21 ms·

“We’re committing Twitter to increase the health and civility of conversation”

164 points by dankohn1 9y ago

nokcha 9y ago
To me, the most interesting part is the following: >What we know is we must commit to a rigorous and independently vetted set of metrics to measure the health of public conversation on Twitter. >So we’re seeking help by opening up an RFP process to cast the widest net possible for great ideas and implementations. RFP: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-submission.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...
ianai 9y ago
I can’t take this seriously. Their economic model seems dependent on extreme messages/people.
- chippy 9y ago
  Well, if Facebook were able to change the news feed to focus more on friends and family and away from their $-cow companies and advertisers, then maybe Twitter can change.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    If anything we should take it extremely seriously in as much as we're getting to a point where private companies undertake research projects on how the can alter the public discourse through algorithms. I'm not saying that has to be bad. It could very well be good too. But it does open some fairly terrifying possibilities as well.
  - throwaway1748 9y ago
    Yeah but Facebook haven't really fixed the problem. That change was a nudge in the right direction but News Feed is still fundamentally optimized for engagement. Hyper-partisan content is just more engaging than nonpartisan content.
chippy 9y ago
You can submit research proposals to Twitter about this commitment, and get funding for it. (I think they are after peer review research level proposals, rather than "ban $politician") https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-submission.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/... * Your proposed health metrics, and methods for capturing, measuring, evaluating and reporting on such metrics * Anticipated resource requirements and methodology * Proposed output from your proposal and estimated time needed to capture, measure and evaluate health metrics * Relevant, peer-reviewed, publications and papers
koolba 9y ago
From the tweet storm, emphasis mine: > While working to fix it, we‘ve been accused of apathy, censorship, political bias, and optimizing for our business and share price instead of the concerns of society. This is not who we are, or who we ever want to be. I don't understand why people don't admit that that their own political biases exist. Hell I know I have them. It's part of what makes us human. Apparently we're not alone either: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-robotsbias-is-the-real-ai-danger/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-robo...
- watwut 9y ago
  Because the moment you admit it, self-appointed "rational" people will use it to deletigimitize you.
  - bitlax 9y ago
    Better to be dishonest and retain the appearance of legitimacy.
    - bilbo0s 9y ago
      The thing is though, as a society, we're dishonest for the appearance of legitimacy on nearly every subject. I mean, that's basically the same reason we don't admit our severe racial biases. Biases are a part of life. Not admitting them is a part of life. Where Twitter goes off the rails, is not in failing to recognize and admit to their own bias, but rather in failing to recognize and admit to the conflicting biases of everyone using their platform. Twitter recognizing their own bias does little at all to solve the core issue they are speaking to in the missive. They need to change the behavior of their users, and I'm not at all sanguine about their ability to do that.
    - watwut 9y ago
      Since we are supposedly talking about level of bias everyone has by function of being human, the "dishonest apearance of legitimacy" framing does not change much nor adds anything meaningful.
moduspol 9y ago
This reads like an arms wide-open embrace of politically correct language and inoffensiveness, along with a shunning of everything else on the platform. I'm honestly not sure how much I blame Twitter. It's not their duty to stand up for offensive ideas and they'll undoubtedly be more commercially successful by limiting the discussion to things that result in algorithmically good "conversational health." It's just a bit disappointing to see us take yet another step away from free expression--particularly in this case because it follows major Democratic senators threatening action if they don't [1]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16591646/facebook-senate-hearing-feinstein-russia-google-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16591646/facebook-senate-...
zestyping 9y ago
Today, Twitter is a planetary-scale hate machine. By which I don't mean "people post hateful things on Twitter." I mean literally generates hate, as in, put a bunch of people with diverse perspectives on Twitter and by the end of the day they hate each other more than when they started. Common ground might have existed, but they won't find it, because Twitter, like any arms dealer, works better when they fight. It even benefits from collateral damage, when they hurt people they didn't specifically intend to hurt. Through its core design—short messages, retweets, engagement metrics—Twitter incapacitates the safeguards necessary for civil discussion. It eliminates context, encourages us to present each other out of context, prevents us from explaining ourselves, rewards the most incendiary messages and most impulsive reactions, drives us to take sides and build walls. If Twitter is going to foster healthy conversation, it will have to change fundamentally. It won't be a matter of tuning some filters and tweaking some ranking algorithms. A big part of it will involve making us the customer, not the product (Zeynep Tufekci: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/965937392942305280 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/965937392942305280).
- krapp 9y ago
  >Through its core design—short messages, retweets, engagement metrics—Twitter incapacitates the safeguards necessary for civil discussion. Which is ironic because, not long ago, people were praising Twitter's character limit as a means of enhancing civil and intelligent discussion, believing it would force people to carefully think about and utilize each character, and eliminate wasteful verbiage. But it turns out brevity is only the soul of wit for those who have their wits about them. Go figure.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Brevity is the soul of getting people to read your shit.
    - xg15 9y ago
      I
clarkmoody 9y ago
Twitter is taking itself too seriously, believing that if it could tweak around the edges, it could improve the quality of the debate in the direction of civility and understanding. Perhaps some nudges and UX changes could encourage these things (I remember a long article about Facebook tweaking their "report picture" function to encourage messaging the person to talk about it before reporting). BUT I hate to break it to @jack, but Twitter conversation simply reflects the nature of humanity in an adversarial political system. Attempting to "elevate the debate" will never work, since the debate has never been "elevated." There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy. No. Politics is always adversarial. As a libertarian, both "sides" of the American political divide feel threatening to me, since all proposals out there are for one form of authoritarianism or another. All proposals involve me giving up a little more of my personal or economic liberty. Will @jack do anything to alleviate my fears that my liberty is being attacked every single day? Probably not. He's devoted to "collective health and civility," which reads like a 1984 thought-police handbook. Of course, the debate always seems civil after the dissenting voices have been crushed. (Pre-emptive retort to attack on libertarianism: Yes, I know Twitter is private property. Yes, Jack can do whatever he wants with his business, within the laws for a publicly-traded company.)
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Yes, every time someone tells me politics is getting more adversarial I think back to people like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEjzSlbHvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEjzSlbHvY
