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Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders
- lupire 6y agoThey have several years of public input in their Tweet database already.
- nautilus12 6y agoThis feels like a honeypot for twitter to keep tabs on people that disagree with their policy. They are going to do whatever they want at the end of the day, they've given me absoloutely no confidence to believe that they want to do whats right.
- zpeti 6y agoOr they will have justification for removing "problematic" politicians because their userbase said so. You know, democracy. A userbase that already leans one way...
- meepmorp 6y agoYou really overestimate the level of importance that everyone else places on whatever it is you have to say.
- square_usual 6y agoYeah, this is Twitter, not Cultural Revolution China. Jack isn't Mao with his Hundred Flowers campaign.
- nautilus12 6y agoDo not underestimate the limits of Jack's desire for control
- meepmorp 6y agoYeah, he’s basically Pol Pot without the humanitarian streak.
- chris_wot 6y agoWow, too little, too late. Such bravery asking after Trump left office.
- christiansakai 6y agoRemove the ability to have followers from world leaders, remove the ability to be liked from world leaders' tweets. Keep the ability to retweet world leaders' tweets, but prevent retweets to be added more from the retweeters.
- etrautmann 6y agoWhat would it mean to not allow followers on Twitter?
- christiansakai 6y agoI was thinking for world leaders' tweets, it should strictly be news, not popularity contests, not hype machine, not rage-inducing machine. I'm thinking of making it strictly news. In terms of how people can get the world leader's news (tweets). Maybe something like news feed on their twitter feed, like Youtube has some local news on my feed even though I don't subscribe to anything.
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoNo one would be able to see the world leader's tweets in their home feed. They would have to go to the specific world leader's page (or use a 3rd party app too once again see Tweets from the world leaders in the home feed). The practical effect would be that only people who are very interested in a world leader (and bots) would retweet them. This would make the Twitter experience even more insular.
- jobigoud 6y agoMaybe they mean you can follow but the followers count is not visible to the public or the account holder.
- anoncow 6y agoAre we asking Twitter to stop being Twitter?
- christiansakai 6y ago
- mcculley 6y agoWorld leaders in developed countries should not be depending on Twitter or private media companies at all. There is no good reason why the President of the United States cannot publish his (in the case of Trump, ill-formed) thoughts directly to whitehouse.gov. We should demand and expect that governments publish directly to the web in an immutable way that is archived to satisfy our duty to history. Twitter made things worse by hiding Trump’s previous tweets. Every voter should be required to read every damn one of them.
- easton 6y agoDon’t worry, the national archives are working on it: https://www.trumplibrary.gov/research/archived-social-media https://www.trumplibrary.gov/research/archived-social-media
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoTwitter really was horrible, it enabled Trump's keyboard warrior persona. He was too chickenshit (or lazy) to actually say things with a camera and press in front of him, but with Twitter he can just shit post with no consequence.
- sitkack 6y agoMaybe the first thing twitter should do is follow its own rules and apply them everywhere. Trump should have been banned years ago. Twitter and Trump danced this together and now Twitter wants to be the good guy?
- luxuryballs 6y ago“(in the case of Trump, ill-formed)” well at least you’re not trying to hide your lack of intelligence and critical thinking skills
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoMarketing tip: Always ask the public for input and consult with "experts" before doing what you intended to all along.
- spacephysics 6y agoAgreed. This is so if they’re questioned by Congress at some point they can say “we regret our transgressions, and have reformed by asking the community what we should do better” Almost like act first, ask permission later.
- debacle 6y agoTwitch did this with some sort of committee late last year and it blew up in their faces.
- DC1350 6y agoThe deer incident?
- debacle 6y agoI think the streamer you're referring to was just the focal point and scapegoat for a lot of the outrage over the very unequal and sometimes disturbing way Twitch moderates content.
- thatguy0900 6y agoI agree people were already mad but you would have to go pretty far out of your way to find someone with worse optics, she definetely brought a lot of heat to it herself.
- debacle 6y agoI think that was Twitch's intent. Why promote a basically no name streamer to a group made up mostly of very prominent people on the platform?
- blowski 6y agoThe BBC, with its explicit "public interest" mandate, funded by public money, is constantly criticised for being simultaneously too deferential, opinionated, conservative, and liberal - and that's only in the UK. How on earth is Twitter going to make a policy that pleases worldwide shareholders, governments (and their oppositions), and the general public? Maybe I lack imagination, but it feels like Twitter is constantly trying to kick its inevitable fragmentation down the road.
- debacle 6y agoTwitter's problem is engagement. Facebook is a doomscroller's paradise. How can Twitter replicate that?
- osrec 6y agoFacebook, when I used to use it, felt like a reasonably structured glut of content. Twitter on the other hand feels like a poorly structured glut of opinions. I sometimes can't even differentiate between the original tweet, the reply, and I find it hard to know how many replies there are. It feels like trying to have a coherent conversation in the middle of an old fashioned stock exchange - virtually impossible - I think twitter's UI is at least partly to blame for this.
- debacle 6y agoI think Twitter's problem is that there isn't enough feel good content. Facebook shows you the dark pattern engagement content, but they also have pictures of your family, kids selling girl scout cookies, 10 minute videos about how to turn ramen noodles into a combine harvester, etc. Twitter only has the dark pattern engagement content and it makes people sick after too long. Maybe they should buy a Flicker type platform just to try and tone down the outrage a bit.
