popular forms of social media that actually have nuanced, reasonable political discussions though. EDIT: the only one I really know of is /r/neutralpolitics.
        lloeki 9y ago
        > Both sides attack people for liking (or not being totally opposed to) some ideas of the other side. More often than not the argument basically boils on to this [0], and even when it's not, the tweetstorm necessary for a constructive answer gets lost in a sea of raging tweets. [0]: http://www.extrafabulouscomics.com/comic/200/ http://www.extrafabulouscomics.com/comic/200/
- dtech 9y ago
  You're twisting his words, he doesn't say anything about censorship. He said that he hoped the technologic capabilities of Twitter would improve the world for the better and in his opinion they haven't. He doesn't say anything that thus people who didn't agree with him should be silenced...
  - broodbucket 9y ago
    If that is all he's saying I think it's pretty short-sighted. Surely Twitter has accomplished a lot of good.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Inconclusive. 'A lot of good' means that something is clearly a net positive. In the case of twitter that would require the weighing of a large pile of issues that twitter heavily influenced where one side of the issue thought twitter was just great and the other that it was terrible depending on the outcome and who you were asking. There is no absolute standard for 'a lot of good'.
    - haberman 9y ago
      He's not denying that it has. He's refuting his former naive belief that open communication would be some kind of magical pixie dust that would make better everything it touched. I can relate to this. I remember thinking, back in the 90s, "once people can directly talk to people from other cultures, and see each other's common humanity, how will there ever be any more war?" Turns out that was an extremely naive belief. Just the opposite is true in many cases: direct communication can aggravate differences. People's self-righteousness tends to escalate when they are directly exposed to their ideological foes.
- statictype 9y ago
  1. He didn't say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevented his side from winning 2. He didn't even say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevents the world from being a better place He's noting that free speech and exchange of ideas isn't sufficient on its own. (That was my takeaway at least)
- statictype 9y ago
  1. He didn't say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevented his side from winning 2. He didn't even say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevents the world from being a better place He's noting that free speech and exchange of ideas isn't sufficient on its own. (That was my takeaway at least)
- ryanSrich 9y ago
  Agreed. Let's outlaw pen and paper and condemn Gutenberg while we're at it for giving Hitler a platform to write Mein Kampf.
  - marklgr 9y ago
    Please, let's leave Hitler out of the discussion.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Yes, your problem is that you have a country full of gullible morons who will believe anything if it's framed in a way that jives with their worldview and sense of self-preservation, even if it's mildly misleading to flat-out wrong at best. It's not unreasonable to combat that with moderation, which I don't consider to be "censorship" if done correctly.
  - broodbucket 9y ago
    "done correctly" = "in accordance with my ideas" If bad ideas are being communicated, then communicate better ones. I understand it's hard, that people can be idiotic and short-sighted, that 140 characters is very limiting, but thinking "<candidate/party/side I support> only lost because of gullible morons" isn't how (in Trump's case) the Dems will end up winning in 2020. There's a fantastic article about this logic here: https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063 https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-26... FWIW I'm not American either.
    - kelnos 9y ago
      Ideas are not necessarily neutral, innocent things. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad. Some of them are a judgment call and certainly fall under the "only good if in accordance with my ideas" bucket. And agreed, suppressing ideas just because you don't agree with them isn't sufficient reason to do so. I've actually have read the article you point to, and while I don't disagree with it (it makes a lot of good points), it's just an opinion. And it's not even a great one sometimes: just because an opposing view point makes you angry, it doesn't mean you're not wrong to be angry. The opposing view point may actually be bat-shit insane. Sometimes it's hard to determine that sort of thing objectively, but... sometimes it's not. For some supporting evidence to the contrary, this one: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-pre... -- that suggests, using per-county voting and education data, that low education and voting for Trump was strongly correlated. Now the meat of the matter is, as you suggest, "what's the best way to win next time?" And yeah, telling Trump voters that they're idiots (even if/when they are) isn't a particularly great way to win over hearts and minds. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here: we're talking about how/why Trump won in the first place, and if it was a good idea to give him and his supporters a platform to easily spread lies to those who are more susceptible to believing them.
- SagelyGuru 9y ago
  What has Williams meant by "a better place"? Clearly, in this context, a better place than the world where not everybody could speak freely and exchange ideas. Is that really wrong? I still believe that freedom of speech is important because it is freedom for ideas, not "freedom for morons" as some are trying to argue.
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  > I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account. Stop blocking spam, advertising, legalize government use of propaganda domestically, etc. No? Then clearly your position has an obvious flaw in that you have to censor certain classes of speech. All of those happen on Twitter.
  - broodbucket 9y ago
    There is a difference between a platform (be that a website, or a government) censoring speech, and individuals opting out of certain things. If I choose, I can view ads and I can view spam. I choose not to, just as it's perfectly fine to not follow Donald Trump on Twitter. I am making the decision about what content I view. An entity in power making that decision for me is censoring free speech. My choosing not to see things, is not.
- NamTaf 9y ago
  The irony of this post and the subsequent replies debating the true meaning/context of his 158-character long quote is hopefully not lost on anyone.
- intended 9y ago