- wgerard 9y ago
  Huh, your comment actually caused me to re-evaluate my thinking a little bit. Because you're right, in general this is true: > There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy. It seems that way sometimes (calm debate and discussion), but US history of course is full of angry, threatening debates with even politicians themselves erupting into actual physical violence sometimes [1]. Still, it feels like there's been a notable shift. Compare one of the 1992 presidential debates [2] to a 2016 presidential debate [3]. The former feels like an actual debate, the latter feels like a segment on a political news show where basically the loudest voice "wins". Of course, US politics has always been a thin veneer of civility masking some extremely aggressive adversarial acts (e.g. Watergate), but it seems like that mask has now disappeared almost entirely. I don't know that Twitter is the cause of any of this (as opposed to just a reflection of where we're at), but it does feel like things have certainly shifted nonetheless. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9qB_BIjWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9qB_BIjWY 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s
Proven 9y ago
Screw Twitter. No control. Gab.ai
ivraatiems 9y ago
The fact that it took @jack, by my count, 13 tweets to say this is itself evidence that what he's trying to do will never come to pass on Twitter. Trying to read it, I kept thinking, "why is this so long?" It's not. I'd read a Medium article or HN or Reddit post three times its length and not blink. The right move to increase civility of discourse would be to stop providing that discourse via environments designed to discourage comprehension, lower the attention span of the user base, and encourage flamey, bite-sized "takes."
- oldcynic 9y ago
  Why is it a long-form post more suited to Livejournal or blog post and in no way written to work on Twitter? That in itself is indicative of the problem.
  - Shank 9y ago
    Platforms don't just stay used the way they were intended or created to be used. Threads became a wildly successful thing on Twitter, and they embraced the phenomenon rather than fighting against it. That's actually a characteristic of good adaption to trends -- something that Twitter could do far more of.
  - cabalamat 9y ago
    It would be nice if there was a platform that was as good at short messages as Twitter while also being good for longer more deliberative posts. Of course the problem for any new social network is that it is hard for it to become successful, due to network effects.
- exodust 9y ago
  I no longer read "one" tweet that is spread out over multiple tweets, it's too jarring and broken and hurts my eyes. I'm surprised it's still going on.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    Twitter upped its character limit recently; next up they should make what I feel is a relatively simple change and turn multi-tweet posts into neatly formatted multi-paragraphed but single-post-seeming articles.
deleted 9y ago
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nyxxie 9y ago
It's vaguely disturbing to read the CEO of a company that hosts one of the world's largest communications platforms talk about "measuring the health" of conversations and his company's goal to get rid of conversations they deem unhealthy. The problems Jack talks about (echo chambers, political bias, misinformation campaigns) are serious problems that our society faces as a small group of voices increasingly have the ability to reach millions of real people. However, I think it's unethical to solve it by eliminating speech based on an arbitrary group of people's notion of what is "healthy speech". I think that Jack forgets that he's talking about real people expressing real thoughts and opinions. Of course he is well within his rights to do whatever he wants with his platforms, but if we want to view this as a problem of ethics, Twitter is directly infringing on private individuals' rights to autonomy of expression and manipulating their view of the world by deciding what they should and should not see. I don't think that is a solution which produces the greatest net good.
- dilap 9y ago
  It's remarkable how quickly the west has embraced a culture of censorship.
  - facetube 9y ago
    Twitter is under no obligation to distribute your content for you for free.
    - CNJ7654 9y ago
      True, but it's sad to see people continue to use Twitter even when they're aware of it's active censorship. Twitter isn't doing anything 'wrong' technically, since it's well within their rights as a private company, but it's still sad to see a society accept and embrace the practices instead of shunning them.
    - dilap 9y ago
      In China, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by a state censor. In the US, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by corporate censors or allied groups like the SPLC. I'm not sure I see a huge difference, in practice. "But if you don't like Twitter's policies, you can just make your own app." Sure, like Gab, which was subsequently banned from both the Google and Apple app stores for not itself censoring. Not a lot of breathing room when the modern communication mediums are dominated by a duopoly. But that's all tangential to my point, which was referring to the cultural appreciation of free speech. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when site's like Twitter claimed to be strong supporters of speech as both a principle and a practical reality to strive for. Nowadays, the more common attitude is, "if we allow people to speak freely, they will spread conspiracy theories, fake news, and hateful thoughts harmful to society, so these ideas must be suppressed." In just a few years, the zeitgeist has gone from valuing free speech as one of our most cherished ideals to valuing social cohesion as the most important good. Pretty crazy.
bob_theslob646 9y ago
The crazy thing every time I read something like this,is how out of touch tech companies are. Isn't technology supposed to enhance our lives? In twitter's case, why cannot it lead to people having more compassionate conversation. I think there is difference between free speech and hate speech and because of metrics such as MAU's and other's Wall Street imposes on twitter and other tech companies, they are not incentivized to have stronger communities which may be smaller rather than larger communities who are more distant if that makes sense.
ProAm 9y ago
I look forward to seeing how they are going to deal with the US President's tweets from this point forward.
- brianmurphy 9y ago
  Or for that matter look at the replies to Trump's tweets if you want an example of vile hatred.
grey-sunshine 9y ago
Terminal stage cancer, twitter that is!
gfodor 9y ago
Twitter should just realize they are the "you're gonna have to throw one away" of global-scale internet discourse and just shut it down and try again.
se30b 9y ago
"health" and "civility" aka they are going to double down on censorship and hostility towards anyone who opposes thier radical left wing agenda. More racism disguised as "anti racism" and more restricted discourse disguised as "openness" Pure doublespeak here folks.
deleted 9y ago
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mudil 9y ago
Twitter might have its quirks. But the truth is that the content on the internet been supplanted by these mega-malls, called Google, Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and VK, and such. And these mega-malls want to be everything to everyone. And at the same time they are aiming for the lowest common denominator just to attract more and more people to its platforms. So, of course the quality of content and discussions will go down. These platforms control the digital ad market. Real journalists can barely survive. Fake news proliferate. Internet is becoming increasingly similar to the strip malls you see everywhere around you, and they have all the same offerings of choices (McDonald's, Subway, Verizon store, etc). Here's a good read: https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-digital-age.html https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-...
