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I 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 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 ago
Do you also oppose the US President holding press conferences for privately owned broadcast TV channels?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  or that CPAN is a non-profit run by the networks to bring you full realtime video access into the senate, congress etc?
- tacostakohashi 6y ago
  I 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 ago
  I'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?).
  - SllX 6y ago
    Your point is good but I think the reality is just really mundane: the government could put out its own text streams and multi-publish them to different platforms, but it’s just not there yet. There’s no fire under anyone’s ass to get it done, if it’s even occurred to anyone in a position to do something about it in the past uh... 14 years? However I would be fully on board with Twitter banning world leaders and IP blocking their capitals including the entire city of Washington. They won’t, that’s a value destroying proposition, but a man can dream.
  - Analemma_ 6y ago
    Twitter isn't "a closed platform" in the sense that is relevant here. If I want to read the President's tweets without a Twitter account, I can.
    - cle 6y ago
      That's not the sense that I was using, and I don't think it's a relevant point either. What's important IMO is that the platform and the data are not controlled by elected officials.
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      Well, sort of. Not if they remove it. The fact that they (mostly) haven't exercised this control so far over world leaders' tweets is a matter of internal policy at Twitter.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  PBS, NPR, the BBC, and Al Jazeera all have seats in the White House press room.
- SkyBelow 6y ago
  I think it is reasonable as long as there are barriers for consumption and people can be selectively limited in their ability to interact with the broadcasts. Maybe if Twitter was brought in as a government contractor, including the inability to restrict people from interacting with government tweets and accounts (any non-government entities would fall under the private business side of things and not be included in this restriction) then I think it would be reasonable for the government to use Twitter.
- barbazoo 6y ago
  Given that the list of organisations [0] consists of public and private ones, your statement reads somewhat disingenuous to me. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_press_corps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_press_corps
- randcraw 6y ago
  Yes. But I'd go further. All holders of US political office at all levels should be unable to restrict any conference or interview in which they take part to any single interviewer or news agency, so they cannot control who asks the questions or who airs the event. For several decades, US Presidents have been able to avoid hard questions by cherry picking interviewers or networks in order to "massage their message". That isn't news and it shirks their responsibility to answer hard questions. Tweets are just the next step in the evolution of accountability avoidance. We did away with royal proclamations long ago for damned good reason: you must answer to the people.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
crazygringo 6y ago
It's not "free copy for twitter" anymore than a press briefing is "free copy for newspapers". Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and listening. Today, Twitter is just as important of a conduit as newspapers or the evening news. People already read Twitter and find it far more convenient to follow a world leader than to visit individual sites or set up an RSS reader. Also you might be suffering from a legal misunderstanding -- Twitter doesn't get any kind of monopoly, free or otherwise, on someone's tweet. You keep the rights to your tweet. There's zero difference between journalists reporting on a press conference and reporting on a tweet, except that tweets are instant while press conferences take time to set up. And also that tweets are direct to the public, while when you read a journalist's article they might be omitting parts or spinning it.
- detritus 6y ago
  > Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and listening. I don't disagree with your post, but do general Government communiques not come in the form of press releases to all willing outlets? Perhaps Twitter should at itself to the list, and press releases come with an abridged 280 character surmisal that they could then use.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I live in New York and I get different pieces of information from the government via pretty much every channel -- direct e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, websites, billboards, ads in the subway, post office mailings, newspapers, etc. Different government agencies and officials at different levels (city, state, national) use all sorts of different communication methods. Governments have been heavily involved in media campaigns across all channels as long as there's been media. Press releases are just one communications channel among many. Twitter is just the ~newest in a very long line.
  - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    Some of them do, but others go out via Tweet, advertisements, physical signage, websites, email, and a variety of other channels. The government has to fight the meme wars just like anyone else who wants to compete for attention.
lisper 6y ago