  This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the time to understand why its important, and why Humanity has valued it and argued for it. The ideas behind it are sound. It falls flat when having to deal with the modern internet. In the simplest explanation - Free Speech was NEVER designed to deal with things like channel saturation and specialized targeting of the human hind brain which happens today. The Free speech model is the bazaar of ideas model. Everyone can see all ideas, and decide for themselves what is best. Heinous ideas are important because at the very least - people can define themselves against it. Modern impediments to free speech arise because small groups of humans have new abilities to disrupt the bazaar. They can spam a single message, they can overwhelm normal discourse, and we have learnt that emotion over comes reason regularly. That's how the brain is designed. In the same way environmental rules are made to prevent abuse of the commons, or pollution of common land, rules will be made to "protect" free speech. How those conflicting ideas will be meshed, is beyond me. Without such rules, motivated people can and will abuse/spam the shit out of a communication channel in order to take control of it. fundamentally - the human brain itself is un-prepared for this environment. Therefore, rules will be made to ensure that the human brain is not completely harmed by it.
  - dorgo 9y ago
    I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation management. Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Reduce/forbid redundant arguments. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Add ratings to arguments (a la hackernews).
    - marklgr 9y ago
      Oh yes, it's hard. Reputation and ratings are abused by "brigades", groups of people who upvote all posts of other members and downvotes those of opponents. Eventually, it's a batlle of the most zealous and organized groups who are willing to put up the most time in this. These groups can be some volunteers on the Internet, but they can also be professionnal teams working on e-reputation/web-influence, and they know very well how to bypass the (mostly rudimentary) protections against astroturfing. It doesn't look like it, but it's a big business.
- hek3 9y ago
  Ofcourse there are bigger issues. Clowns are being propped up in every sphere of life in every country not based on their skill but on their skill at getting youtube/twitter/facebook followers. It's happening so fast there are no control rods. If MTV and Hollywood gave us celeb culture. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have taken mindless celeb worship to another level. Obama is good example of the feel good pointlessness that social media can prop up.
- ern 9y ago
  I'd love to know why you believe that private entities can't/shouldn't censor speech on their platforms, and what philosophical underpinnings this has (not being snarky, I'm keen to know how you came to have this belief).
- soup10 9y ago
  Your emotional reaction to the quote has nothing to do with what he's talking about. Hes not talking about censorship or one side winning. He's saying he was hoping political wisdom would be gained from the free exchange of ideas, trump may be smart but he's certainly not wise.
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  The quote is 158 characters long. Maybe it lacks nuance.
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  > I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place If you value Liberalism, it's the actual ability to exchange information - independent of the ideas being shared - that makes the world a better place. The problem is that this information may not be true, and even when it is true, people tend to dislike the 'exchange information and ideas' when they disagree with the information and ideas being exchanged. Williams says so himself: > If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry Sorry for what? Launching a platform where one can instantly read a wide variety of ideas and where narratives can be challenged as quickly as they're spun? It's like apologizing for creating the printing press because Martin Luther used it to kick off The Reformation. Anyone who uses Twitter has witnessed legitimate - thus credible - reporters and news outlets spread incorrect stories, only for Twitter to quickly call them out. So while much of Twitter may be poison, it beats relying solely on biased websites - such as the Washington Post - for information.
- marklgr 9y ago
  You conflate censoring ie. forcing people to shut up, and giving anyone a giant soapbox. One can regret doing the latter without suggesting doing the former.
- ehnto 9y ago
  I read it very differently. To me it sounds like the base assumption was that the majority of ideas are worthwhile and not nefarious or damaging, and that he now feels that was wrong. Anyone who has been a moderator on a public forum, let alone one as big as twitter, can quickly tell you that not all ideas are created equal. I have said it before on this board of which is moderated, but if every single person spoke their mind the internet would be full of absolute garbage and hate, because those people tend to speak loudest and most often when given the chance. To be clear I am not for censorship and I want to make sure there is a place for everyones legitimate views. But there is no sense in pretending free speech has to be a free for all. We can dismiss some things as objectively bad. Even a presidential debate has a moderator and there is an expected legitimacy to the discourse.
- timthelion 9y ago
  Has anyone else noticed, that we are failing to distinguish between two very different rights: 1) Free speech 2) Free and anonymous speech All of the platforms that have big problems support the later. Maybe the problem is anonymity rather than freedom of speech. It is true that Facebook doesn't really support anonymous speech, but even there, most of the fake news spread was anonymously published. I imagine that when you read this, a dystopia of national Internet ID cards pops into your mind. However, I don't think this necessarily needs to be. I've been working on a project called push to talk: http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html and I hope that the existence of a real persons voice behind the scenes would help. I think that youtube also has an advantage, that the distinction between anonymous speech and non-anonymous speech is clear, and the voice synthesized videos are much less popular.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    I'm really torn on this. Plenty of non-anonymous people have posted some pretty horrible things on Facebook. And it goes the other way, too: there are plenty of people who would feel justifiably threatened and afraid to speak their true feelings if they could not be anonymous, and their contributions are often just as valuable as people who aren't anonymous.