riffic 9y ago
Twitter should implement federation with an open protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
aestetix 9y ago
Isn't this what their "Trust and Safety" Comittee was for?
jessaustin 9y ago
Yeah they are so concerned. If they had started adding decent shadow-ignore capabilities to curb the harassment ten years ago, it would already have been scandalously late. Twitter is what it is, and no amount of executive window dressing could change that. If they were a firm capable of major functionality updates (or profit!), they would have shown some sign of that before now.
DisruptiveDave 9y ago
I've been strongly doubting that there is such a thing as "the collective health and society." At best, we're in a growing pains situation as a species. At worst, we're simply not built to have this type of communication. There is nothing in nature that makes me think this simple, open-sky way to "communicate" with hundreds of thousands of faceless people is necessary.
deleted 9y ago
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rotrux 9y ago
Man. This is exactly what happened to the democrats.
lukev 9y ago
Civility is nice, but I don't think it's what's fundamentally wrong with Twitter. One can (and people do) express hateful ideas quite politely. Preserving some concept of free speech while also preventing it from growing into an ideological cesspool is required to give Twitter net positive societal value, but mere civility ain't that.
zombieprocesses 9y ago
Good old "civility". The excuse that tyrants, dictators, liberals, conservatives and social media tycoons use to justify censorship. Surprised the other excuse ( "won't you please think of the children" ) wasn't used. Can't wait for the next wave of censorship. ISPs banning twitter, news and pornography to increase "health and civility". The promise of open and free internet is quickly turning into a nightmare of censored social media. Is anyone else concerned that twitter and social media are now openly stating that they will manipulate content/people to fit their agenda? If it was china doing this, HN and the media would be attacking it from every angle possible. Strangely, the same type of behavior in the US is supported by these same people.
- Karrot_Kream 9y ago
  What is "censorship"? When I learned about the concept, I learned the definition that "censorship" is to block a person's speech in a purely public space. You seem to be alluding to a more abstract right than this.
  - zombieprocesses 9y ago
    > What is "censorship"? When I learned about the concept, I learned the definition that "censorship" is to block a person's speech in a purely public space. You seem to be alluding to a more abstract right than this. Censorship is just limiting/preventing speech. It can be by government, private organizations or even individuals. Governments can censor. Companies can censor. Your parents can censor. Historically, since governments have been the most powerful institutions and our focus was primarily on preventing government censorship. Censorship by private organizations and private individuals is legal ( including self-censorship ). Censorship by government is generally illegal in the US. But that doesn't mean twitter can't censor. They can and they do censor. It's just that it is legal and their right to censor. Hope that clears up any confusion on censorship. But here's a thought, as corporations get more and more powerful ( even more powerful than many governments around the world ), should we as a society think about protecting citizens from corporate censorship?
    - 9y ago
Clanan 9y ago
The political/philosophical diversity of awardees will illuminate just how genuine this effort is. Interestingly, these social media companies which are engaging in censorship are now being reminded that if they decide to censor by politics, they may be held liable for everything posted to their platform.
brudgers 9y ago
On the one hand I am hopeful because it is a decent sentiment about a real problem and because Twitter is the only possible entity in a position to fix it. On the other, the format of the message suggests how daunting the task is. Thanks for taking the time to read and consider, and also, come help us: +-------+---------------------------------------+ | | | | | Twitter Careers | | | careers.twitter.com | | | | +-------+---------------------------------------+ Twitter does not make it easy to know when to STFU.
j-c-hewitt 9y ago
Ehhhhhh. There's like two things that I want from Twitter as someone who buys internet clicks: Lower prices. More cost effectiveness. Those two things are two things that Twitter has never offered.
zaroth 9y ago
I’m sorry Jack, but just log into your own service and try to read the message you just posted, and maybe it will dawn on you why Twitter as it currently exists is antithetical to healthy and civil conversation. And once you’ve lost trust (which you have on all sides) any steps or “measures” you implement will inherently be distrusted. Good luck with your “hate machine” as another poster aptly describes it. You’re going to have to dig a lot deeper than sentiment analysis to find anything close to redemption.
panic 9y ago
Online trolls love figuring out and exploiting automated systems. Any computer-evaluated "health metric" will just become another weapon in their hands. You need human moderators!
neonate 9y ago
Bershidsky's take here: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-02/twitter-s-attempt-at-self-regulation-won-t-work https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-02/twitter-s....
retox 9y ago
There is hate and bile on Twitter because people are full of hate and bile. This is a frightening time to be alive for a lot of people, full of uncertainty and a feeling that they have been hard done by and manipulated by faceless bureaucrats. The answer to this aspect is "simple"; make people happier. What makes is easier and more 'acceptable' for people to write these things is that they don't have to look into the faces of their targets. You can't have civil discourse when two people are wearing masks. This problem can't be solved by social media in its current form, or maybe ever. Perhaps VR communities where everyone is forced to use their own face and have it 100% accurate and real-time. Even then people don't have the same sense of humour and understanding of nuance which is a big reason we choose to associate with the people we do. It's easy to be offended when you hear two people talk in terms you aren't familiar with and aren't privy to past discussions and inside jokes. This is unsolvable by social media without federation, which is basically what traditional forums are.
egfx 9y ago
Twitter is deeply depressing. Their best feature, lists is lost and goes completely unnoticed. Meanwhile we get moments plus hashtags which link us to literally every minor iteration of the exact same story. A measure of madness?
theNJR 9y ago
Why is there not a national public social platform? Certainly this has been discussed, yet in all my years of geekery, I haven't come across a conversation about it. Whenever the topic of YouTube/Facebook/Twitter censorship comes up, it always ends in "Well, it's their platform so they can do what they want". That's true. But don't we need a platform where they can't, that is owned by we the people?
- deleted 9y ago
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- leereeves 9y ago
  The Internet itself used to be owned by the public and the government privatized it.
nickgrosvenor 9y ago
They should create an authenticated badge on Twitter, if you confirm your identity, you can get one, then users could filter by “authentic badge only” so you’d experience twitter with only vetted, real people. This would greatly reduce trolls imho.
- allpratik 9y ago
  This is something which can be done and is easily achievable. I have seen (and currently seeing) that to create an echo chamber a certain number of troll armies have to create it one first, trend it and then people take over from that. Having a verified tag will really help and go long way. Sure, even the KYC process will hurt and potentially can be gamed with but having this visual cues will alert the user about the source and maybe the authenticity of the content.