- zo1 6y agoI think they should bring out personalized, customizable and curatable blocking/block-lists for both accounts and topics, and perhaps content sentiment as well. E.g. I want to follow Star Trek celebrity actors for their Star Trek/culture/movies/good content, but not for their incessant anti-Republican and Trump-bashing content. Yes, sometimes I'll miss stuff because AI/ML isn't perfect. But we don't want to "desensitize" people by forcing them to internalize beliefs not their own because they want "some" of the content posted by the people they follow. Ads and "engagement" have a huge negative externality that comes with all these online tools, which is why these platforms never go in the direction of enabling and giving tools to the users to drive their own experience.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 6y agoI would suggest that besides concentrating on the world leader issue that Twitter consider some sort of expiration, short at that, for all tweets so as to put down this revenge/vengeance oriented the woke have created. people complain about fake news and rightly so but the cycle of hatred that results from these purity tests applied to anyone because of past tweets is worse
- spacephysics 6y agoIdeally that would be quite a feature, but in practice nothing on the internet is assuredly temporary. Logistically it’s infeasible. Someone will create a database of archived tweets, or screenshots will circle the web. Etc.
- dreen 6y agoWe need a public place where anyone can get verified and only verified people are allowed to interact (in addition to more traditional as well as anonymous spaces)
- timdaub 6y agoWhile on first sight, I find it applaudable that Twitter cares and wants to learn, I think it's not in their responsibility anymore to moderate. They've proven to be incapable and overwhelmed about making legitimate decisions. They should get regulated and they should stop regulating.
- spacephysics 6y agoOptimistically I’d agree, but given corporate politics my gut instinct leads to deep pessimism. I think this is just a PR stunt, nothing will change that isn’t already planned before this public input session. Move along, status quo.
- exabrial 6y agoBe a free speech platform, how about that?
- matthewmacleod 6y agoExcept maybe it's a bit more complex than your ridiculously simplified pithy one-liner. Seriously, what the fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's literally duckspeak – a reflexive slogan uttered without any thought. It elides all of the complexity of understanding what free speech is, or what a platform is.
- weakfish 6y agoPeople tend to conflate freedom from persecution due to speech with freedom to say whatever, wherever. They are not the same.
- vxNsr 6y agoOddly, until recently they were. It only became different recently and obv xkcd popularized the idea, but if freedom of speech isn’t associated with freedom from persecution it’s not really free speech. Everyone in the world has the right to free speech because they can literally talk and say whatever they want, but if the society that speech is spoken in doesn’t agree to allow that speech to be spoken freely (as in beer) it’s not a truly progressive society. Apparently the brits have been struggling with this for years[0] [0] https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/index.html#fn:1 https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/in...
- krapp 6y ago>but if freedom of speech isn’t associated with freedom from persecution it’s not really free speech. Given that every government in history which has recognized the concept of "free speech", including the United States, has regulated and even outlawed some forms of speech, and given that "consequence" is a natural, emergent property of societies and the fact that humans are social, emotional animals who don't process speech as mere passive data, one must come to the conclusion that free speech has never existed at any point in space or time. That being the case, one wonders why everyone is so concerned now about something that, clearly, humanity has never needed up until this point?
- gonzo41 6y agoWorld leaders can tweet, they shouldn't be able to untweet. It's public record. They shouldn't be able to block users - If the feedback is so bad, then twitter should be banning those users under regular T&C's The T&C's that apply to me should apply to them. If they cross they line they should be handled like I would etc. Pretty simple IMO.
- ralmidani 6y agoWorld leaders should not "be subject to the same rules as others on Twitter", they should be held to a higher standard; if some random loser writes a Tweet justifying genocide, reasonable people can disagree on whether that loser should be banned. But when it's people who are backed by a military which can actually carry out a genocide (and, e.g. in the case of Netanyahu and his ministers, the Assad regime, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Burmese military junta, has already been carrying one out for years), they must be banned, full stop.
- aww_dang 6y agoI'd like to see the tweet and read their genocidal rhetoric directly. If the alternative is a news outlet digesting and editorializing their words, I'd rather hear it directly from the source.
- ralmidani 6y agoSometimes the genocidal rhetoric is not subtle, but sometimes they market it as "protecting minorities" (Assad, who is decimating the Sunni Muslim majority), or "liberating women from being baby factories" (Chinese Communist Party, on forced sterilization of Uighur women).
- aww_dang 6y agoDissent is valuable. Twitter should allow replies on these posts. There should be more transparency on how the replies are ranked or hidden.
- ralmidani 6y agoHitler and Mussolini were not debated, they were defeated. Dissent is good if it's your only option, but we're talking about external parties not under the control of these "leaders".
- gedy 6y agoI think the nuance is interpreting "the rules" instead of just: > "whether or not they believe world leaders should be subject to the same rules as others on Twitter". E.g. Twitter in 2020 was rife with "inciting violence" but largely depending on your point of view/politics, and if it was "justified". Etc.
- kitd 6y agoThis came up when Trump was threatening social media with restraints. I wrote this at the time and haven't changed my view: For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and the ordinary citizen. During the Enlightenment, the authorities were monarchs, but even before that, the origins of free speech can be seen in the Reformation, the authorities being the established Church and the battles being eg the right to a Bible in your own language or the right to worship without priests. In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well, authoritarian. Global leaders & business people who tweet or post on FB carry an authority ex officio that make their proclamations much more acceptable to the neutral reader. That in itself is a dangerous situation and Twitter or FB absolutely need to take control. If these companies want us to take them seriously as champions of free speech, they have to play their role to help restore that balance of power, by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters.
- meragrin_ 6y ago> by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters. That would be nice, but all they'll do is push their own agenda. They've already proven that.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoSo absent power dynamics, speech shouldn't be free? I rather think of it as a fundamental human faculty which one has the right to exercise. Not everything is about your hierarchies.
- curation 6y agoWhat is free speech? I argue it is not even a concept. Concepts divide people. There is no person against free speech. Please don't bring up Russia and China. I've been to these countries and people they cherish free speech;they just have freely spoken to have an explicit authoritarian ruler. Free speech is conversation to have out of laziness.