The problem is that all leaders have an inherent conflict of interest between the following two goals: 1. Doing the job 2. Maintaining power The problem is, again, two-fold: 1. The things you need to do to serve the first goal are often different from the things you need to do to serve the second, and 2. You must achieve the second goal in order to even attempt to achieve the first. That's the fundamental problem. It has nothing to do with Twitter per se. It's an inherent feature of all large-scale societal interactions.
- moustachesmith 6y ago
  A demonhunt ? 'Just answer me, nor glamorized regent, whose freedom we the folk, are going to fight for?' 'For the freedom of foreigners? ...is this going to be a castrated migrationthespian?' 'Cos meet the Jones isn't radical enough anymore?' (-;
- bun_at_work 6y ago
  The stated conflict of interest is only really an issue in democracies, or other forms of representative governments. Otherwise, spot-on.
  - lisper 6y ago
    Why only in democracies? Dictators have to work to stay in power too. It doesn't just happen automatically.
- btkramer9 6y ago
  This is a great point and this[1] video gets at the same thing with much more detail and examples [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
  - lisper 6y ago
    Yes, that is a truly fantastic video. Should be required viewing for everyone. [UPDATE] There's a book too: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics-ebook/dp/B005GPSLHI/ https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
nostromo 6y ago
I don't trust the media enough to honestly and accurately convey information from my elected officials to me. And while press releases on whitehouse.gov are a step in the right direction, the fact that they are press releases usually makes them anodyne and uninteresting. The best approach is the one we used to have: a non-partisan (or at least, bipartisan) press corps asking elected tough questions live on television. But that has been lost for some time now.
- concordDance 6y ago
  Why live? Live means politicians will mispeak and can be interrupted before getting their message across.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    That's also its advantage - the press can't selectivity edit it to push their viewpoint.
codingdave 6y ago
> They should be communicating with the public via government operated websites Most everything a government official or board or committee does is on the public record. Saying they cannot use 3rd party tools to organize, document, and communicate their actions would be more expensive and time consuming for them, which ultimately takes them away from the business of actually governing.
jpxw 6y ago
A key issue with politicians’ use of Twitter is that Twitter’s userbase is a very poor reflection of the wider population. Politicians who are on Twitter, whether they know it or not, start to drift towards the views of Twitter users. Dopamine, like that which you get from from a popular tweet, is a powerful drug, and will alter peoples behaviour. Aside from that, though, it seems the medium of Twitter has a remarkable ability to bring out people’s most toxic sides... it’s really not healthy.
throwaway894345 6y ago
Ultimately the problem is that Twitter et al is the new de facto public square. Politicians want to go where the people are, not to publish to an RSS feed that some single digit percentage of their audience (which will skew elite) will ever access. Note also that there are other, broader consequences: Twitter operates the public square restriction from free speech provisions like the US First Amendment—it can regulate access and manipulate the dialogue to suit its own purposes to the detriment of the broader society, which is the whole point of provisions like 1A. Some are content that this isn’t a de jure public square, as though that will prevent us from suffering the de facto consequences. I think the answer is to start regulating Twitter so it doesn’t have control over so much national and international dialogue. We might say that social media giants must behave according to the first amendment such that it is a “safe” space for politicians to interact. If we’re worried about preserving some sense of moderation, we could require social media giants to implement some common protocol so that they don’t own the dialogue, but only a view (in the SQL sense) into the dialogue.
- undersuit 6y ago
  I think the answer is to start regulating our government. Far more effective to write a law on how the president can use communication platforms than to regulate the current top communication platform.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    It depends on what you’re solving for. I want to fix free speech and remove Twitter from the helm of democracy. That it doesn’t need to regulate world leaders is a bonus.
williesleg 6y ago
Twitter doesn't care. They're in the business of collecting data. Now that so many have left, they want their 'opinion' which is really that they thirst for more data.
nemothekid 6y ago
You have it backwards. People aren't born world leaders. In the America at least, they start out as private citizens, and run for office, and while doing so communicate with people in order to spread their message. What you are asking is for people to shut down their own personal social media accounts when they win an elected position. That doesn't seem like good policy - users will continue to use the same communication channels to their elected representatives.
proc0 6y ago
I'm not a fan of Twitter but it's definitely not just free copy for them; it's like a new communication tech has been invented (i.e. telegram -> phone) but this time it did not have immediate military application (I guess) and government wasn't the one doing the research and unfortunately the tech didn't become as open as the Internet or phone lines. My guess would be that large social media platforms should be part of telecomms now. Calling someone is not as common as it used to, it's now all SM.