deleted 9y ago
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munificent 9y ago
Looks like Twitter finally reached a level of toxicity that it's negatively impacting shareholder value.
joncp 9y ago
"Committing twitter" sounds like a crime. An all-too-common one at that.
- ygaf 9y ago
  I read it in the "committed to an asylum" sense. And that it must be Tim Berners-Lee talking, until you see the source.
deleted 9y ago
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deevolution 9y ago
I think this might call for some fundamental changes to their algorithms. Maybe automatically penalize hate filled comments/flame wars and reward conversation that adds "value". Maybe charge bots on a per post basis? Perhaps reward real users with utility tokens like steem?
nan0 9y ago
This is kinda related to the topic, but does anyone have any resources relating to how we as humans are not phycologically ready for mass communication on the scale that we have today? I know it's broad , worth a shot though.
- mattbierner 9y ago
  Not communication directly, but I’ve been reading Future Shock and found many of the points relevant even 50 years later. One that comes to mind: the past few generations have seen an enermous erosion of belief in institutions and systems that once gave people purpose (religion, family, community, craftsmanship, ...) This, combined with extremely rapid change, has left a lot of people feeling unmoored and lost in their own time. How they react to this is unpredictable but it is often strange or sad, and sometimes even dangerous
golemiprague 9y ago
I use Twitter only for those kind of things, they take all the fun away. I don't use it under my real name, what's the point? I want to argue and spew hate and all this kind of stuff, for nice discussions I got my real friends. They should open the platform completely and let people say whatever they want otherwise they are just going to be a boring product that nobody wants to use. We got messaging systems already anyway.
WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
I think we've heard something similar from them for years now. When will it happen? Twitter is now part of everyone's life in the U.S. given that the president uses it as a bullhorn. It needs to clean up its act, now.
deleted 9y ago
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monkeyfoop 9y ago
Great, more censorship and them determining what is "fake news"
0800 9y ago
First things first, Twitter. Small baby steps before you shoot yourself in the foot. Focus first and foremost on getting rid of radicalizing terrorist content. That has been on your backlog for years now, while you prioritized more pressing matters, such as cutting off access to developers and apps. You kind of owe it to society and the parents of your teenage users to make this right. Then, when it is 2023, go after the grieving trolls. Those who mock suicide victim families, DOX innocents, post indecent pictures of naked black people doing lewd things to watermelons. Some people may even help report such things manually for free. Then bots. Kill 99% of all bots, keep only those with a 1000+ legit followers, or make bot owners verify them with a cute droid badge. Then after one of Trump's tweets starts WWIII, and you are as significant as Myspace, maybe you can have a look at the health and civility of online conversation. I'd start with a "My Safe Space" button, where you can automatically unsubscribe to all posts about a certain topic/containing a certain trigger word. If you can't wait that long, there is an easy fix to remove 50% of uncivil content by going back to a 140 character limit. I feel that was closer to the healthy and civilized discussion platform you envisioned Twitter to be when you started it.
westurner 9y ago
First Amendment protections apply to suits brought by the government. Civil suits are required to prove damages ("quantum of damages"). There are opportunity cost, pre-judgement, and post-judgement interest calculations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost There are many open platforms. (I've contributed to those as well). Some are built on open standards. None of said open platforms have procedures or resources for handling the onslaught of disrespectful trash that the people we've raised eventually use these platforms for communicating at other people who have feelings and understand the Golden Rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule The initial early adopters (who have other better things to do) are fine: helpful, caring, critical, respectful; healthy. And then everyone else comes surging in with hate, disrespect, and vitriol; unhealthy. They don't even realize that being hateful and disrespectful is making them more depressed. They think that complaining and talking smack to people is changing the world. And then they turn off the phone or log out of the computer, and carry on with their lives. No-one taught them to be the positive, helpful energy they want to attract from the world. No-one properly conditioned them to either respectfully disagree according to the data or sit down and listen. No-one explained to them that a well-founded argument doesn't fit in 140 or 280 characters, but a link and a headline do. No-one explained to them that what they write on the internet lasts forever and will be found by their future interviewers, investors, jurors, and voters. No-one taught them that being respectful and helpful in service of other people - of the group's success, of peaceful coexistence - is the way to get ahead AND be happy. "No-one told me that." Shareholders of public corporations want to see growth in meaningless numbers, foreign authoritarian governments see free expression as a threat to their ever-so-fragile self-perceptions, political groups seek to frame and smear and malign and discredit (because they are so in need of group acceptance; because money still isn't making them happy), and there are children with too much free time reading all of these. No-one is holding these people accountable: we need transparency and accountability. We need to focus on more important goals and feel good about helping; about volunteering our time to help others be happier. Instead, now that these haters and scam artists have all self-identified, we must spend our time conditioning their communications until they learn to respectfully disagree on facts and data or go somewhere else. "That's how you feel? Great. How does that make your victim feel?" is the confrontation that some people are seeking from companies that set out to serve free speech and provide a forum for citizens to share the actual news. Who's going to pay for that? Can they sue for their costs and losses? Advertisers do not want a spot next to hateful and disrespectful. "How dare you speak of censorship in such veiled terms!?" Really? They're talking about taking down phrases like "kill" and "should die"; not phrases like "I disagree because:" So, now, because there are so many hateful economically disadvantaged people in the world with nothing better to do and no idea how to run a business or keep a job with benefits, these companies need to staff 24 hour a day censors to take down the hate and terror and gang recruiting within one hour. What a distorted mirror of our divisively fractured wealth inequality, indeed. "Ban gangs ASAP, please: they'll just go away" How much does it cost to pay prison labor to redundantly respond to this trash? Are those the skills they need to choose a different career with benefits and savings that meet or exceed inflation when they get out? What is the procedure for referring threats of violence to justice in your jurisdiction? Are there wealthy individuals in your community who would love to contribute resources to this effort? Maybe they have some region-specific pointers for helping the have-nots out here trolling like it's going to get them somewhere they want to be in life? Let me share a little story with you: A person walks into a bar/restaurant, flicks off the bartender/waiter, orders 5 glasses of free water, starts plastering ads to the walls and other peoples' tables, starts making threats to groups of people cordially conversing, and walks out.