    - timthelion 9y ago
      I agree, at the same time, the Czech internet is filled with hate speech, absolutely virolic hate speech, and it is beleived by some that these comments are actually being posted by the Russian embasy in order to undermine Czech democracy. If that theory is true (and why wouldn't it be? They have the means, the incentive, and the anonymity) then how would one fight against that without breaking anonymity? Would you prefer a situation in which secret police agents tracked down troll internet users, and if they found those users to be Russia agents, they would shoot them? I might prefer that actually ;) but I'm not in charge of the secret police and so therefore its not in my capabilities to make that happen. Of course, it is possible that this conspiracy theory is false. That Czechs, or a large portion of them, actually are that hateful (also likely). If that is the case, than this country is on the edge of a genocide (against Muslims and Gypsies) far more brutal than Nazi germany. And in that case, anonymity would be a good thing for all the activists who try to fight against the hate. So you're right, that it is a very difficult question.
- LeeHwang 9y ago
  Yes it's a pretty disturbing message that actually goes against the ACLU's opinion on free speech. Also it worries me I'm seeing more authoritarian traits in silicon valley elites. Those who make peaceful protests impossible make violence inevitable.
IanCal 9y ago
Somewhat concerning statements on their own. > “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I'd like to see a more detailed look at why Twitter might not have been a good idea. I don't think that free, easy communication is a bad thing and I think it's powered an enormous change for good. The sentiment expressed in the quotes sounds worryingly similar to proponents of censorship. I just think that Twitter is a bad way of communicating anything vaguely complex.
- yorwba 9y ago
  > I don't think that free, easy communication is a bad thing It is neither good nor bad, just an amplifying medium for whatever someone chooses to use it for.
- duskwuff 9y ago
  I think the key word in that quote, which you've overlooked, is "automatically". Allowing free communication may be good... but it can't "automatically" make the world a better place on its own.
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  Honestly, I am more worried about the fact HN seems oblivious to the fact Twitter was being used as a targeted propaganda system by a foreign government than I am of censorship in the US.
  - 3131s 9y ago
    A foreign government? Many governments place targeted propaganda on all sorts of platforms, the US primary among them. Both US political parties were no doubt doing astroturfing of their own this last election. And among US politicians, having corrupt foreign ties is hardly unique to Trump. Trump probably has some relationship with the Russian government, but IMO it is hardly significant in comparison to the full scope of corrupt, bad behavior exhibited by the US government.
- GuiA 9y ago
grandalf 9y ago
In 2016 the US was still vulnerable to a Kardashian style PR stunt attack. Trump performed this attack over and over again and garnered an estimated $2B of free advertising from it. Trump used Twitter to do this, but he could have used other social media. Trump's tweets were not newsworthy because Twitter routed them to millions of people but because large media firms wanted to monetize the hysteria created by the tweets so they had their newsrooms run coverage of each and every tweet.
- GuiA 9y ago
  > In 2016 the US was still vulnerable to a Kardashian style PR stunt attack. Trump performed this attack over and over again and garnered an estimated $2B of free advertising from it. This hits the nail on the head. Late stage capitalism has completely fused media, news, and entertainment. This means that any person or organization who manages to "hack" the news cycle (i.e. finds a way to be in the spotlight on a very regular basis) can reap great profits. Like a presidency. I don't agree that he could have used any other social media to the same effect. Information propagates and decays on Twitter much, much faster than on other mainstream platforms: if I post something, everyone who follows me sees it right away, and very few tweets are seen a few days after they have been posted. No other mainstream social network is like this. These properties have led to Twitter becoming the new AP stream for journalists, aka the entry point to the news cycle. If you want to dominate the news cycle, dominate Twitter - be it with racist tweets or asking for free chicken nuggets. Twitter as a media apparatus has naturally played a great part in electing Trump. The Twitter leadership isn't composed of economists or political scientists or sociologists, so of course this kind of stuff lies completely outside of their concern (unless it brings good PR, like it does now). Same goes for Facebook, although the role it plays in the equation is different.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    > I don't agree that he could have used any other social media to the same effect. Information propagates and decays on Twitter much, much faster than on other mainstream platforms I certainly agree that Twitter's characteristics are unique, but I think there was also a lot of awareness of Trump going into the election and so I wonder if he could have done the same thing with a simple blog. My biggest curiosity is that now that he's shown that the attack can work, how many candidates will enter the next election doing it and how unusual will they be...
urda 9y ago
AKA: > Twitter co-founder: I'm sorry we didn't use our platform to silence an opposing view point. Shame. Silencing someone else because you disagree makes you many, many times worse than them. Sunlight and exposure is the best disinfectant, not this play.
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  Hey, if you want to legalize government propaganda go ahead. It's pretty clear sunlight is an ineffective disinfectant in that scenario.
  - Inconel 9y ago
    Isn't government sanctioned propaganda already legal in most places? Or at least unpunished?
  - nhebb 9y ago
    > if you want to legalize government propaganda Some argue that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 already did that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith-Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
- baq 9y ago
