5 ms·

What you say is untrue. Bloomberg: Grassley says Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal declined an invitation to appear today. Kurt Wagner Tech Reporter

pclmulqdq 4y ago
For good reason. Usually, these whistleblower sessions are used as a place to get sound bites for campaigning and give the CEO a tongue lashing. Due to the pending acquisition, this one has stakes that are about 100x higher than the typical whistleblower session. If Parag Agrawal screws up at this hearing, it could literally cost him billions of dollars. Let's be real: Twitter is a huge cesspool of harassment, hosts a ton of pornography (including from children), and clearly has monetization/business problems. It also seems to have much worse engineering than other social businesses. It's going to be a lot harder to defend in one of these sessions than Facebook.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Let's be real: Twitter is a huge cesspool of harassment, hosts a ton of pornography (including from children) For the porn: So do Reddit and Facebook, with the latter having had multiple lawsuits by former content moderators for the uncountable amount of CSAM and gore [1]. The first "most popular" subreddit was r/NSFW, followed by r/gonewild - Reddit literally got big with porn. As for harassment: Facebook with its closed groups is just as bad if not worse for radicalization (simply because way more people use it and no one monitors these groups, not to mention open channels such as newspaper comment sections), with direct links to deadly unrest such as in India [2]. Meta's other products are a horror show in themselves - Whatsapp has a history with mobs riled up by fake news to the point these have their own Wikipedia listicle [3] and Instagram has been under fire for years in helping to aid eating disorders [4]. It's bad enough that there are so many bad actors on Twitter, but the simple fact that Facebook makes billions of dollars in profit each year and doesn't even come close to the amount of moderation they would need makes them even worse. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35xk5/facebook-moderators-are-suing-for-trauma-ptsd https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35xk5/facebook-moderators-a... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/india-facebook-under-the-microscope-over-ignoring-hate-speech/a-59610062 https://www.dw.com/en/india-facebook-under-the-microscope-ov... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings [4] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/instagram-eating-disorders-depression-young-girls-lawsuits-claim/story?id=87418473 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/instagram-eating-disorders-d...
  - claytongulick 4y ago
    > no one monitors these groups In a country that values freedom of speech and association, this is considered a feature, not a bug.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      US-style absolutist interpretations of "freedom of speech" always come at a serious cost - and in almost all cases marginalized people (people of color, jews, and most recently trans people) end up bearing that cost, while the majority society feels no impact.
      - claytongulick 4y ago
        US-style absolutism about freedom of speech comes from hard earned lessons about the other options being much worse. It seems that much of the world has forgotten or willfully ignore these lessons. The cost of freedom is that people will use it to do things you don't like. Freedom isn't necessary for a society to function, lots of societies function without it, and have for most of human history. Given the choice though, I prefer to live in a society that chooses to maximize liberty. Without freedom of speech, all other liberties are irrelevant. There's a reason why it's the first amendment.
        ohgodplsno 4y ago
        >comes from hard earned lessons about the other options being much worse. Your country is barely 300 years old and has had a single constitution for its whole existence. The US has learned _no_ lessons through its existence. It's a country founded by colons who didn't want to pay taxes to the UK. The amount of lessons the US can give the world is about... none.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        mschuster91 4y ago
- rvz 4y ago
  > If Parag Agrawal screws up at this hearing, it could literally cost him billions of dollars. Good. It is an indefensible house of cards where it can take someone like Mudge to just blow it up and give the regulators a reason to give a massive fine and put them under strict rules to do better, and they should give them massive fines.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Mudge won't blow it up. Regulators may go for $X00 million of fines, but that's it. The company will release a statement saying, "all of this is incorrect about our business, and we are inviting some congresspeople to come meet with us on a fact-finding trip." Rules might get a little stricter, but the lobbyists from Facebook and Google won't let them get strict enough to hurt them - and any rule that hurts Twitter materially will hurt FB a lot more. This kind of thing is a once-in-3-months occurrence now, and no meaningful changes ever come of it. The only reason this one is different is because of the specter of Elon Musk's acquisition falling through.
    - dereg 4y ago
      Lindsey Graham committed to, in the testimony, working with Elizabeth Warren to create new rules, similar to Europe’s GDPR. Perhaps watching the testimony would change your mind.
      - deltree7 4y ago
        When it comes to details, dems and repubs want totally opposite things. Repubs want free speech (unbanning of conservatives, Trump), Dems want control (what can and can't be said on the platform). Bottomline, Ain't happening
whimsicalism 4y ago
Could counsel have appeared instead?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  No. Individuals get invited to Congress (or subpoenaed), and you can bring a lawyer to advise you, but they cannot speak.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