164 points by dankohn1 9y ago

To me, the most interesting part is the following: >What we know is we must commit to a rigorous and independently vetted set of metrics to measure the health of public conversation on Twitter. >So we’re seeking help by opening up an RFP process to cast the widest net possible for great ideas and implementations. RFP: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-submission.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...

ianai 9y ago

I can’t take this seriously. Their economic model seems dependent on extreme messages/people.

chippy 9y ago
Well, if Facebook were able to change the news feed to focus more on friends and family and away from their $-cow companies and advertisers, then maybe Twitter can change.
- vidarh 9y ago
  If anything we should take it extremely seriously in as much as we're getting to a point where private companies undertake research projects on how the can alter the public discourse through algorithms. I'm not saying that has to be bad. It could very well be good too. But it does open some fairly terrifying possibilities as well.
- throwaway1748 9y ago
  Yeah but Facebook haven't really fixed the problem. That change was a nudge in the right direction but News Feed is still fundamentally optimized for engagement. Hyper-partisan content is just more engaging than nonpartisan content.

chippy 9y ago

You can submit research proposals to Twitter about this commitment, and get funding for it. (I think they are after peer review research level proposals, rather than "ban $politician") https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-submission.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/... * Your proposed health metrics, and methods for capturing, measuring, evaluating and reporting on such metrics * Anticipated resource requirements and methodology * Proposed output from your proposal and estimated time needed to capture, measure and evaluate health metrics * Relevant, peer-reviewed, publications and papers

koolba 9y ago

From the tweet storm, emphasis mine: > While working to fix it, we‘ve been accused of apathy, censorship, political bias, and optimizing for our business and share price instead of the concerns of society. This is not who we are, or who we ever want to be. I don't understand why people don't admit that that their own political biases exist. Hell I know I have them. It's part of what makes us human. Apparently we're not alone either: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-robotsbias-is-the-real-ai-danger/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-robo...

watwut 9y ago
Because the moment you admit it, self-appointed "rational" people will use it to deletigimitize you.
- bitlax 9y ago
  Better to be dishonest and retain the appearance of legitimacy.
  - bilbo0s 9y ago
    The thing is though, as a society, we're dishonest for the appearance of legitimacy on nearly every subject. I mean, that's basically the same reason we don't admit our severe racial biases. Biases are a part of life. Not admitting them is a part of life. Where Twitter goes off the rails, is not in failing to recognize and admit to their own bias, but rather in failing to recognize and admit to the conflicting biases of everyone using their platform. Twitter recognizing their own bias does little at all to solve the core issue they are speaking to in the missive. They need to change the behavior of their users, and I'm not at all sanguine about their ability to do that.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Since we are supposedly talking about level of bias everyone has by function of being human, the "dishonest apearance of legitimacy" framing does not change much nor adds anything meaningful.

moduspol 9y ago

This reads like an arms wide-open embrace of politically correct language and inoffensiveness, along with a shunning of everything else on the platform. I'm honestly not sure how much I blame Twitter. It's not their duty to stand up for offensive ideas and they'll undoubtedly be more commercially successful by limiting the discussion to things that result in algorithmically good "conversational health." It's just a bit disappointing to see us take yet another step away from free expression--particularly in this case because it follows major Democratic senators threatening action if they don't [1]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16591646/facebook-senate-hearing-feinstein-russia-google-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16591646/facebook-senate-...

zestyping 9y ago

Today, Twitter is a planetary-scale hate machine. By which I don't mean "people post hateful things on Twitter." I mean literally generates hate, as in, put a bunch of people with diverse perspectives on Twitter and by the end of the day they hate each other more than when they started. Common ground might have existed, but they won't find it, because Twitter, like any arms dealer, works better when they fight. It even benefits from collateral damage, when they hurt people they didn't specifically intend to hurt. Through its core design—short messages, retweets, engagement metrics—Twitter incapacitates the safeguards necessary for civil discussion. It eliminates context, encourages us to present each other out of context, prevents us from explaining ourselves, rewards the most incendiary messages and most impulsive reactions, drives us to take sides and build walls. If Twitter is going to foster healthy conversation, it will have to change fundamentally. It won't be a matter of tuning some filters and tweaking some ranking algorithms. A big part of it will involve making us the customer, not the product (Zeynep Tufekci: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/965937392942305280 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/965937392942305280).

krapp 9y ago
>Through its core design—short messages, retweets, engagement metrics—Twitter incapacitates the safeguards necessary for civil discussion. Which is ironic because, not long ago, people were praising Twitter's character limit as a means of enhancing civil and intelligent discussion, believing it would force people to carefully think about and utilize each character, and eliminate wasteful verbiage. But it turns out brevity is only the soul of wit for those who have their wits about them. Go figure.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Brevity is the soul of getting people to read your shit.
  - xg15 9y ago
    I

clarkmoody 9y ago

Twitter is taking itself too seriously, believing that if it could tweak around the edges, it could improve the quality of the debate in the direction of civility and understanding. Perhaps some nudges and UX changes could encourage these things (I remember a long article about Facebook tweaking their "report picture" function to encourage messaging the person to talk about it before reporting). BUT I hate to break it to @jack, but Twitter conversation simply reflects the nature of humanity in an adversarial political system. Attempting to "elevate the debate" will never work, since the debate has never been "elevated." There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy. No. Politics is always adversarial. As a libertarian, both "sides" of the American political divide feel threatening to me, since all proposals out there are for one form of authoritarianism or another. All proposals involve me giving up a little more of my personal or economic liberty. Will @jack do anything to alleviate my fears that my liberty is being attacked every single day? Probably not. He's devoted to "collective health and civility," which reads like a 1984 thought-police handbook. Of course, the debate always seems civil after the dissenting voices have been crushed. (Pre-emptive retort to attack on libertarianism: Yes, I know Twitter is private property. Yes, Jack can do whatever he wants with his business, within the laws for a publicly-traded company.)