  It's about the mechanism, not Trump himself. In a better (that is, promoting reason and truth instead of emotion and tribalism) discussion framework Trump wouldn't win.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Is it, though? I mean, really? In an ideal world, I would absolutely love to agree with you. But, aside from certain forms of speech (hate speech, illegal speech, etc.), Twitter is pretty hands-off with what it allows. So it has given "sunlight and exposure" to people like Trump, and what has it gotten us...? Trump. A man who has used racism, sexism, xenophobia, lies, and false promises to win the US Presidency, and who used Twitter as a major platform for spreading such. How has sunlight and exposure disinfected his toxicity? Now, sure, doing otherwise would definitely be silencing an opposing view point. But... when that view point is so toxic, why is that necessarily bad? This might be a controversial opinion for me to hold, but I don't believe all view points are created equal, and I don't believe all view points deserve to be heard, or, more to the point, deserve a platform to be heard. I'm not saying choosing is easy, and not fraught with moral peril, but I think the idea of this big free-flow of ideas being the ideal, given the constraints and issues with our society, is... frankly, a little naive.
danblick 9y ago
If you're interested in this topic, I would highly recommend Neil Postman's book, "Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business". I agree with claims that Postman predicted Trump's rise back in 1985: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-oursel... The book is written about television, but the main ideas are still applicable to online newsfeeds and social media. The book unpacks the phrase: "the ideas that are convenient to express become the content of a culture". If the most convenient form of communication is long-form writing in newspapers or pamphlets, people will get their information from (long-form writing in) newspapers or pamphlets. If it's television, they will get information from (visual, snappy, "entertaining") video. If it's Twitter, people will end up talking about ideas that can be conveniently expressed in 140 characters or less.
formula_ninguna 9y ago
How's that related to HN? Why politics here? You better quote me, I won't mind :))))
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mklarmann 9y ago
Twitter is a simple technology that connects people, and the current presidency is IMO not their fault. Twitter just brought up to the surface what was already there but hidden. I am sorry that everyone now has to go through a lot of pain with the current presidency. But I think getting there is the only effective way for society to realize that your (US) political, social and educational system (just to name a few) are completely broken. And you have got to fix it. Most people didn't know how bad it is fucked up, now it becomes obvious. You got the president you earned. Twitter so just made it possible, that you are able to face your true challenges. Don't blame the messenger...
- gurkendoktor 9y ago
  > Twitter just brought up to the surface what was already there but hidden. We "know" through pop science that Facebook makes you miserable: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201603/science-explains-how-facebook-makes-you-sad https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-pe... On some level that's a mechanism that's "already there" in everyone, but Facebook is clearly more than a messenger if it influences how we feel. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that Twitter has a negative impact on us as well. But I agree that there are many systemic problems that Twitter has nothing to do with.
aaron695 9y ago
I wonder if he gets the irony, or he just doesn't get it? A large part of why people lashed out and voted Trump was their impression places like Twitter censored their point of view.
khacking 9y ago
afas
dreta 9y ago
I'd say this is an Orwellian statement, but at this point i got so used to Twitter silencing voices they disagree with i'm shocked they didn't just ban Trump long ago, since they banned people for pettier reasons multiple times. Hillary got more support on Twitter than Trump. The reason places like Twitter helped Trump in any signifficant fashion was that they let Trump reach people directly, and not through the media which are still lying, and slandering the president, and trying to paint a false picture of what's going on in the country.
GuiA 9y ago
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place” - Ev Williams "Really don't want to get in politics. I just want to help invent and develop technologies that improve lives. Feels so bizarre." - Elon Musk "For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens." - HN Moderation team It's okay, maybe some day Silicon Valley will realize that technology and politics aren't two concepts that you can neatly disentangle from one another, and that building tech never "automatically" makes the world a better place on its own. If you are touching human lives, you are "in politics".
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Thank you.
- baq 9y ago
  this is why scientists and technologists should run for office. kind of 'if you don't want to do it, you're qualified'.
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Hoasi 9y ago
Twitter is not a discussion forum. It is great as a polished RSS feeds reader & writer combined though. You can share quick messages and respond to people with Twitter, sure, but that is more like texting. Useful as it may be, it's still not the best way to discuss with someone, let alone with several people together. But brevity and repetition make Twitter an ideal medium for propaganda. No wonder some people use it as such.
- deleted 9y ago
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Grue3 9y ago
As much as I dislike Trump (for being an obvious Putin shill) and Twitter (for the mindless 140-character "discourse" it propagates), it is absolutely not Twitter's fault Trump got elected. It's that Democratic Party has completely dropped the ball on messaging, strategy, and choosing the right candidate for the job. And they still won't admit it, which means they'll keep on losing. Blaming Twitter or other media won't solve anything.
russellbeattie 9y ago
I stopped using Twitter after the election. The inability to express complex, nuanced, thorough ideas and responses, combined with its popularity (or at least, mass media influence), directly lead to Trump's election. The character limit, which I had perceived as merely an inconvenience for years, is actually a fundamental flaw which enabled a demagogue like him to succeed, and I refuse to participate in that stupidity any more. If Ev really wants to make amends, he should get Twitter to immediately expand the character limit to take away Trump's excuse for short, inflammatory posts, forcing him to try to actually put together coherent, intelligent sentences that express fully thought out ideas.
- formula_ninguna 9y ago
  I was thinking about stopping using Twitter but then realized that I'd never begun using it.

