
Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds” - rmbryan
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet
======
mattknox
Wetherell was not involved with launching retweet, and didn't implement much
(maybe any?) of the code in that Nov 2009 launch. He probably did write a
version of the frontend for retweet at some point, and had done some backend
code, but all of that was largely rewritten by launch day.

To be fair, he probably didn't claim that, but making his involvement out to
be more than it was probably did well for the article.

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nostrademons
Reading through some of the comments here, it occurs to me that there's a
moral trilemma at play here: you can have _power_ , you can have
_righteousness_ , or you can have _impartiality_ , but you must pick 2 out of
3. If you bring something new into the world that gives new voice or new
capabilities to previously disenfranchised groups, then you have a choice
between explicitly selecting _who_ you bestow this power on (in which case you
can preserve your righteousness, but sacrifice impartiality), or giving this
gift away free to everyone who can make use of it (in which case you remain
impartial, but will inevitably end up empowering people you find morally
abhorrent). Or you can choose to do nothing and never bring anything useful
into the world, which is also valid, but means you're eclipsed by people who
_do_.

Silicon Valley (and science/tech in general) has traditionally selected power
& impartiality, while nation-states and religions have traditionally selected
power & righteousness. Many of the commenters here would seemingly select
righteousness & impartiality, which perhaps speaks to why we're discussing
this on a message board rather than bringing startups into the world.

~~~
krajzeg
"Choose two out of three" triangles are sexy, but I fail to see how this
applies here. Doing nothing doesn't really mean choosing to be impartial and
righteous at the same time, and there is no way to both moderate and be
impartial if you actually run a platform.

I see it as every platform being able to choose a point on a sliding scale
between enforcing its morality and being impartial. The more moderation you
do, the less impartial you are, sure - but nobody actually wants the extremes
of this scale.

~~~
Zak
I don't think that argument applies here. The article isn't advocating
censorship or legal restrictions on social media. Instead, it's saying that
reducing friction from a very specific content-sharing workflow and giving it
a prominent position in the UI of social media sites may not have been a good
design decision.

Edit: I intended this as a reply to a different comment, but it has a reply
now so I'll leave it as-is.

~~~
krajzeg
It does apply a little if you extend the definition of "moderation" to include
choosing the right set of features in order to direct your users' behavior.

That said, I was mostly replying to the parent comment, not discussing the
main thesis of the article.

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ShakataGaNai
One _major_ problem with this: It's not like he "invented" the retweet. The
userbase invented the "RT" prefixed message. Twitter the company simply took
what the user base had done and weaponized it and empowered it. But at the
same time they made it easier to track a single specific message being RT'd.
So blessing and a curse.

~~~
plorkyeran
The article specifically argues that the retweet button causes problems that
manual retweeting didn't, and so he did invent the thing that's actually a
problem.

~~~
derekdahmer
Yea the act of copying and pasting to do a retweet required just enough extra
work that people had to think about what they were typing, and so users used
it in a less reactionary way.

It's kind of incredible that a tweak to one small feature could have such a
large behavioral impact.