- Traster 6y agoThis is pretty extraordinary. Close to 6 years of Donald Trump brazenly breaking twitter rules as candidate and president. Repeated violations, culminating in a riot at the capitol. March of 2021 and Jack Dorsey rocks up "Hey guys, I think we should think about our policies with regard to politicians".
- known 6y agoWisdom of Crowds is mot always correct; You may want to consult with socioeconomic experts;
- baryphonic 6y agoSuppose you run a message broadcasting service hosting three hypothetical world leaders. One posts propaganda about an ongoing genocide in his country, namely that the genocide is highly beneficial to those being genocided. The second posts racist messages threatening another country with annihilation. The third posts that his recent election loss was "stolen," and subsequent to these posts a few of his supporters stage a riot in the capital (without coordination from the leader). Which messages do you allow? Which do you censor? And which world leaders do you ban?
- GiorgioG 6y agoPoliticians like everyone else are entitled to their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to their own facts. We should hold all of our politicians accountable to provide factual information. It's one thing to say "I believe the election was rigged based on facts X,Y,Z" and quite another thing to say (real tweet): " “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!” Maybe world leaders need two accounts/streams, one for 'official' government business and one for political rhetoric which has some sort of limitations (can't be RT'd, etc.)
- caconym_ 6y agoIsn’t spreading political disinformation, hate speech, etc. not allowed on Twitter? I think that’s generally a good policy; and they should just treat this kind of speech from political leaders, the rich and powerful, etc. the same way they’d treat it coming from a nobody. The most visible accounts should be the ones subject to the highest level of scrutiny and moderation. Doing it the other way round is bizarre, IMO. We’re living in a time where most people on Earth have an unprecedented ability to broadcast their opinions to the world, effectively free of editorial oversight, and I think a lot of people forget that. Especially given how quickly this change has happened, it’s kind of nuts to see so much hand-wringing over media platforms exercising a bare minimum editorial oversight to prevent incoherent toxic bullshit from dominating the information landscape they host.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoConvenient that they did this now, and not say, last November. Or even once in the last four years.
- robjan 6y agoThey should hide all metrics. Remove follower count, retweet count, like count. Without metrics there is less incentive to game the system and less feedback when attempting to game it.
- system16 6y agoOn Twitter you can find promoted full blown propaganda paid for by hostile (to the US at least) state sponsored news agencies and government officials. These same governments ban Twitter in their own countries and would never allow similar content on their own platforms. Twitter's solution here is to insert a tiny "State affiliated" footer text below the account name. Can you imagine in the Cold War-era NBC being allowed to broadcast propaganda ads bought and paid for by the Soviet Union?
- refenestrator 6y agoPlenty of it by our own government and allies as well. Maybe we can be a little more principled than "good guy nations" and "bad guy nations" if the goal is truth?
- loceng 6y agoWho's truth is more truthful, who's lies are more harmful/helpful?
- taf2 6y ago"Seriously because the aliens are already here and I have proof!" -- Joking aside sometimes pushing a truth whether it's true or not has an impact on inflaming conspiracy theories... Youtube's covid, election banners for example IMO did more to incite deep state conspiracy then to reduce it... "One often meets their fate on the path they take to avoid it..." - Kung Fu panda
- loceng 6y agoYouTube's blanket ban was a problem absolutely - it was lazy and as hands-off as possible missing all nuance.
- thereddaikon 6y agoClassic Google, when nuance and reason are required they instead program a dumb bot to handle it.
- AlwaysBCoding 6y agoA good article by Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, on "credible neutrality" as a guiding principle for the protocol: https://nakamoto.com/credible-neutrality/ https://nakamoto.com/credible-neutrality/ Twitter has long lost credible neutrality as a platform which is why it's ultimately going to die.
- statstutor 6y agoI understand "credibly neutral" here to mean the idea that you appear neutral, whether or not you are actually neutral. Compare with: plausible deniability. The goal of credible neutrality is to convince people that you have acted fairly and gain political acceptance [Vitalik does this by appealing to the standards for property ownership under capitalism]; the goal is not to act fairly [as Vitalik softly admits, the true goal is to do whatever is necessary to support (his) wealth accumulation]. I would much rather credible neutrality did not exist as a justification for particular actions, and that it faced automatic criticism. Give Bob 1000 coins and admit that you did so, rather than set up a system of rules which is designed for Bob to receive 1000 coins. The use of passive voice is an indicator that someone has disguised their responsibility.
- TameAntelope 6y agoAll things ultimately die, I dunno how useful that is as a prediction...
- matthewmacleod 6y agoI have quite literally no idea what the correct answer is, and I reckon anyone who claims to have an easy answer is lying, because the landscape is fundamentally different to anything we've seen before. Twitter is both a public forum and a private enterprise. The decisions it makes—not just in terms of moderation, but in terms of structure and incentive—substantially affect the spread of mis/disinformation. Is it the responsibility of the platform to prevent its abuse to that end? Or is it essential for it to remain entirely neutral? How does that work across different legal, social, and political environments? How does that apply differently to democratically-elected leaders? What constitutes harassment or targeted abuse? What counts as impersonation or parody? It feels like it's going to be a fairly unpleasant period while we figure that all out.
- aww_dang 6y ago>The decisions it makes—not just in terms of moderation, but in terms of structure and incentive—substantially affect the spread of mis/disinformation. If we can't trust individuals to digest information themselves, what are we doing? I find the premise troubling. People can disagree and interpret events differently. Without that, there's very little to discuss.
- GrinningFool 6y ago> If we can't trust individuals to digest information themselves, what are we doing? We're realizing that it's no longer as simple as "people should just know better", because the forces they're up against are armed with all the latest psychological tricks to induce belief even in people who /do/ know better.