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Yes, every time someone tells me politics is getting more adversarial I think back to people like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEjzSlbHvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEjzSlbHvY
wgerard 9y ago
Huh, your comment actually caused me to re-evaluate my thinking a little bit. Because you're right, in general this is true: > There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy. It seems that way sometimes (calm debate and discussion), but US history of course is full of angry, threatening debates with even politicians themselves erupting into actual physical violence sometimes [1]. Still, it feels like there's been a notable shift. Compare one of the 1992 presidential debates [2] to a 2016 presidential debate [3]. The former feels like an actual debate, the latter feels like a segment on a political news show where basically the loudest voice "wins". Of course, US politics has always been a thin veneer of civility masking some extremely aggressive adversarial acts (e.g. Watergate), but it seems like that mask has now disappeared almost entirely. I don't know that Twitter is the cause of any of this (as opposed to just a reflection of where we're at), but it does feel like things have certainly shifted nonetheless. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9qB_BIjWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9qB_BIjWY 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s

Proven 9y ago

Screw Twitter. No control. Gab.ai

ivraatiems 9y ago

The fact that it took @jack, by my count, 13 tweets to say this is itself evidence that what he's trying to do will never come to pass on Twitter. Trying to read it, I kept thinking, "why is this so long?" It's not. I'd read a Medium article or HN or Reddit post three times its length and not blink. The right move to increase civility of discourse would be to stop providing that discourse via environments designed to discourage comprehension, lower the attention span of the user base, and encourage flamey, bite-sized "takes."

oldcynic 9y ago
Why is it a long-form post more suited to Livejournal or blog post and in no way written to work on Twitter? That in itself is indicative of the problem.
- Shank 9y ago
  Platforms don't just stay used the way they were intended or created to be used. Threads became a wildly successful thing on Twitter, and they embraced the phenomenon rather than fighting against it. That's actually a characteristic of good adaption to trends -- something that Twitter could do far more of.
- cabalamat 9y ago
  It would be nice if there was a platform that was as good at short messages as Twitter while also being good for longer more deliberative posts. Of course the problem for any new social network is that it is hard for it to become successful, due to network effects.
exodust 9y ago
I no longer read "one" tweet that is spread out over multiple tweets, it's too jarring and broken and hurts my eyes. I'm surprised it's still going on.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Twitter upped its character limit recently; next up they should make what I feel is a relatively simple change and turn multi-tweet posts into neatly formatted multi-paragraphed but single-post-seeming articles.

deleted 9y ago

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nyxxie 9y ago

It's vaguely disturbing to read the CEO of a company that hosts one of the world's largest communications platforms talk about "measuring the health" of conversations and his company's goal to get rid of conversations they deem unhealthy. The problems Jack talks about (echo chambers, political bias, misinformation campaigns) are serious problems that our society faces as a small group of voices increasingly have the ability to reach millions of real people. However, I think it's unethical to solve it by eliminating speech based on an arbitrary group of people's notion of what is "healthy speech". I think that Jack forgets that he's talking about real people expressing real thoughts and opinions. Of course he is well within his rights to do whatever he wants with his platforms, but if we want to view this as a problem of ethics, Twitter is directly infringing on private individuals' rights to autonomy of expression and manipulating their view of the world by deciding what they should and should not see. I don't think that is a solution which produces the greatest net good.

dilap 9y ago
It's remarkable how quickly the west has embraced a culture of censorship.
- facetube 9y ago
  Twitter is under no obligation to distribute your content for you for free.
  - CNJ7654 9y ago
    True, but it's sad to see people continue to use Twitter even when they're aware of it's active censorship. Twitter isn't doing anything 'wrong' technically, since it's well within their rights as a private company, but it's still sad to see a society accept and embrace the practices instead of shunning them.
  - dilap 9y ago
    In China, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by a state censor. In the US, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by corporate censors or allied groups like the SPLC. I'm not sure I see a huge difference, in practice. "But if you don't like Twitter's policies, you can just make your own app." Sure, like Gab, which was subsequently banned from both the Google and Apple app stores for not itself censoring. Not a lot of breathing room when the modern communication mediums are dominated by a duopoly. But that's all tangential to my point, which was referring to the cultural appreciation of free speech. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when site's like Twitter claimed to be strong supporters of speech as both a principle and a practical reality to strive for. Nowadays, the more common attitude is, "if we allow people to speak freely, they will spread conspiracy theories, fake news, and hateful thoughts harmful to society, so these ideas must be suppressed." In just a few years, the zeitgeist has gone from valuing free speech as one of our most cherished ideals to valuing social cohesion as the most important good. Pretty crazy.

bob_theslob646 9y ago

The crazy thing every time I read something like this,is how out of touch tech companies are. Isn't technology supposed to enhance our lives? In twitter's case, why cannot it lead to people having more compassionate conversation. I think there is difference between free speech and hate speech and because of metrics such as MAU's and other's Wall Street imposes on twitter and other tech companies, they are not incentivized to have stronger communities which may be smaller rather than larger communities who are more distant if that makes sense.

ProAm 9y ago

I look forward to seeing how they are going to deal with the US President's tweets from this point forward.

brianmurphy 9y ago
Or for that matter look at the replies to Trump's tweets if you want an example of vile hatred.

grey-sunshine 9y ago

Terminal stage cancer, twitter that is!

gfodor 9y ago

Twitter should just realize they are the "you're gonna have to throw one away" of global-scale internet discourse and just shut it down and try again.

se30b 9y ago

"health" and "civility" aka they are going to double down on censorship and hostility towards anyone who opposes thier radical left wing agenda. More racism disguised as "anti racism" and more restricted discourse disguised as "openness" Pure doublespeak here folks.

deleted 9y ago

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mudil 9y ago

Twitter might have its quirks. But the truth is that the content on the internet been supplanted by these mega-malls, called Google, Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and VK, and such. And these mega-malls want to be everything to everyone. And at the same time they are aiming for the lowest common denominator just to attract more and more people to its platforms. So, of course the quality of content and discussions will go down. These platforms control the digital ad market. Real journalists can barely survive. Fake news proliferate. Internet is becoming increasingly similar to the strip malls you see everywhere around you, and they have all the same offerings of choices (McDonald's, Subway, Verizon store, etc). Here's a good read: https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-digital-age.html https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-...

riffic 9y ago

Twitter should implement federation with an open protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub

aestetix 9y ago

Isn't this what their "Trust and Safety" Comittee was for?

jessaustin 9y ago

Yeah they are so concerned. If they had started adding decent shadow-ignore capabilities to curb the harassment ten years ago, it would already have been scandalously late. Twitter is what it is, and no amount of executive window dressing could change that. If they were a firm capable of major functionality updates (or profit!), they would have shown some sign of that before now.