~~~
RandallBrown
I distinctly remember people typing "RT @whoever some fake tweet they never
said" as a joke or to be purposefully misleading. It solved a real problem
with the old fake RT system.

~~~
eropple
There's a really solvable answer to that, though: ban people who do it.
Enforce some controls on your platform.

But the search for more money continues...

------
ergothus
I found this to be a rather refreshing take on the traditional "tech people
didn't consider the consequences" \- it doesn't place blame on the tech
person, and reflects thought and awareness before and after. (It's easy in
hindsight to say "people suck, so this is a terrible idea", but far harder to
do in advance).

Left unanswered is what do about it - the implied "require some effort" isn't
likely to be successful, as the incentives to make things easier is there, and
the incentive to promote long term civility is...not.

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bjt2n3904
For a long time, I've made the argument that the First and Second Amendments
of the US Constitution are indistinguishable from each other.

Previously, when the government was attacking encryption, I made the argument
that this was gun control for software. "What you have is too powerful. No one
needs 'military grade' encryption. Some people are misusing it, and we need
the government to control it. No one's coming for your encryption, we just
want key escrow." Of course, encryption is not only a protection for banking,
it's a protection for free speech.

I agree that words can be a "weapon"\--but in the same way that a scalpel can
be a weapon. It depends how you use it. It's frightening that people are now
starting to apply the "gun control" thought process to "retweets".

Before anyone jumps down my throat with "but Twitter isn't bound by the
constitution", no duh. But regardless whether it's a company or a government,
hearing someone with a lot of power advocate for suppressing freedom of
expression isn't a great thing.

Whatever happened to the "Free Speech Wing" of the "Free Speech Party"?

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dccoolgai
So tired of these "OMG What Did I Create?" stories from social media devs. How
about you grow a conscience _before_ you build these things? I have told
managers to go f themselves for: _Content that would demean people_ Lying to
or misleading customers *Hosing over my fellow engineers ... among other
things

I don't think it's that special of a thing to do but reading these things
makes it seem like it is.

~~~
amiantos
The problem is idealism.

> “I was very excited about the opportunity that Twitter represented,”
> Wetherell said, noting that he initially felt the retweet button would
> elevate voices from underrepresented communities.

The problem is that it didn't register to him, or anyone, that "racists" were
an "underrepresented community", as were sexists, misogynists, homophobes,
anti-intellectuals, quacks, and so on. When attempting to give a voice to
minorities, they gave a voice to all "minorities", including people who had
minority opinions. The idealism came in the form of expecting that these tools
will, by default, be used for good... it wouldn't surprise me that people in
the tech community, who have often come from privilege or at the very least
live within privileged bubbles, are naive about what people are really capable
of.

"A rising tide lifts all boats..." unfortunately some of those ships are full
of pirates and disease.

It's sad, but you really need think about these things from a jaded and
cynical perspective when building them, it's unfortunate that there's been a
long crusade against cynicism. Being optimistic and feeling optimism about the
world and humanity leads to problems like this.

~~~
redwards510
Well said. In addition to simply being naive, I think there is also the self-
delusion that everyone subscribes to when they convince themselves that their
job (no matter what it is) is somehow helping contribute _something_ good to
the world. I had a relative that worked as a telemarketer selling predatory
debt consolidation packages to people on the verge of bankruptcy and when he
described what he was doing, he enthusiastically framed it like he was helping
the people from going bankrupt, even though he was just helping them dig a
bigger hole.

If your company is a public corporation, your only purpose is to maximize
shareholder value.

------
jackfoxy
I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering
available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

~~~
ethbro
I was wondering today why Facebook et al. don't break their share functions
into emotionally binned categories.

"Share because it makes me angry" etc

Seems like they'd get amazing whole text training sets, as well as a signal to
better guide their platforms (e.g. under-weighting negative emotions in share
velocity).

~~~
seisvelas
People would quickly realize that if they share it under a negative category
their share velocity would be hit. A better approach might just be to
sentiment-detect negative emotion in Tweets and adjust share velocity
accordingly.

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brokenkebab
There seem to be a growing idea in Silicon Valley minds that we (IT crowd,
devs, techies, managers) are in fact great! Way smarter then those stupid
peons around us which use our products. So logically we have a mission to
bring those unwashed morons to the bright side, and we must manipulate them
for their own good.

While it's certainly pleasant illusion for us, there are two glowing problems:

1\. We are not necessary better (neither morally, nor intellectually) then
other people, it's just a current importance of IT economy which makes us a
bit more successful, and and sometimes gives us some sort of influence.

2\. There's an empirical evidence of activist journalism which suggests the
only achievable result on this way is loss of respect, and growing animosity.

------
dawhizkid
Retweets function to spread messages, but the quote tweet (combined with the
retweet) is the ultimate hate/shame tool. I rarely see it use outside of "hey
universe look what this idiot once said".

------
phkahler
Been saying for years that the Share button is what ruined Facebook. I went
there to see what was up with people I know, not to get news or Memes.

The problem now is that FB makes a lot of money via sharing paid content so
they won't get rid of it.

------
darepublic
The mainstream media has weaponized the use of the word weaponized

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throw7
I think it's funny, this developer is calling his users 4-Year-Olds. Reminds
me when we used to call them lusers.

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btbuildem
So -- remove the button.

No? Why not?