- aww_dang 6y agoPeople have been lying to and manipulating others since the beginning of recorded history. Even mythological figures exhibited deceptive behavior. The Pulitzer prize is named for the creator of "yellow journalism". There's nothing new here. This reads as "this time is different", an appeal to special circumstances without addressing the crux of the issue, subjectivity & diversity of opinion. In practical terms this requires "fact checkers" supposedly impartial arbiters of objective truth. We can disagree on philosophy and the nature of man, but this premise is a non-starter for me.
- geoelkh 6y agoHow do we give feedback? I think Twitter should allow trusted/editorial account that shows prominently (even part of the tweet itself) on world leaders tweets. This will be NYTs, Washington Post, etc... of the world. The big plus here is we return the editorial part of these institutions. Imo, these used to be net positive on the society (see Watergate during Nixon) Twitter will pick the list of editors (kind of what they currently do with the verified account) The bar to be an editor needs to be high and a trusted source of news.
- jtdev 6y agoWho defines what is “trusted” in this scenario? I think your entire assertion here is problematic... the “trusted” sources that you mention have for years shown an inability to report without injecting their biases and agendas.
- toast0 6y agoThe only reasonable policy is to ban all world leaders from Twitter. As world leaders, they can speak elsewhere. If someone is accused of being a world leader, and you have adequate identification, it's fairly easy to confirm or deny. In the case of a disputed election, maybe both candidates could be considered leaders until the dispute is resolved.
- nonotreally 6y agoI think this is a useful idea. They have platforms already, and we give them platforms on TV and in papers. Unfiltered access to their hyperbole seems to be a net-negative.
- ars 6y agoThe problem is that ever since banning Trump they have less usage on the site. So they need those "exciting" world leaders. Telling Twitter to ban all world leaders is the opposite of what they want. They want to be able to have all those people on there, while not being blamed for leaving "bad" content up.
- toast0 6y agoOn the plus side, the lower traffic seems to have helped with links to twitter threads, which actually work now (or at least better)
- jfengel 6y agoThey need those exciting leaders if their sole goal is to maximize their profits. If they also want to have a world to spend their profits in, it's worth considering that some tactics may be different. This is unusual territory, since it's not all that common for one company to be so closely involved with what could literally have been violent insurrection, even leading to outright war. It didn't, but it came far closer than the leadership of Twitter liked. They want to be ubiquitous, but not so pervasive as to be existential.
- ars 6y ago
- IgorPartola 6y agoThey might want to address issues like this as well: https://gizmodo.com/twitter-stands-by-lets-oann-link-to-reporters-cell-num-1846509040 https://gizmodo.com/twitter-stands-by-lets-oann-link-to-repo...
- kyrra 6y agoBtw, a nytimes reporter did the something similar, but not as gross. https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-nikole-hannah-jones-doxxing-free-beacon-reporter https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-nikole-hannah-j...
- jmeister 6y agoWas this motivated by the hostile meeting with China on Friday, and an expectation of worsening US-China relationships?
- at_a_remove 6y agoA Republican Congresswoman was just locked out of her Twitter account prior to some kind of Dem resolution, at least if you believe https://www.mrctv.org/blog/marjorie-taylor-green-reportedly-suspended-twitter-dems-push-eject-her-congress https://www.mrctv.org/blog/marjorie-taylor-green-reportedly-... as a source of truth. Nothing to see here, move along.
- nonotreally 6y agoI'm not seeing your point here. Do you like this? Not like it? Why? I feel like this is exactly the type of feedback they're asking for.
- at_a_remove 6y agoI offer data, not a conclusion. And it's data that is well-timed, given the statement. What do you think?
- nonotreally 6y agoI didn't raise the point. I haven't formed an opinion on this particular issue. Why did you offer this data?
- at_a_remove 6y agoI guess I will break all of this down for you, since you did ask. 1) Twitter calls for public input on their approach to their handling of accounts of government officials. This individual is a government official and this is an instance of handling their account. 2) Well-timed. They called for this input on March 18th. This instance of account handling is from March 19th, approximately one day later. This makes it "more relevant," given that it was not, say, six years ago. So, I offered this data because it was topical and timely to the discussion at hand. Rather than a hypothetical, it exists as a real instance of how Twitter as a corporation handles the Twitter accounts of government leaders. If I were to discuss the price of tea in China back in 1887, that would not be topical or timely.
- jtdev 6y agoSimple answer to this entire issue: If it’s not illegal, don’t censor or moderate it in any way. Social media companies like Twitter realize that this is the most reasonable approach, but it effectively removes their ability to manipulate... so of course they continue to censor and moderate in a biased fashion.
- nonotreally 6y agoMy gut says that you are right. I think the election fraud nonsense suggests it might not be that simple. Bad actors in positions of power are abusing these services to the point where we have real conflict occurring. How do we account for these edge cases?
- jtdev 6y agoIf it's not illegal, don't censor or moderate it in any way. More speech is better than less speech; Uncensored speech is in fact the antidote to the supposed problems that Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. disengenuously claim to be solving.
- nonotreally 6y agoAre there any cases where more speech is not the answer? Can we agree that calls for violence is a limit of speech that is good?
- jtdev 6y agoThat would fall into the "illegal" [0] category if people are in fact calling for violence. [0] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title18-section373&num=0&edition=prelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...
- nonotreally 6y agoSounds like we agree on this. I want to push you here though. Did twitter contribute to the events on the 6th? Do they have any role to play? Do you have to use the words "go and kill them" in order for it to be violence? I'm trying to be genuine here, because I don't know. I will say it certainly feels like we saw the violence being induced for months ahead of time on twitter without explicit calls for violence. Should we just allow this? It's happening still. We have members of congress calling the election stolen. This is how more violence happens. It's a slow burn, but it's a burn.
- xg15 6y ago> Politicians and government officials are constantly evolving how they use our service I find corporate-speak as dreadful, artificial and insincere as the next guy, but this bit was unintentionally funny. At least I wonder now how a constantly evolving government official would look.