ed312 6y ago

Do you also oppose the US President holding press conferences for privately owned broadcast TV channels?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
calvinmorrison 6y ago
or that CPAN is a non-profit run by the networks to bring you full realtime video access into the senate, congress etc?
tacostakohashi 6y ago
I 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 ago
I'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?).
- SllX 6y ago
  Your point is good but I think the reality is just really mundane: the government could put out its own text streams and multi-publish them to different platforms, but it’s just not there yet. There’s no fire under anyone’s ass to get it done, if it’s even occurred to anyone in a position to do something about it in the past uh... 14 years? However I would be fully on board with Twitter banning world leaders and IP blocking their capitals including the entire city of Washington. They won’t, that’s a value destroying proposition, but a man can dream.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  Twitter isn't "a closed platform" in the sense that is relevant here. If I want to read the President's tweets without a Twitter account, I can.
  - cle 6y ago
    That's not the sense that I was using, and I don't think it's a relevant point either. What's important IMO is that the platform and the data are not controlled by elected officials.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    Well, sort of. Not if they remove it. The fact that they (mostly) haven't exercised this control so far over world leaders' tweets is a matter of internal policy at Twitter.
dehrmann 6y ago
PBS, NPR, the BBC, and Al Jazeera all have seats in the White House press room.
SkyBelow 6y ago
I think it is reasonable as long as there are barriers for consumption and people can be selectively limited in their ability to interact with the broadcasts. Maybe if Twitter was brought in as a government contractor, including the inability to restrict people from interacting with government tweets and accounts (any non-government entities would fall under the private business side of things and not be included in this restriction) then I think it would be reasonable for the government to use Twitter.
barbazoo 6y ago
Given that the list of organisations [0] consists of public and private ones, your statement reads somewhat disingenuous to me. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_press_corps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_press_corps
randcraw 6y ago
Yes. But I'd go further. All holders of US political office at all levels should be unable to restrict any conference or interview in which they take part to any single interviewer or news agency, so they cannot control who asks the questions or who airs the event. For several decades, US Presidents have been able to avoid hard questions by cherry picking interviewers or networks in order to "massage their message". That isn't news and it shirks their responsibility to answer hard questions. Tweets are just the next step in the evolution of accountability avoidance. We did away with royal proclamations long ago for damned good reason: you must answer to the people.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

crazygringo 6y ago

It's not "free copy for twitter" anymore than a press briefing is "free copy for newspapers". Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and listening. Today, Twitter is just as important of a conduit as newspapers or the evening news. People already read Twitter and find it far more convenient to follow a world leader than to visit individual sites or set up an RSS reader. Also you might be suffering from a legal misunderstanding -- Twitter doesn't get any kind of monopoly, free or otherwise, on someone's tweet. You keep the rights to your tweet. There's zero difference between journalists reporting on a press conference and reporting on a tweet, except that tweets are instant while press conferences take time to set up. And also that tweets are direct to the public, while when you read a journalist's article they might be omitting parts or spinning it.

detritus 6y ago
> Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and listening. I don't disagree with your post, but do general Government communiques not come in the form of press releases to all willing outlets? Perhaps Twitter should at itself to the list, and press releases come with an abridged 280 character surmisal that they could then use.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  I live in New York and I get different pieces of information from the government via pretty much every channel -- direct e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, websites, billboards, ads in the subway, post office mailings, newspapers, etc. Different government agencies and officials at different levels (city, state, national) use all sorts of different communication methods. Governments have been heavily involved in media campaigns across all channels as long as there's been media. Press releases are just one communications channel among many. Twitter is just the ~newest in a very long line.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  Some of them do, but others go out via Tweet, advertisements, physical signage, websites, email, and a variety of other channels. The government has to fight the meme wars just like anyone else who wants to compete for attention.

lisper 6y ago

The problem is that all leaders have an inherent conflict of interest between the following two goals: 1. Doing the job 2. Maintaining power The problem is, again, two-fold: 1. The things you need to do to serve the first goal are often different from the things you need to do to serve the second, and 2. You must achieve the second goal in order to even attempt to achieve the first. That's the fundamental problem. It has nothing to do with Twitter per se. It's an inherent feature of all large-scale societal interactions.