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3ioewjkfljdksl 9y ago
to be fair I think he has kept twitter relevant...

>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.

Frondo 9y ago
A smarter guy than either you or me wrote about this kinda thing some time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
lern_too_spel 9y ago
Where does that quote say anything about censorship? Another option would be to mark comments with fact checks.
nitinreddy88 9y ago
Totally agree with you. Twitter should be publishing whatever the user wants to convey (unless its violating any local laws). They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion.
- kelnos 9y ago
  But should they decide what's right and wrong based on what is objectively right and wrong? I think it's an interesting question. If you build a tool that ends up being used as a platform to spread misinformation and lies, is that ok? Is it ok to censor that kind of thing? Set aside laws and general feelings about censorship. If certain kinds of speech are genuinely harmful to society, and if you can actually objectively define that (I know, very hard if not impossible to do in many/most situations), should you still allow that speech? It's certainly a judgment call, and a lot of people might get that call wrong sometimes or even often. But is it pointless or harmful to try? Think about moderated message boards. No one would take issue with a moderated message board where the moderators act to keep things on-topic and civil. (Hell, HN tries to be that, and IMO does a pretty good job most of the time.) Twitter has chosen, with the exception of things like hate speech and threatening behavior (etc.) to be hands-off. Was that a good choice? I'm not sure. I don't think it's unreasonable to think they could do just as well -- if not better -- if there was moderation of some kind built in.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > Twitter should be publishing whatever the user wants to convey (unless its violating any local laws). That's what they do. > They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion. Well, they could, but they don't and as such they are bigger free speech advocates than you are because you want to restrict what they can do on their website, which is a privately run entity and as such not subject to 'free speech' laws.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Oh this again. Free speech is an idea, not an amendment. If you censor opposing political views, you are antithetical to the concept and idea of free speech and you should be condemned.
xname2 9y ago
I don't think he wants to censor speech. He may suggest to use Twitter as a platform to promote certain kind of speech, with sort of technical means.
Fede_V 9y ago
That's not what the quote is saying. First of all, the architecture of a service has important influence on the kind of speech that it will foster: for example, the 140 character limit insures that it's almost impossible to get a nuanced argument across. Second, the broadcasting model of twitter often leads to horrible dogpiles. I am a huge free speech advocate, and I don't like censorship but several key decisions about the architecture of twitter were definitely suboptimal if your goal was building a better town square for the exchange of ideas.
- colordrops 9y ago
  What exactly are you saying?
  - Fede_V 9y ago
    That Twitter, as it's currently designed, is an excellent platform for sharing cool links (science/ML twitter is fantastic), but it is downright deleterious for any subject where nuance is called for. I think Twitter had a net negative effect on political discussion not because of free speech, but because it rewards bombastic language, point scoring, cheerleading and makes substantial arguments impossible.
    - broodbucket 9y ago
      Twitter is definitely terrible for discussion not just because of the character limit but also because of the echo chambers it creates. I follow a lot of people on both "sides" and they love to make fun of the other through the most low hanging fruit possible. Both sides attack people for liking (or not being totally opposed to) some ideas of the other side. I don't think there's many popular forms of social media that actually have nuanced, reasonable political discussions though. EDIT: the only one I really know of is /r/neutralpolitics.
      - lloeki 9y ago
        > Both sides attack people for liking (or not being totally opposed to) some ideas of the other side. More often than not the argument basically boils on to this [0], and even when it's not, the tweetstorm necessary for a constructive answer gets lost in a sea of raging tweets. [0]: http://www.extrafabulouscomics.com/comic/200/ http://www.extrafabulouscomics.com/comic/200/
dtech 9y ago
You're twisting his words, he doesn't say anything about censorship. He said that he hoped the technologic capabilities of Twitter would improve the world for the better and in his opinion they haven't. He doesn't say anything that thus people who didn't agree with him should be silenced...
- broodbucket 9y ago
  If that is all he's saying I think it's pretty short-sighted. Surely Twitter has accomplished a lot of good.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Inconclusive. 'A lot of good' means that something is clearly a net positive. In the case of twitter that would require the weighing of a large pile of issues that twitter heavily influenced where one side of the issue thought twitter was just great and the other that it was terrible depending on the outcome and who you were asking. There is no absolute standard for 'a lot of good'.
  - haberman 9y ago
    He's not denying that it has. He's refuting his former naive belief that open communication would be some kind of magical pixie dust that would make better everything it touched. I can relate to this. I remember thinking, back in the 90s, "once people can directly talk to people from other cultures, and see each other's common humanity, how will there ever be any more war?" Turns out that was an extremely naive belief. Just the opposite is true in many cases: direct communication can aggravate differences. People's self-righteousness tends to escalate when they are directly exposed to their ideological foes.
statictype 9y ago
1. He didn't say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevented his side from winning 2. He didn't even say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevents the world from being a better place He's noting that free speech and exchange of ideas isn't sufficient on its own. (That was my takeaway at least)
statictype 9y ago
1. He didn't say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevented his side from winning 2. He didn't even say that free speech and exchange of ideas prevents the world from being a better place He's noting that free speech and exchange of ideas isn't sufficient on its own. (That was my takeaway at least)
ryanSrich 9y ago
Agreed. Let's outlaw pen and paper and condemn Gutenberg while we're at it for giving Hitler a platform to write Mein Kampf.
- marklgr 9y ago
  Please, let's leave Hitler out of the discussion.
kelnos 9y ago
Yes, your problem is that you have a country full of gullible morons who will believe anything if it's framed in a way that jives with their worldview and sense of self-preservation, even if it's mildly misleading to flat-out wrong at best. It's not unreasonable to combat that with moderation, which I don't consider to be "censorship" if done correctly.
- broodbucket 9y ago
  "done correctly" = "in accordance with my ideas" If bad ideas are being communicated, then communicate better ones. I understand it's hard, that people can be idiotic and short-sighted, that 140 characters is very limiting, but thinking "<candidate/party/side I support> only lost because of gullible morons" isn't how (in Trump's case) the Dems will end up winning in 2020. There's a fantastic article about this logic here: https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063 https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-26... FWIW I'm not American either.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    Ideas are not necessarily neutral, innocent things. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad. Some of them are a judgment call and certainly fall under the "only good if in accordance with my ideas" bucket. And agreed, suppressing ideas just because you don't agree with them isn't sufficient reason to do so. I've actually have read the article you point to, and while I don't disagree with it (it makes a lot of good points), it's just an opinion. And it's not even a great one sometimes: just because an opposing view point makes you angry, it doesn't mean you're not wrong to be angry. The opposing view point may actually be bat-shit insane. Sometimes it's hard to determine that sort of thing objectively, but... sometimes it's not. For some supporting evidence to the contrary, this one: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-pre... -- that suggests, using per-county voting and education data, that low education and voting for Trump was strongly correlated. Now the meat of the matter is, as you suggest, "what's the best way to win next time?" And yeah, telling Trump voters that they're idiots (even if/when they are) isn't a particularly great way to win over hearts and minds. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here: we're talking about how/why Trump won in the first place, and if it was a good idea to give him and his supporters a platform to easily spread lies to those who are more susceptible to believing them.