- occamrazor 6y agoAlso, I learned that “evolve” can be a transitive verb.
- xg15 6y agoEven outside Pokémon, amazingly.
- TrispusAttucks 6y agoSo let me understand this, Twitter, which banned it's own United States President, is now removing itself from responsibility of banning other nation's presidents many of whom call for genocide and violence and are stated enemies of Twitters parent country?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI think you're misreading the history. For years, Twitter refused to ban basically any world leader, including the US president, despite many calls for them to do so and many tweets that would've gotten you or I banned. But events 2 months ago rendered that stance untenable. So now they've gotta come up with a new one, since they don't want the rule to be "special privileges, but only for leaders who Twitter, Inc. happens to like". It's very likely that whatever new policy comes out of this will involve restrictions on other nation's presidents.
- chmod775 6y ago> But events 2 months ago rendered that stance untenable. Now that's just not true. What trump did was a relatively minor infraction compared to what is happening in some countries around the world. Like it just doesn't come close on any scale. The realization here is that people at twitter have an opinion on US politics, and are generally oblivious to the rest of the world. The waters they're in would've been way less hot if they just did nothing and claimed neutrality. In that light shedding their neutrality was a very conscious decision by Twitter.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt was relatively minor, but it was a lot more relevant to Twitter because it happened in the country where most of their employees and servers are located. What they realized, I think, is that their prior stance of "we'll never ban a world leader" was naive; they hadn't fully thought through the potential negative effects, because the full spectrum of consequences that a government leader's speech can have was outside the personal experience of the policy setters.
- BaseS4 6y ago> let radicalized employees ban anyone they want > never release details of how the censorship algos work > spend lots on PR firms and lobbyists in the hope to get your product nationalized as a utility > ban a United States President > already possess a bajillion recommendations in your tweet database about what to do > ask anyways to create the illusion of group participation and community building ok twitter
- kjrose 6y agoBasically, we know that governments and leaders are going to punish us for taking sides in political fights. So we are going to pretend that the side we took is supported by the "public" Please don't nationalize/regulate us.
- protomyth 6y agoTwitter is incapable of doing any judgements where the leaders / office holders of any country are concerned. If people want to follow a leader, let them. If they are incapable of handling what they see then that's on them. They are leaders of countries, not some Instagram star.
- teraflop 6y ago> Twitter is incapable of doing any judgements where the leaders / office holders of any country are concerned. What do you mean by this? Surely Twitter is capable of making judgments and enforcing its rules accordingly, just like Burger King can require the president to pay for his meals. Are you saying Twitter should decline to enforce any rules against world leaders?
- protomyth 6y agoThey allow anti-semantic comments from some leaders and censor others over opinions that they don't support but haven't violated any actual reading of the rules. They have demonstrated that they cannot figure this problem out. So, since they cannot do it in an objective or fair way, they should not do it at all. People can follow or not follow. Elected leaders have always been a special case.
- canoebuilder 6y agoIf Twitter maintains its place in public discourse and communication, then sooner or later the “approach to world leaders” or politicians on any level becomes a moot point, because if anyone's views diverge to a sufficient degree from Twitter staff they will be banned long before attaining political office. Twitter should not be filtering and censoring public discourse, debate, and information, acting as the arbiter of what ideas and information can influence politics. Communications platforms in the United States should adhere to the United States constitution.
- ars 6y agoI'm not sure how to find the survey, but my take: If the Tweet violates guidelines then remove it from any kind of public listing of Tweets, but leave it for people who specifically follow that person. Perhaps mark it with a special "click here to open" kind of thing. But don't ban/block anyone for something that is not illegal. It's as simple as that: follow local law, and block only what's actually illegal.
- jonnypotty 6y agoOh sod off twitter, don't pretend you care what the public think.
- dirtyid 6y agoWorld leaders are ultimately going to decide if ceding messaging influence powers to Twitter values / US influence is wise, not public input. Most countries are going to want sovereign control over online speech / content moderation eventually.
- Iv 6y agoTwitter, decide what you are: 1. Are you an infrastructure? In that case you censor nothing but probably give users tools to manage their own censorship (like "remove suspected bot content" "remove tagged hate speech" options) 2. Are you a media? And in that case you have an editorial line, that you apply TO EVERYBODY. Or you state that world leader (or which world leaders) get a free pass. You make it explicit. You can't be the first one for leaders and the second one for random individuals. Be coherent. Let's be real, we are mostly talking about Trump here. To this day, I am not sure if it was just simple selfish greed or higher twitter instances aligning with his opinions, but there was an anomaly, an incoherence in your stance. If you want to fix the cynical image you are trying to get, choose a coherent stance and stick to it, EVEN IF THAT MAKES YOU LOSE MONEY. Or accept that you are a cynical entity.
- tacostakohashi 6y agoI don't really have much of an opinion on how twitter should approach world leaders. I'm more interested in the approach of world leaders to twitter. As far as I'm concerned, people receiving salaries from the taxpayer shouldn't be spending their time writing free copy for twitter. They should be communicating with the public via government operated websites, or press conferences covered by multiple media organizations. If the president feels a need to push out realtime text snippets, it can be done via an RSS feed on whitehouse.gov, and people can consume it via whatever app / client they want. If twitter wanted to scrape that and provide access to it, fine, but they shouldn't be given a free monopoly on that content.
- ed312 6y agoDo you also oppose the US President holding press conferences for privately owned broadcast TV channels?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- calvinmorrison 6y agoor that CPAN is a non-profit run by the networks to bring you full realtime video access into the senate, congress etc?
- tacostakohashi 6y agoI can live with it if there's a pool of such channels and a system for sharing access across them, which is more or less the case for white house press conferences. If the president were to just pick one favorite channel and only ever be interviewed by them and have them as the only invitee for press conferences, then no.