DisruptiveDave 9y ago

I've been strongly doubting that there is such a thing as "the collective health and society." At best, we're in a growing pains situation as a species. At worst, we're simply not built to have this type of communication. There is nothing in nature that makes me think this simple, open-sky way to "communicate" with hundreds of thousands of faceless people is necessary.

deleted 9y ago

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rotrux 9y ago

Man. This is exactly what happened to the democrats.

lukev 9y ago

Civility is nice, but I don't think it's what's fundamentally wrong with Twitter. One can (and people do) express hateful ideas quite politely. Preserving some concept of free speech while also preventing it from growing into an ideological cesspool is required to give Twitter net positive societal value, but mere civility ain't that.

zombieprocesses 9y ago

Good old "civility". The excuse that tyrants, dictators, liberals, conservatives and social media tycoons use to justify censorship. Surprised the other excuse ( "won't you please think of the children" ) wasn't used. Can't wait for the next wave of censorship. ISPs banning twitter, news and pornography to increase "health and civility". The promise of open and free internet is quickly turning into a nightmare of censored social media. Is anyone else concerned that twitter and social media are now openly stating that they will manipulate content/people to fit their agenda? If it was china doing this, HN and the media would be attacking it from every angle possible. Strangely, the same type of behavior in the US is supported by these same people.

Karrot_Kream 9y ago
What is "censorship"? When I learned about the concept, I learned the definition that "censorship" is to block a person's speech in a purely public space. You seem to be alluding to a more abstract right than this.
- zombieprocesses 9y ago
  > What is "censorship"? When I learned about the concept, I learned the definition that "censorship" is to block a person's speech in a purely public space. You seem to be alluding to a more abstract right than this. Censorship is just limiting/preventing speech. It can be by government, private organizations or even individuals. Governments can censor. Companies can censor. Your parents can censor. Historically, since governments have been the most powerful institutions and our focus was primarily on preventing government censorship. Censorship by private organizations and private individuals is legal ( including self-censorship ). Censorship by government is generally illegal in the US. But that doesn't mean twitter can't censor. They can and they do censor. It's just that it is legal and their right to censor. Hope that clears up any confusion on censorship. But here's a thought, as corporations get more and more powerful ( even more powerful than many governments around the world ), should we as a society think about protecting citizens from corporate censorship?
  - 9y ago

Clanan 9y ago

The political/philosophical diversity of awardees will illuminate just how genuine this effort is. Interestingly, these social media companies which are engaging in censorship are now being reminded that if they decide to censor by politics, they may be held liable for everything posted to their platform.

brudgers 9y ago

On the one hand I am hopeful because it is a decent sentiment about a real problem and because Twitter is the only possible entity in a position to fix it. On the other, the format of the message suggests how daunting the task is. Thanks for taking the time to read and consider, and also, come help us: +-------+---------------------------------------+ | | | | | Twitter Careers | | | careers.twitter.com | | | | +-------+---------------------------------------+ Twitter does not make it easy to know when to STFU.

j-c-hewitt 9y ago

Ehhhhhh. There's like two things that I want from Twitter as someone who buys internet clicks: Lower prices. More cost effectiveness. Those two things are two things that Twitter has never offered.

zaroth 9y ago

I’m sorry Jack, but just log into your own service and try to read the message you just posted, and maybe it will dawn on you why Twitter as it currently exists is antithetical to healthy and civil conversation. And once you’ve lost trust (which you have on all sides) any steps or “measures” you implement will inherently be distrusted. Good luck with your “hate machine” as another poster aptly describes it. You’re going to have to dig a lot deeper than sentiment analysis to find anything close to redemption.

panic 9y ago

Online trolls love figuring out and exploiting automated systems. Any computer-evaluated "health metric" will just become another weapon in their hands. You need human moderators!

neonate 9y ago

Bershidsky's take here: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-02/twitter-s-attempt-at-self-regulation-won-t-work https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-02/twitter-s....

retox 9y ago

There is hate and bile on Twitter because people are full of hate and bile. This is a frightening time to be alive for a lot of people, full of uncertainty and a feeling that they have been hard done by and manipulated by faceless bureaucrats. The answer to this aspect is "simple"; make people happier. What makes is easier and more 'acceptable' for people to write these things is that they don't have to look into the faces of their targets. You can't have civil discourse when two people are wearing masks. This problem can't be solved by social media in its current form, or maybe ever. Perhaps VR communities where everyone is forced to use their own face and have it 100% accurate and real-time. Even then people don't have the same sense of humour and understanding of nuance which is a big reason we choose to associate with the people we do. It's easy to be offended when you hear two people talk in terms you aren't familiar with and aren't privy to past discussions and inside jokes. This is unsolvable by social media without federation, which is basically what traditional forums are.

egfx 9y ago

Twitter is deeply depressing. Their best feature, lists is lost and goes completely unnoticed. Meanwhile we get moments plus hashtags which link us to literally every minor iteration of the exact same story. A measure of madness?

theNJR 9y ago

Why is there not a national public social platform? Certainly this has been discussed, yet in all my years of geekery, I haven't come across a conversation about it. Whenever the topic of YouTube/Facebook/Twitter censorship comes up, it always ends in "Well, it's their platform so they can do what they want". That's true. But don't we need a platform where they can't, that is owned by we the people?

deleted 9y ago
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leereeves 9y ago
The Internet itself used to be owned by the public and the government privatized it.

nickgrosvenor 9y ago

They should create an authenticated badge on Twitter, if you confirm your identity, you can get one, then users could filter by “authentic badge only” so you’d experience twitter with only vetted, real people. This would greatly reduce trolls imho.

allpratik 9y ago
This is something which can be done and is easily achievable. I have seen (and currently seeing) that to create an echo chamber a certain number of troll armies have to create it one first, trend it and then people take over from that. Having a verified tag will really help and go long way. Sure, even the KYC process will hurt and potentially can be gamed with but having this visual cues will alert the user about the source and maybe the authenticity of the content.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

munificent 9y ago

Looks like Twitter finally reached a level of toxicity that it's negatively impacting shareholder value.