SagelyGuru 9y ago
What has Williams meant by "a better place"? Clearly, in this context, a better place than the world where not everybody could speak freely and exchange ideas. Is that really wrong? I still believe that freedom of speech is important because it is freedom for ideas, not "freedom for morons" as some are trying to argue.
fictioncircle 9y ago
> I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account. Stop blocking spam, advertising, legalize government use of propaganda domestically, etc. No? Then clearly your position has an obvious flaw in that you have to censor certain classes of speech. All of those happen on Twitter.
- broodbucket 9y ago
  There is a difference between a platform (be that a website, or a government) censoring speech, and individuals opting out of certain things. If I choose, I can view ads and I can view spam. I choose not to, just as it's perfectly fine to not follow Donald Trump on Twitter. I am making the decision about what content I view. An entity in power making that decision for me is censoring free speech. My choosing not to see things, is not.
NamTaf 9y ago
The irony of this post and the subsequent replies debating the true meaning/context of his 158-character long quote is hopefully not lost on anyone.
intended 9y ago
This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the time to understand why its important, and why Humanity has valued it and argued for it. The ideas behind it are sound. It falls flat when having to deal with the modern internet. In the simplest explanation - Free Speech was NEVER designed to deal with things like channel saturation and specialized targeting of the human hind brain which happens today. The Free speech model is the bazaar of ideas model. Everyone can see all ideas, and decide for themselves what is best. Heinous ideas are important because at the very least - people can define themselves against it. Modern impediments to free speech arise because small groups of humans have new abilities to disrupt the bazaar. They can spam a single message, they can overwhelm normal discourse, and we have learnt that emotion over comes reason regularly. That's how the brain is designed. In the same way environmental rules are made to prevent abuse of the commons, or pollution of common land, rules will be made to "protect" free speech. How those conflicting ideas will be meshed, is beyond me. Without such rules, motivated people can and will abuse/spam the shit out of a communication channel in order to take control of it. fundamentally - the human brain itself is un-prepared for this environment. Therefore, rules will be made to ensure that the human brain is not completely harmed by it.
- dorgo 9y ago
  I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation management. Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Reduce/forbid redundant arguments. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Add ratings to arguments (a la hackernews).
  - marklgr 9y ago
    Oh yes, it's hard. Reputation and ratings are abused by "brigades", groups of people who upvote all posts of other members and downvotes those of opponents. Eventually, it's a batlle of the most zealous and organized groups who are willing to put up the most time in this. These groups can be some volunteers on the Internet, but they can also be professionnal teams working on e-reputation/web-influence, and they know very well how to bypass the (mostly rudimentary) protections against astroturfing. It doesn't look like it, but it's a big business.
hek3 9y ago
Ofcourse there are bigger issues. Clowns are being propped up in every sphere of life in every country not based on their skill but on their skill at getting youtube/twitter/facebook followers. It's happening so fast there are no control rods. If MTV and Hollywood gave us celeb culture. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have taken mindless celeb worship to another level. Obama is good example of the feel good pointlessness that social media can prop up.
ern 9y ago
I'd love to know why you believe that private entities can't/shouldn't censor speech on their platforms, and what philosophical underpinnings this has (not being snarky, I'm keen to know how you came to have this belief).
soup10 9y ago
Your emotional reaction to the quote has nothing to do with what he's talking about. Hes not talking about censorship or one side winning. He's saying he was hoping political wisdom would be gained from the free exchange of ideas, trump may be smart but he's certainly not wise.
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
The quote is 158 characters long. Maybe it lacks nuance.
factsaresacred 9y ago
> I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place If you value Liberalism, it's the actual ability to exchange information - independent of the ideas being shared - that makes the world a better place. The problem is that this information may not be true, and even when it is true, people tend to dislike the 'exchange information and ideas' when they disagree with the information and ideas being exchanged. Williams says so himself: > If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry Sorry for what? Launching a platform where one can instantly read a wide variety of ideas and where narratives can be challenged as quickly as they're spun? It's like apologizing for creating the printing press because Martin Luther used it to kick off The Reformation. Anyone who uses Twitter has witnessed legitimate - thus credible - reporters and news outlets spread incorrect stories, only for Twitter to quickly call them out. So while much of Twitter may be poison, it beats relying solely on biased websites - such as the Washington Post - for information.
marklgr 9y ago
You conflate censoring ie. forcing people to shut up, and giving anyone a giant soapbox. One can regret doing the latter without suggesting doing the former.
ehnto 9y ago
I read it very differently. To me it sounds like the base assumption was that the majority of ideas are worthwhile and not nefarious or damaging, and that he now feels that was wrong. Anyone who has been a moderator on a public forum, let alone one as big as twitter, can quickly tell you that not all ideas are created equal. I have said it before on this board of which is moderated, but if every single person spoke their mind the internet would be full of absolute garbage and hate, because those people tend to speak loudest and most often when given the chance. To be clear I am not for censorship and I want to make sure there is a place for everyones legitimate views. But there is no sense in pretending free speech has to be a free for all. We can dismiss some things as objectively bad. Even a presidential debate has a moderator and there is an expected legitimacy to the discourse.
timthelion 9y ago
Has anyone else noticed, that we are failing to distinguish between two very different rights: 1) Free speech 2) Free and anonymous speech All of the platforms that have big problems support the later. Maybe the problem is anonymity rather than freedom of speech. It is true that Facebook doesn't really support anonymous speech, but even there, most of the fake news spread was anonymously published. I imagine that when you read this, a dystopia of national Internet ID cards pops into your mind. However, I don't think this necessarily needs to be. I've been working on a project called push to talk: http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html and I hope that the existence of a real persons voice behind the scenes would help. I think that youtube also has an advantage, that the distinction between anonymous speech and non-anonymous speech is clear, and the voice synthesized videos are much less popular.
- kelnos 9y ago
  I'm really torn on this. Plenty of non-anonymous people have posted some pretty horrible things on Facebook. And it goes the other way, too: there are plenty of people who would feel justifiably threatened and afraid to speak their true feelings if they could not be anonymous, and their contributions are often just as valuable as people who aren't anonymous.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    I agree, at the same time, the Czech internet is filled with hate speech, absolutely virolic hate speech, and it is beleived by some that these comments are actually being posted by the Russian embasy in order to undermine Czech democracy. If that theory is true (and why wouldn't it be? They have the means, the incentive, and the anonymity) then how would one fight against that without breaking anonymity? Would you prefer a situation in which secret police agents tracked down troll internet users, and if they found those users to be Russia agents, they would shoot them? I might prefer that actually ;) but I'm not in charge of the secret police and so therefore its not in my capabilities to make that happen. Of course, it is possible that this conspiracy theory is false. That Czechs, or a large portion of them, actually are that hateful (also likely). If that is the case, than this country is on the edge of a genocide (against Muslims and Gypsies) far more brutal than Nazi germany. And in that case, anonymity would be a good thing for all the activists who try to fight against the hate. So you're right, that it is a very difficult question.
LeeHwang 9y ago
Yes it's a pretty disturbing message that actually goes against the ACLU's opinion on free speech. Also it worries me I'm seeing more authoritarian traits in silicon valley elites. Those who make peaceful protests impossible make violence inevitable.