- cle 6y agoI'm not. There's a natural scarcity of space for physical cameras and reporters. As far as I understand, the press themselves are largely responsible for figuring out these logistics via the WHCA. (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.) There isn't any practical scarcity for text streams coming from the White House though, so I can't think of a reason why consuming them should be tied to a closed platform like Twitter, other than marginal costs of setting up and operating the infrastructure (perhaps not so marginal once we start talking about government contracts?).
- mc32 6y agoI hope every country they have users in demand they keep the data for local users local and they conform to the laws of the jurisdiction like local media has to.
- macspoofing 6y agoOh man .. Twitter ... what an effin mess they are. What do they think they will get from a questionnaire?
- breck 6y agoMy one input: please consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan a world leader, since she is leading the majority of the world (90%) in terms of providing everyone access to the world's scientific information.
- throwawaysea 6y agoTwitter, Facebook, Google, and other tech companies are too big and powerful and influential to be allowed to act on their own. They should either be split up or regulated heavily so that they are held to behaving like a public agency. It's not just not acceptable to have a company with a user base larger than most countries to operate with the power to shape societal speech - they need to just enforce the bare minimum legal requirement and nothing more. Personally I have no trust that Twitter is doing any of this in good faith. For example take this bit from their blog post: > We’re also in the process of consulting with a range of human rights experts, civil society organizations, and academics worldwide whose feedback will be reflected in forthcoming revisions to the policy framework. This sounds like they will solicit opinions that agree with their planned policy updates, and will increase the amount of censorship they perform, informed by their progressive politics. This blog post just seems like a notice that this is coming, rather than an honest attempt to collect user input. They're also not clear what organizations they are consulting but I am guessing it does not include any moderate or conservative voices. The blog post does not mention "speech", "free speech", "censorship", "neutral", etc. It does however mention things like "fundamental human rights" and frustratingly vague wording like "health of the public conversation". This blog post is a fluffy PR piece that is starting the work of previewing and justifying whatever they're about to do to double down on their current heavy handed control of speech. Another curious part of this post: > This is to ensure a global perspective is reflected in the feedback It's interesting that the blog post mentions seeking a "global perspective", so maybe this is PR for other nations more so than a US audience. Twitter doesn't do a good job of reflecting varying perspectives even domestically in the US., since they regularly disallow centrist or conservative posts on a variety of controversial topics. When they take this mode of operation internationally, it is even more unacceptable since Twitter (and Facebook) are essentially propagandizing other nations and engaging in a slow-moving cultural shaping mission when they censor speech from those nations according to their own political or cultural opinions. I am expecting that the "global perspective" they seek is one that agrees with their way of doing things, not an honest readiness to accept ideological/cultural diversity. If they at all cared about this, they would first start by correcting their mistakes within the US. Other countries are aware of these issues, and the risk that Twitter and other big tech companies bring to their societies. We've seen leaders like Angela Merkel (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-twitter-over-problematic-trump-ban.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...) and Emmanuel Macron (https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter-facebook-bf8640d0-57d0-4747-affb-e91835f9fb84.html https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter...) point out the obvious issues with Twitter banning Trump, and it was a wake up call to those leaders. With leftist activists now calling for other countries' leaders to be banned (https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-trump-banned-bolsonaro-modi-india-brazil-populists-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-trump-banned-bolsona...), I would say those nations have every right to be alarmed. It's ironic that we place such a focus on foreign actors influencing our society in America. We often hear about Russian interference or other such scary activity, but the same scrutiny is never given to domestic actors who are waging an all out war on diversity of thought. Twitter is one of those bad actors, and cannot be trusted to uphold free speech principles. We need alternatives to them, and the other companies complicit in propagandizing our society - regular censors/deplatformers like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.
- etxm 6y agoI got an idea, don’t let world leaders use it at all. They have official means of communicating with the public. Leave Twitter for people without a voice, posting memes, and general bullshitting. World leaders don’t need to get caught up in quippy bickering.
- shrubble 6y agoIf you know who the first Lord Beaverbrook was, or have read The Fountainhead and remember the character of Gail Wynand, you can understand and almost predict the next moves of Dorsey/Twitter. Its the same reason for Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post.... having a media outlet gives you political power.
- glitchc 6y agoWorld leaders should not have a forum on Twitter. We have official government channels for that, where other stakeholders in the system provide their input before the message becomes public. If an individual moves into the position of a world leader or equivalent, their account should be frozen until such time that the position ends. This is the only sane policy. Anything else is too dangerous for humanity. Twitter and similar forums have the potential to destabilize global peace in the long run. Ex: A world leader should not be allowed to say "We are going to war" on Twitter, only to have the military turn around and say "We're doing what?!". Most governments have an official process for declaring war for this very reason, otherwise we are regressing back to medieval times.
- dv_dt 6y agoI think I disagree there. Though there are negative effects, one positive effect is that Twitter creates an opportunity for direct public feedback being seen by world leaders vs official channels that insulate from that feedback to a much higher degree. Though I do say "opportunity" because obviously leaders can create organizational insulators to Twitter accounts just as with any other channel.
- BoorishBears 6y agoWhat feedback? Does anyone think Donald Trump ever actually read those one-line zingers random celebs would reply to his tweets with? Do people think some dictator is going to ignore the people they're oppressing but listen to @xx69destroyerman calling them out?
- dv_dt 6y agoNot all opportunities are exercised - but especially on HN I would think we should realize that it's significant that they exist. But your comment also brings up a possible secondary benefit: the benefit of the people to see and possibly get in contact with other real people (real for the most part hopefully), as they criticize world figures. This is something that doesn't exist in other media outlets or exists only for people who can afford to take time out to go to a protest or in person official function.