moustachesmith 6y ago
A demonhunt ? 'Just answer me, nor glamorized regent, whose freedom we the folk, are going to fight for?' 'For the freedom of foreigners? ...is this going to be a castrated migrationthespian?' 'Cos meet the Jones isn't radical enough anymore?' (-;
bun_at_work 6y ago
The stated conflict of interest is only really an issue in democracies, or other forms of representative governments. Otherwise, spot-on.
- lisper 6y ago
  Why only in democracies? Dictators have to work to stay in power too. It doesn't just happen automatically.
btkramer9 6y ago
This is a great point and this[1] video gets at the same thing with much more detail and examples [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
- lisper 6y ago
  Yes, that is a truly fantastic video. Should be required viewing for everyone. [UPDATE] There's a book too: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics-ebook/dp/B005GPSLHI/ https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

nostromo 6y ago

I don't trust the media enough to honestly and accurately convey information from my elected officials to me. And while press releases on whitehouse.gov are a step in the right direction, the fact that they are press releases usually makes them anodyne and uninteresting. The best approach is the one we used to have: a non-partisan (or at least, bipartisan) press corps asking elected tough questions live on television. But that has been lost for some time now.

concordDance 6y ago
Why live? Live means politicians will mispeak and can be interrupted before getting their message across.
- Izkata 6y ago
  That's also its advantage - the press can't selectivity edit it to push their viewpoint.

codingdave 6y ago

> They should be communicating with the public via government operated websites Most everything a government official or board or committee does is on the public record. Saying they cannot use 3rd party tools to organize, document, and communicate their actions would be more expensive and time consuming for them, which ultimately takes them away from the business of actually governing.

jpxw 6y ago

A key issue with politicians’ use of Twitter is that Twitter’s userbase is a very poor reflection of the wider population. Politicians who are on Twitter, whether they know it or not, start to drift towards the views of Twitter users. Dopamine, like that which you get from from a popular tweet, is a powerful drug, and will alter peoples behaviour. Aside from that, though, it seems the medium of Twitter has a remarkable ability to bring out people’s most toxic sides... it’s really not healthy.

throwaway894345 6y ago

Ultimately the problem is that Twitter et al is the new de facto public square. Politicians want to go where the people are, not to publish to an RSS feed that some single digit percentage of their audience (which will skew elite) will ever access. Note also that there are other, broader consequences: Twitter operates the public square restriction from free speech provisions like the US First Amendment—it can regulate access and manipulate the dialogue to suit its own purposes to the detriment of the broader society, which is the whole point of provisions like 1A. Some are content that this isn’t a de jure public square, as though that will prevent us from suffering the de facto consequences. I think the answer is to start regulating Twitter so it doesn’t have control over so much national and international dialogue. We might say that social media giants must behave according to the first amendment such that it is a “safe” space for politicians to interact. If we’re worried about preserving some sense of moderation, we could require social media giants to implement some common protocol so that they don’t own the dialogue, but only a view (in the SQL sense) into the dialogue.

undersuit 6y ago
I think the answer is to start regulating our government. Far more effective to write a law on how the president can use communication platforms than to regulate the current top communication platform.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  It depends on what you’re solving for. I want to fix free speech and remove Twitter from the helm of democracy. That it doesn’t need to regulate world leaders is a bonus.

williesleg 6y ago

Twitter doesn't care. They're in the business of collecting data. Now that so many have left, they want their 'opinion' which is really that they thirst for more data.

nemothekid 6y ago

You have it backwards. People aren't born world leaders. In the America at least, they start out as private citizens, and run for office, and while doing so communicate with people in order to spread their message. What you are asking is for people to shut down their own personal social media accounts when they win an elected position. That doesn't seem like good policy - users will continue to use the same communication channels to their elected representatives.

proc0 6y ago

I'm not a fan of Twitter but it's definitely not just free copy for them; it's like a new communication tech has been invented (i.e. telegram -> phone) but this time it did not have immediate military application (I guess) and government wasn't the one doing the research and unfortunately the tech didn't become as open as the Internet or phone lines. My guess would be that large social media platforms should be part of telecomms now. Calling someone is not as common as it used to, it's now all SM.