IanCal 9y ago

Somewhat concerning statements on their own. > “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I'd like to see a more detailed look at why Twitter might not have been a good idea. I don't think that free, easy communication is a bad thing and I think it's powered an enormous change for good. The sentiment expressed in the quotes sounds worryingly similar to proponents of censorship. I just think that Twitter is a bad way of communicating anything vaguely complex.

yorwba 9y ago
> I don't think that free, easy communication is a bad thing It is neither good nor bad, just an amplifying medium for whatever someone chooses to use it for.
duskwuff 9y ago
I think the key word in that quote, which you've overlooked, is "automatically". Allowing free communication may be good... but it can't "automatically" make the world a better place on its own.
fictioncircle 9y ago
Honestly, I am more worried about the fact HN seems oblivious to the fact Twitter was being used as a targeted propaganda system by a foreign government than I am of censorship in the US.
- 3131s 9y ago
  A foreign government? Many governments place targeted propaganda on all sorts of platforms, the US primary among them. Both US political parties were no doubt doing astroturfing of their own this last election. And among US politicians, having corrupt foreign ties is hardly unique to Trump. Trump probably has some relationship with the Russian government, but IMO it is hardly significant in comparison to the full scope of corrupt, bad behavior exhibited by the US government.
GuiA 9y ago

grandalf 9y ago

In 2016 the US was still vulnerable to a Kardashian style PR stunt attack. Trump performed this attack over and over again and garnered an estimated $2B of free advertising from it. Trump used Twitter to do this, but he could have used other social media. Trump's tweets were not newsworthy because Twitter routed them to millions of people but because large media firms wanted to monetize the hysteria created by the tweets so they had their newsrooms run coverage of each and every tweet.

GuiA 9y ago
> In 2016 the US was still vulnerable to a Kardashian style PR stunt attack. Trump performed this attack over and over again and garnered an estimated $2B of free advertising from it. This hits the nail on the head. Late stage capitalism has completely fused media, news, and entertainment. This means that any person or organization who manages to "hack" the news cycle (i.e. finds a way to be in the spotlight on a very regular basis) can reap great profits. Like a presidency. I don't agree that he could have used any other social media to the same effect. Information propagates and decays on Twitter much, much faster than on other mainstream platforms: if I post something, everyone who follows me sees it right away, and very few tweets are seen a few days after they have been posted. No other mainstream social network is like this. These properties have led to Twitter becoming the new AP stream for journalists, aka the entry point to the news cycle. If you want to dominate the news cycle, dominate Twitter - be it with racist tweets or asking for free chicken nuggets. Twitter as a media apparatus has naturally played a great part in electing Trump. The Twitter leadership isn't composed of economists or political scientists or sociologists, so of course this kind of stuff lies completely outside of their concern (unless it brings good PR, like it does now). Same goes for Facebook, although the role it plays in the equation is different.
- grandalf 9y ago
  > I don't agree that he could have used any other social media to the same effect. Information propagates and decays on Twitter much, much faster than on other mainstream platforms I certainly agree that Twitter's characteristics are unique, but I think there was also a lot of awareness of Trump going into the election and so I wonder if he could have done the same thing with a simple blog. My biggest curiosity is that now that he's shown that the attack can work, how many candidates will enter the next election doing it and how unusual will they be...

urda 9y ago

AKA: > Twitter co-founder: I'm sorry we didn't use our platform to silence an opposing view point. Shame. Silencing someone else because you disagree makes you many, many times worse than them. Sunlight and exposure is the best disinfectant, not this play.