- mmaunder 6y agoI think Twitter fails to realize that cyber space will ultimately supersede real world in its importance as a common space to interact, transact, communicate and live. We’re already close to that point. This: “Generally, we want to hear from the public on whether or not they believe world leaders should be subject to the same rules as others on Twitter. And, should a world leader violate a rule, what type of enforcement action is appropriate.” is interesting. The trouble is that, from Twitters perspective, they are the arbiter of how these interactions happen. Same for other major platforms. It fails to address the question of whether private for profit corporations should be sole arbiters of the very substrate upon which we live and its rules. Once the public and world governments think this through and fully game it out, I don’t think they’ll settle for the current status quo. We’re already seeing internet shutdowns during elections in certain countries as a course and crude enforcement or regulatory action. I’d expect this to become more granular over time and to expand.
- loveistheanswer 6y ago>Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. -Marshall Mcluhan, 1966
- benlumen 6y agoInterested in a dialogue now they helped put their guy in office. The power of this company is chilling.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andrew_ 6y agoColor me dubious that any policy will be enforced evenly.
- User23 6y agoI’m much more interested in world leaders’ approach to Twitter. I expect we’ll be seeing some object lessons in the difference between power and influence. The way Twitter is framing this is really interesting, they're evidently operating under the assumption that they are in the position of power.
- abbaselmas 6y ago"questionnaire will be available in the coming days in 14 languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Urdu." not in Turkish! Great!
- mberning 6y agoMighty fine of them to start caring about this months after the US election. They are run by transparent political operatives but the media constantly runs air cover for them. 50 years ago the media would be investigating the inner workings of Twitter with a microscope.
- seany 6y agoSeems like not censoring anyone regardless of who they are is the best option.
- sneak 6y agoIt's the best option for the world, but not the best option for Twitter Inc, sadly. They aren't the same thing. Twitter is a for-profit company and has a legal obligation to not build in revenue footguns, even if it would be better for society and the world for them to stop censoring people. :(
- undefined1 6y agohow about a simple rule? No politicians on Twitter.
- steve76 6y agoThere is no moral equivalence. Public consensus means nothing. Laws still restrain people no matter how many people agree. The purpose of laws, in regards to humans? Limit the violence, not create it. Here's an idea. How about not betraying the people paying for your bailouts. You could at least hire more people. Isn't Karl Marx the one European who has enslaved more people than anyone? Wealth doesn't accumulate. What once was novel, like electricity, becomes ubiquitous. And you can't "rich" yourself out of society. If you are moral and behave, you accumulate wealth, and often give it away before your lazy spoiled children ruin you. And the dialectical materialism, didn't Marx misread Hegel? Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Hegel never said that. What Hegel said is if you choose an "-ism", the very real world proves it wrong, and that's how you get ideals. The communist plague the world. OK. We'll just advance medicine. The communist bribe and loan our leaders? OK. We'll just take the money from them, and throw them in the ocean when the loan comes due. Anything else?
- dnndev 6y agoDifferentiate between official and unofficial announcements... most are unofficial unless scheduled ahead of time etc. Such as a government public announcement. Similar to TV
- jimmytucson 6y agoI must say Twitter is handling this masterfully. They already censored the president of the United States, oft-called the most powerful person in the world. The die is cast. Soliciting opinions now adds a layer of plausible deniability without changing things. What could be the outcome? Will a cohort of COVID-deniers convince Twitter that everyone is entitled to an opinion, leading to the great unbanning of Donald Trump?
- mr_toad 6y ago> the president of the United States Ex president. Trump has to live by the same rules as the rest of the hoi polloi.
- hristov 6y agoI think twitter should give foreign leaders pretty wide latitude to tweet, as long as they do not call for violence, use their tweets to command foreign agents, etc. Of course twitter can put notices on their tweets that these are foreign leaders that may not have the best interests of Americans at heart. It is rather pathetic that the citizens of the US, which is supposed to be a democracy run by its citizens are too scared to communicate directly with foreign leaders but are begging the government to create a smoke screen of propaganda so that their fragile minds can be protected from direct statements of foreign leaders. We are supposed to be adults and we are supposed to be making the major decisions for our the direction of our nation and forcing our politicians to execute our will. We are not supposed to be scared children begging an expensive army of government officials, journalists, and shady "analysts" to protect us from the reality of the world. If you let someone else shape your world view for you, they will do it to their advantage, and in the US this usually means more war, more tax payer dollars spend on the military, more death. Most of the more recent wars the US got into have been aided by carefully manufacturing powerful supervillian images of foreign leaders who were usually just garden variety low level a-holes that were completely harmless to the US. So man up, or woman up, read what the other people have to say directly from the source and try to make the best decision for the nation and yourself.
- Tossitto 6y agoYour error is in assuming the public has any meaningful say in government outcomes.
- binarymax 6y agoHow about: the same rules apply to everyone no matter who you are?
- TheRealNGenius 6y agoWorld leaders should not be afforded any form of preferential treatment. Everyone is equal under the law; all users equal under a platform. That's it. The moment you treat a subset of the population differently from another (such as giving them a blue checkmark), you begin to break from this ideal. Of course, any platform is free to do as they please. But congrats, in doing so, you have devolved into a world of kings and queens.
- bun_at_work 6y agoIsn't the checkmark just a verification? Pretty sure that's there so users can differentiate between real and spoof accounts. That way users know that @realDonaldTrump is really him, instead of the (probably) co-opted account @DonaldTrump. It's a pretty far cry from having any sort of additional power. Furthermore, acknowledging status where it exists is not the same as creating a distinct group of people with special status. What about "Dr." for people with doctorate degrees? Doctors don't have any more rights than anyone else, and having the title exist certainly doesn't create some part of society that is inaccessible to others. Holding political leaders to a different standard on social media doesn't mean they are royalty, it's just an acknowledgement that they do hold power, elected, inherited, or otherwise. Furthermore, if Twitter's history is a sign of what any new policy would look like, world leaders would be held to a more restrictive standard than others, on Twitter.