~~~
daveFNbuck
The guy in the article doesn't even work at Twitter. He's not in a position to
remove it.

~~~
splendidHaiku
Maybe other people work at twitter who could remove it? Questions was why not
just remove it.

~~~
daveFNbuck
The people who are in a position to remove it aren't the ones who said it's
like handing a loaded weapon to a 4-year-old, so they don't have the reason to
remove it that the question was referring to.

They have a more nuanced view and are quoted in the article saying that
they're looking into how to modify the interface to "encourage more
consideration before spread".

------
9HZZRfNlpR
Twitter was not made for serious, challenging conversation from the beginning.
Every feature it has is designed for short, sarcastic tweets or replies. It's
almost hardcoded to the product. Possibly that's why politicians love it.

------
gavanwoolery
There is a much larger problem here than RTs, and that is lack of journalistic
integrity.

You can spread pretty much any sort of information without research or even a
logical basis. Weirdly, we tend to default to accepting it as valid rather
than questioning it.

The only realistic cure for this, outside of draconian authority, is to teach
people how to be more skeptical and educate them on logical fallacies.

These are things that should be taught from elementary school and onwards
IMHO.

~~~
smogcutter
So I don't remember this well enough to find a link, but some time ago there
was a viral clip of someone tripping on the subway steps in NY. They drop all
their stuff, look like a dork, everyone's fine, whatever. But then someone
takes a longer look at security camera footage from the station (or someone
independent sets up a camera, I forget), and finds that _lots_ of people trip
on that particular step. Turns out it's slightly taller than the others, so
it's easy to catch your foot on it.

One possible solution is to convince everyone individually to pay really close
attention to their feet all the time. Or you could fix the steps.

No one had to go around and convince people to be shitty to each other on the
internet. A structural change made it easier and more rewarding, and our dumb
monkey brains went wild. If your solution is to change the dumb monkey brain
part and not the structural part, you're gonna have a bad time.

------
tictoc
Did they know it was a weapon? Would it be a weapon if twitter wasn't popular?

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api
The same thing could be said of every tech product back to the sharpened rock.

------
austincheney
Retweet is like gossip but easier. There are people who are wired to enjoy
gossiping. They can have this stupidity.

On the other hand I prefer to avoid Twitter all together and get my news from
actual journalism.

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krtkush
Similar - [https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/man-created-facebook-like-
bu...](https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/man-created-facebook-like-button-now-
warns-mind-can-hijacked-social-media/)

~~~
sp332
Also a guy who did major pioneering work on infinite scrolling
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959)

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simplecomplex
Hyperbole. Social media is not broken. The retweet is not why. And this guy
didn't invent the idea of republishing content. Other microblog services had
that, and I'm pretty sure Twitter users were doing it on their own.

~~~
loceng
So I'm curious what you think is the problem, or if there is one - and if so,
what your proposed solution would be?

~~~
simplecomplex
People create their own problems out of nothing. People make mountains out of
mole hills. Twitter is one of those problems. Twitter is one of those
mountains.

~~~
loceng
So you haven't thought very deeply into this? Those statements don't tell me
anything - I can say there's the colour white, but that's actually made up of
a spectrum of colours. I ask because if you haven't thought deeply into it,
how are you confident that your macro statements are accurate?