fictioncircle 9y ago
Hey, if you want to legalize government propaganda go ahead. It's pretty clear sunlight is an ineffective disinfectant in that scenario.
- Inconel 9y ago
  Isn't government sanctioned propaganda already legal in most places? Or at least unpunished?
- nhebb 9y ago
  > if you want to legalize government propaganda Some argue that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 already did that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith-Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
baq 9y ago
It's about the mechanism, not Trump himself. In a better (that is, promoting reason and truth instead of emotion and tribalism) discussion framework Trump wouldn't win.
kelnos 9y ago
Is it, though? I mean, really? In an ideal world, I would absolutely love to agree with you. But, aside from certain forms of speech (hate speech, illegal speech, etc.), Twitter is pretty hands-off with what it allows. So it has given "sunlight and exposure" to people like Trump, and what has it gotten us...? Trump. A man who has used racism, sexism, xenophobia, lies, and false promises to win the US Presidency, and who used Twitter as a major platform for spreading such. How has sunlight and exposure disinfected his toxicity? Now, sure, doing otherwise would definitely be silencing an opposing view point. But... when that view point is so toxic, why is that necessarily bad? This might be a controversial opinion for me to hold, but I don't believe all view points are created equal, and I don't believe all view points deserve to be heard, or, more to the point, deserve a platform to be heard. I'm not saying choosing is easy, and not fraught with moral peril, but I think the idea of this big free-flow of ideas being the ideal, given the constraints and issues with our society, is... frankly, a little naive.

danblick 9y ago

If you're interested in this topic, I would highly recommend Neil Postman's book, "Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business". I agree with claims that Postman predicted Trump's rise back in 1985: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-oursel... The book is written about television, but the main ideas are still applicable to online newsfeeds and social media. The book unpacks the phrase: "the ideas that are convenient to express become the content of a culture". If the most convenient form of communication is long-form writing in newspapers or pamphlets, people will get their information from (long-form writing in) newspapers or pamphlets. If it's television, they will get information from (visual, snappy, "entertaining") video. If it's Twitter, people will end up talking about ideas that can be conveniently expressed in 140 characters or less.

formula_ninguna 9y ago

How's that related to HN? Why politics here? You better quote me, I won't mind :))))

deleted 9y ago

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mklarmann 9y ago

Twitter is a simple technology that connects people, and the current presidency is IMO not their fault. Twitter just brought up to the surface what was already there but hidden. I am sorry that everyone now has to go through a lot of pain with the current presidency. But I think getting there is the only effective way for society to realize that your (US) political, social and educational system (just to name a few) are completely broken. And you have got to fix it. Most people didn't know how bad it is fucked up, now it becomes obvious. You got the president you earned. Twitter so just made it possible, that you are able to face your true challenges. Don't blame the messenger...

gurkendoktor 9y ago
> Twitter just brought up to the surface what was already there but hidden. We "know" through pop science that Facebook makes you miserable: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201603/science-explains-how-facebook-makes-you-sad https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-pe... On some level that's a mechanism that's "already there" in everyone, but Facebook is clearly more than a messenger if it influences how we feel. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that Twitter has a negative impact on us as well. But I agree that there are many systemic problems that Twitter has nothing to do with.

aaron695 9y ago

I wonder if he gets the irony, or he just doesn't get it? A large part of why people lashed out and voted Trump was their impression places like Twitter censored their point of view.

khacking 9y ago

afas

dreta 9y ago

I'd say this is an Orwellian statement, but at this point i got so used to Twitter silencing voices they disagree with i'm shocked they didn't just ban Trump long ago, since they banned people for pettier reasons multiple times. Hillary got more support on Twitter than Trump. The reason places like Twitter helped Trump in any signifficant fashion was that they let Trump reach people directly, and not through the media which are still lying, and slandering the president, and trying to paint a false picture of what's going on in the country.

GuiA 9y ago

“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place” - Ev Williams "Really don't want to get in politics. I just want to help invent and develop technologies that improve lives. Feels so bizarre." - Elon Musk "For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens." - HN Moderation team It's okay, maybe some day Silicon Valley will realize that technology and politics aren't two concepts that you can neatly disentangle from one another, and that building tech never "automatically" makes the world a better place on its own. If you are touching human lives, you are "in politics".

jacquesm 9y ago
Thank you.
baq 9y ago
this is why scientists and technologists should run for office. kind of 'if you don't want to do it, you're qualified'.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Hoasi 9y ago

Twitter is not a discussion forum. It is great as a polished RSS feeds reader & writer combined though. You can share quick messages and respond to people with Twitter, sure, but that is more like texting. Useful as it may be, it's still not the best way to discuss with someone, let alone with several people together. But brevity and repetition make Twitter an ideal medium for propaganda. No wonder some people use it as such.

deleted 9y ago
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Grue3 9y ago

As much as I dislike Trump (for being an obvious Putin shill) and Twitter (for the mindless 140-character "discourse" it propagates), it is absolutely not Twitter's fault Trump got elected. It's that Democratic Party has completely dropped the ball on messaging, strategy, and choosing the right candidate for the job. And they still won't admit it, which means they'll keep on losing. Blaming Twitter or other media won't solve anything.

russellbeattie 9y ago

I stopped using Twitter after the election. The inability to express complex, nuanced, thorough ideas and responses, combined with its popularity (or at least, mass media influence), directly lead to Trump's election. The character limit, which I had perceived as merely an inconvenience for years, is actually a fundamental flaw which enabled a demagogue like him to succeed, and I refuse to participate in that stupidity any more. If Ev really wants to make amends, he should get Twitter to immediately expand the character limit to take away Trump's excuse for short, inflammatory posts, forcing him to try to actually put together coherent, intelligent sentences that express fully thought out ideas.

formula_ninguna 9y ago
I was thinking about stopping using Twitter but then realized that I'd never begun using it.