- TheRealNGenius 6y agoI'm pretty sure that not just anyone can get a checkmark. If it were the case that anyone could get the checkmark, then sure, I agree it would just be just a form of verification. This would be perfectly fine :) You're right that acknowledging status exists is not the same as creating it. But does one not go hand in hand with the other in this case, where you are selectively picking who to acknowledge? Now, I don't know the specifics, but from what I understand, there is an overwhelming disparity between journalists/politicians getting blue checkmarks compared to others who may have more followers. Of course, that would also be fine, assuming there was a rigorous definition of what a "journalist" was. Keep in mind, this is not evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni8CpIJpmqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni8CpIJpmqw I want to be clear, I was not implying political leaders royalty. But when you hold some group to a different standard than others or have rules for them that differ (whether more restrictive or lax), you have basically reinvented legal inequality.
- stakkur 6y agoI can't seem to find the case for treating some users one way, and some users another. Also can't determine how a 'leader' will be concisely defined and vetted.
- qbasic_forever 6y agoPurely from an opsec perspective I doubt we'll ever have world leaders as online and accessible on private platforms like Twitter as we did in the last years. It's just too much of a national security risk and every major state has to assume the CIA/Mossad/KGB/etc. is actively trying to intercept and undermine world leader's online presence. It is stupidly easy for a determined state actor to over time infiltrate and get an in with a private American company. The risks are just too great to have a world leader using Twitter or similar platforms for anything more than reshashed press releases and announcements. Smart nations will probably get ahead of potential hacking or other incidents by just having a blanket and clear policy that no official business will be communicated or done on Twitter or similar platforms.
- whitebread 6y agoAt this point it feels like the best option is to shut twitter down completely. What good comes solely from twitter?
- devwastaken 6y agoSame rules, no special treatment, no special indicators or "official" tags. Don't involve yourself in the politics. You do not want to be caught in wether taiwan is a country or not, or who the leader of palestine is, etc.
- 908B64B197 6y agoI aggree with this. And no special moderation either. If it violates what Bay Area Americans consider ok, ban the account. After all, these foreign world leaders have decided to use a private American company as a platform. If they don't like it they should simply build their own.
- williesleg 6y agoOh that's just a twitter way of collecting more data. They're assholes.
- lgleason 6y agoThis is laughable. Twitter banned the president of the United States of America. They are not a neutral platform and should be stripped of their section 230 exemptions. They are the last group that should be trying to be the "arbiter or truth". Twitter's culture and actions are so politically slanted in one direction that as an organization it would not know what truth was if it had teeth and bit them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stevenicr 6y agoI've been thinking about these things and twitter for the past few months, and I wonder.. Is snoop dogg on twitter? If yes, then your policy is already transparent to me, why can't twitter see it for themselves? If indeed snoop has been banned for promoting violence, then okay - go all the way - anyone who has ever talked about violent things block them. I myself might enjoy a portal that has no death, killing, boxing, hockey, fighting... all those things. Just as I got excited when I saw that fbook was deranking all politics and then in Australia blocked all news - I was like - wow, what a utopia social network - friends and family can see and be seen without all that other stuff! I have chuckled many times over the years watching twitter dodge and weave as policies shift this way and that - some things that I've already dealt with with open public forums. I'd say I'm very interested in this one - but the whole phone number for your account thing has basically censored my use of it so I already go elsewhere.
- stevenicr 6y agoI wonder if any downvoters could tell me if they have seen the videos and the plethora of songs from snoop that advocate serious violence, including the fairly recent one with putting a gun to the pres and pulling the trigger? fine to disagree, just not sure if others know enough about the comment to not disagree ignorantly.
- anothernewdude 6y agoBan 'em all.
- shmageggy 6y ago> we want our policies to remain relevant to the ever-changing nature of political discourse on Twitter and protect the health of the public conversation What the fuck? In what universe are the political hot takes, memes, and sniping on Twitter considered "discourse"? And in what universe is this considered healthy public conversation? Do people actually think Twitter is in any way a good medium for this?
- loveistheanswer 6y agoIt's like a cigarrette company saying they want to protect the health of people's lungs
- grumple 6y agoThey should, firstly, be held to at least the same standards as other users. If it's not ok for one user to threaten another, why is it ok for a world leader to use your forum to threaten war, especially when world leaders are given a mandate and monopoly on violence? Similarly, if you would ban someone for repeatedly spreading misinformation, you should ban world leaders. They should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one. Stop creating platforms for despots.
- ianai 6y agoDon’t host world leaders on Twitter. It’s like having Kiss or the local strip club perform for your kids first birthday or something else.
- dataflow 6y agoThis survey is just messed up... when you press Back and Continue you see the questions change entirely while keeping your answers!! It's not even clear to me that they're recording the answers properly!
- nautilus12 6y agoHonestly fuck twitter. I can't imagine how mad I'd be if they were pulling this kind of shit on my political party members: https://www.axios.com/twitter-suspends-mtg-marjorie-taylor-greene-31ca5d68-640d-4d52-af24-2d717a6114d2.html https://www.axios.com/twitter-suspends-mtg-marjorie-taylor-g...
- effnorwood 6y agoYou won't always be drawing the lines you historically ignorant idiots.
- rkagerer 6y agoCall me old fashioned, but I don't think world leaders like the US president should use Twitter. - Unlike traditional media where you have several competing outlets to disseminate your message, everything you put out on that platform is subject to the censorship whims of a single corporation. - It doesn't feel very presidential. 140 or 280 or whatever characters seems like an artificial cap on what is presumably very important messaging for the country. (You may argue people don't have an appetite for more - I guarantee when politics comes up in conversation over a backyard BBQ most people have a lot more to say than that).