
Ask HN: Is Twitter Good for the World - quietthrow
Dorsey says that twitter won’t censor demagogue leaders cos it promotes public conversation. While that is true it’s also  being an avenue to spread hate, fear and divide people. There is only so much rational public conversation that can happen when public is stricken by strong emotions like hate and fear. If anything that states promotes more charged convos accelerating the divide even more.<p>What’s the tipping point where twitter should consider banning such accounts? How is it fair that a few people at a company can decide on things that impacts so many people, governments and democracies in the world.<p>As a thought experiment what would the world be like if there was no twitter or Facebook. On balance has their existence been positive for the world or negative?
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krapp
Twitter is neither good, nor bad. It's a platform, and given its size, most of
what happens on it is completely banal.

Twitter is also not a public utility, it's a private business whose owners
have the right to manage it as they see fit, within the bounds of the law.

The problem here is that Twitter has become far more important as a nexus for
political communication and news than it should be. But television is also an
avenue to spread hate, fear and divide people. So are newspapers. So is radio
and the telephone. Every form of mass communication carries that potential -
plenty of riots have been started with just pamphlets and word of mouth.
Twitter is just one site on the greater web, and the web magnifies the rate at
which information _of all kinds_ spreads. Get rid of Twitter, or censor it,
and you don't actually change anything but the specific channels through which
information flows.

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lucozade
I think it's very good of the management at Twitter that they have a policy of
not censoring democratic leaders. I'm hopeful that there won't ever be a
tipping point on the basis that it's probably a financially good decision as
well as a politically fair one.

There's no need for a thought experiment though. We know exactly what the
world is like without the likes of Twitter and Facebook. What it looks like is
a world where most information is very heavily filtered by a very small, self-
selecting group. And through channels that were, usually, heavily
editorialised and explicitly biased.

I think it's too early to say whether they are a net force for good or not. My
gut feeling is that they will push democracies to be much more direct than
representative. I happen to think that this is likely to be a really bad thing
but I don't know that for a fact.

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quietthrow
\- the group may not be small here but the platform that enable this is run by
a as you say small and self selecting group. In addition small self-selecting
groups can exploit the masses as have been shown.

-net net you are saying that twitter/fb will force democracies to be direct and in your personal opinion is a really bad thing but you are giving the benefit of doubt. Jury is out there but today we can see that because of these technologies democracies have been divided like never before and that is a fact.

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luckylion
> While that is true it’s also being an avenue to spread hate, fear and divide
> people.

So is paper. Or language. Do you have the same stance on those two that you
have on Twitter?

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quietthrow
True but its paper and language based dissemination of information takes time.
and Time is a good catalyst of strengthening or weakening sudden emotions. It
gives space for rational decision making. Realtime comms like twitter etc
eliminate that space and hence in effect make it more easy to act emotionally
without giving the space to rational behavior to provide a balanced action
(individually and there by collectively).. There is a reason why gun sales
usually have a waiting period.

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luckylion
The time you need to send out counter-information is the same, though. If your
information dissemination is slow then so is you correcting some fake news
piece, or uncovering some government propaganda - if it's fast, then so is
your ability to combat it.

Since there's very little (besides actual lynch mobs which don't happen in
Western societies any more) that has a very short time window, I don't see the
momentary emotional uproar as a problem. Terrorists aren't attacking some
target because they read a rumor on Twitter 30 minutes ago, they are immersed
in an ideological framework that doesn't require real time communication.
Remember, McVeigh didn't have Twitter.