joncp 9y ago

"Committing twitter" sounds like a crime. An all-too-common one at that.

ygaf 9y ago
I read it in the "committed to an asylum" sense. And that it must be Tim Berners-Lee talking, until you see the source.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deevolution 9y ago

I think this might call for some fundamental changes to their algorithms. Maybe automatically penalize hate filled comments/flame wars and reward conversation that adds "value". Maybe charge bots on a per post basis? Perhaps reward real users with utility tokens like steem?

nan0 9y ago

This is kinda related to the topic, but does anyone have any resources relating to how we as humans are not phycologically ready for mass communication on the scale that we have today? I know it's broad , worth a shot though.

mattbierner 9y ago
Not communication directly, but I’ve been reading Future Shock and found many of the points relevant even 50 years later. One that comes to mind: the past few generations have seen an enermous erosion of belief in institutions and systems that once gave people purpose (religion, family, community, craftsmanship, ...) This, combined with extremely rapid change, has left a lot of people feeling unmoored and lost in their own time. How they react to this is unpredictable but it is often strange or sad, and sometimes even dangerous

golemiprague 9y ago

I use Twitter only for those kind of things, they take all the fun away. I don't use it under my real name, what's the point? I want to argue and spew hate and all this kind of stuff, for nice discussions I got my real friends. They should open the platform completely and let people say whatever they want otherwise they are just going to be a boring product that nobody wants to use. We got messaging systems already anyway.

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago

I think we've heard something similar from them for years now. When will it happen? Twitter is now part of everyone's life in the U.S. given that the president uses it as a bullhorn. It needs to clean up its act, now.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

monkeyfoop 9y ago

Great, more censorship and them determining what is "fake news"

0800 9y ago

First things first, Twitter. Small baby steps before you shoot yourself in the foot. Focus first and foremost on getting rid of radicalizing terrorist content. That has been on your backlog for years now, while you prioritized more pressing matters, such as cutting off access to developers and apps. You kind of owe it to society and the parents of your teenage users to make this right. Then, when it is 2023, go after the grieving trolls. Those who mock suicide victim families, DOX innocents, post indecent pictures of naked black people doing lewd things to watermelons. Some people may even help report such things manually for free. Then bots. Kill 99% of all bots, keep only those with a 1000+ legit followers, or make bot owners verify them with a cute droid badge. Then after one of Trump's tweets starts WWIII, and you are as significant as Myspace, maybe you can have a look at the health and civility of online conversation. I'd start with a "My Safe Space" button, where you can automatically unsubscribe to all posts about a certain topic/containing a certain trigger word. If you can't wait that long, there is an easy fix to remove 50% of uncivil content by going back to a 140 character limit. I feel that was closer to the healthy and civilized discussion platform you envisioned Twitter to be when you started it.

westurner 9y ago

First Amendment protections apply to suits brought by the government. Civil suits are required to prove damages ("quantum of damages"). There are opportunity cost, pre-judgement, and post-judgement interest calculations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost There are many open platforms. (I've contributed to those as well). Some are built on open standards. None of said open platforms have procedures or resources for handling the onslaught of disrespectful trash that the people we've raised eventually use these platforms for communicating at other people who have feelings and understand the Golden Rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule The initial early adopters (who have other better things to do) are fine: helpful, caring, critical, respectful; healthy. And then everyone else comes surging in with hate, disrespect, and vitriol; unhealthy. They don't even realize that being hateful and disrespectful is making them more depressed. They think that complaining and talking smack to people is changing the world. And then they turn off the phone or log out of the computer, and carry on with their lives. No-one taught them to be the positive, helpful energy they want to attract from the world. No-one properly conditioned them to either respectfully disagree according to the data or sit down and listen. No-one explained to them that a well-founded argument doesn't fit in 140 or 280 characters, but a link and a headline do. No-one explained to them that what they write on the internet lasts forever and will be found by their future interviewers, investors, jurors, and voters. No-one taught them that being respectful and helpful in service of other people - of the group's success, of peaceful coexistence - is the way to get ahead AND be happy. "No-one told me that." Shareholders of public corporations want to see growth in meaningless numbers, foreign authoritarian governments see free expression as a threat to their ever-so-fragile self-perceptions, political groups seek to frame and smear and malign and discredit (because they are so in need of group acceptance; because money still isn't making them happy), and there are children with too much free time reading all of these. No-one is holding these people accountable: we need transparency and accountability. We need to focus on more important goals and feel good about helping; about volunteering our time to help others be happier. Instead, now that these haters and scam artists have all self-identified, we must spend our time conditioning their communications until they learn to respectfully disagree on facts and data or go somewhere else. "That's how you feel? Great. How does that make your victim feel?" is the confrontation that some people are seeking from companies that set out to serve free speech and provide a forum for citizens to share the actual news. Who's going to pay for that? Can they sue for their costs and losses? Advertisers do not want a spot next to hateful and disrespectful. "How dare you speak of censorship in such veiled terms!?" Really? They're talking about taking down phrases like "kill" and "should die"; not phrases like "I disagree because:" So, now, because there are so many hateful economically disadvantaged people in the world with nothing better to do and no idea how to run a business or keep a job with benefits, these companies need to staff 24 hour a day censors to take down the hate and terror and gang recruiting within one hour. What a distorted mirror of our divisively fractured wealth inequality, indeed. "Ban gangs ASAP, please: they'll just go away" How much does it cost to pay prison labor to redundantly respond to this trash? Are those the skills they need to choose a different career with benefits and savings that meet or exceed inflation when they get out? What is the procedure for referring threats of violence to justice in your jurisdiction? Are there wealthy individuals in your community who would love to contribute resources to this effort? Maybe they have some region-specific pointers for helping the have-nots out here trolling like it's going to get them somewhere they want to be in life? Let me share a little story with you: A person walks into a bar/restaurant, flicks off the bartender/waiter, orders 5 glasses of free water, starts plastering ads to the walls and other peoples' tables, starts making threats to groups of people cordially conversing, and walks out.