For good reason. Usually, these whistleblower sessions are used as a place to get sound bites for campaigning and give the CEO a tongue lashing. Due to the pending acquisition, this one has stakes that are about 100x higher than the typical whistleblower session. If Parag Agrawal screws up at this hearing, it could literally cost him billions of dollars. Let's be real: Twitter is a huge cesspool of harassment, hosts a ton of pornography (including from children), and clearly has monetization/business problems. It also seems to have much worse engineering than other social businesses. It's going to be a lot harder to defend in one of these sessions than Facebook.

mschuster91 4y ago
> Let's be real: Twitter is a huge cesspool of harassment, hosts a ton of pornography (including from children) For the porn: So do Reddit and Facebook, with the latter having had multiple lawsuits by former content moderators for the uncountable amount of CSAM and gore [1]. The first "most popular" subreddit was r/NSFW, followed by r/gonewild - Reddit literally got big with porn. As for harassment: Facebook with its closed groups is just as bad if not worse for radicalization (simply because way more people use it and no one monitors these groups, not to mention open channels such as newspaper comment sections), with direct links to deadly unrest such as in India [2]. Meta's other products are a horror show in themselves - Whatsapp has a history with mobs riled up by fake news to the point these have their own Wikipedia listicle [3] and Instagram has been under fire for years in helping to aid eating disorders [4]. It's bad enough that there are so many bad actors on Twitter, but the simple fact that Facebook makes billions of dollars in profit each year and doesn't even come close to the amount of moderation they would need makes them even worse. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35xk5/facebook-moderators-are-suing-for-trauma-ptsd https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35xk5/facebook-moderators-a... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/india-facebook-under-the-microscope-over-ignoring-hate-speech/a-59610062 https://www.dw.com/en/india-facebook-under-the-microscope-ov... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings [4] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/instagram-eating-disorders-depression-young-girls-lawsuits-claim/story?id=87418473 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/instagram-eating-disorders-d...
- claytongulick 4y ago
  > no one monitors these groups In a country that values freedom of speech and association, this is considered a feature, not a bug.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    US-style absolutist interpretations of "freedom of speech" always come at a serious cost - and in almost all cases marginalized people (people of color, jews, and most recently trans people) end up bearing that cost, while the majority society feels no impact.
    - claytongulick 4y ago
      US-style absolutism about freedom of speech comes from hard earned lessons about the other options being much worse. It seems that much of the world has forgotten or willfully ignore these lessons. The cost of freedom is that people will use it to do things you don't like. Freedom isn't necessary for a society to function, lots of societies function without it, and have for most of human history. Given the choice though, I prefer to live in a society that chooses to maximize liberty. Without freedom of speech, all other liberties are irrelevant. There's a reason why it's the first amendment.
      - ohgodplsno 4y ago
        >comes from hard earned lessons about the other options being much worse. Your country is barely 300 years old and has had a single constitution for its whole existence. The US has learned _no_ lessons through its existence. It's a country founded by colons who didn't want to pay taxes to the UK. The amount of lessons the US can give the world is about... none.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - mschuster91 4y ago
rvz 4y ago
> If Parag Agrawal screws up at this hearing, it could literally cost him billions of dollars. Good. It is an indefensible house of cards where it can take someone like Mudge to just blow it up and give the regulators a reason to give a massive fine and put them under strict rules to do better, and they should give them massive fines.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Mudge won't blow it up. Regulators may go for $X00 million of fines, but that's it. The company will release a statement saying, "all of this is incorrect about our business, and we are inviting some congresspeople to come meet with us on a fact-finding trip." Rules might get a little stricter, but the lobbyists from Facebook and Google won't let them get strict enough to hurt them - and any rule that hurts Twitter materially will hurt FB a lot more. This kind of thing is a once-in-3-months occurrence now, and no meaningful changes ever come of it. The only reason this one is different is because of the specter of Elon Musk's acquisition falling through.
  - dereg 4y ago
    Lindsey Graham committed to, in the testimony, working with Elizabeth Warren to create new rules, similar to Europe’s GDPR. Perhaps watching the testimony would change your mind.
    - deltree7 4y ago
      When it comes to details, dems and repubs want totally opposite things. Repubs want free speech (unbanning of conservatives, Trump), Dems want control (what can and can't be said on the platform). Bottomline, Ain't happening

whimsicalism 4y ago

Could counsel have appeared instead?

pclmulqdq 4y ago
No. Individuals get invited to Congress (or subpoenaed), and you can bring a lawyer to advise you, but they cannot speak.