
“We’re committing Twitter to increase the health and civility of conversation” - dankohn1
https://twitter.com/jack/status/969234275420655616
======
zestyping
Today, Twitter is a planetary-scale hate machine. By which I don't mean
"people post hateful things on Twitter." I mean literally generates hate, as
in, put a bunch of people with diverse perspectives on Twitter and by the end
of the day they hate each other more than when they started. Common ground
might have existed, but they won't find it, because Twitter, like any arms
dealer, works better when they fight. It even benefits from collateral damage,
when they hurt people they didn't specifically intend to hurt.

Through its core design—short messages, retweets, engagement metrics—Twitter
incapacitates the safeguards necessary for civil discussion. It eliminates
context, encourages us to present each other out of context, prevents us from
explaining ourselves, rewards the most incendiary messages and most impulsive
reactions, drives us to take sides and build walls.

If Twitter is going to foster healthy conversation, it will have to change
fundamentally. It won't be a matter of tuning some filters and tweaking some
ranking algorithms. A big part of it will involve making us the customer, not
the product (Zeynep Tufekci:
[https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/965937392942305280](https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/965937392942305280)).

~~~
pavlov
Regretfully I agree. There’s a lot I like about Twitter, but it’s clear — just
reading my own feed — that for many it’s primarily about seeking that quick
fix of outrage. I get carried away too, retweeting some screenshot of someone
being an ass in a discussion about gun control or whatever, and later I feel
ashamed.

Twitter is the closest thing to Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” in _1984_. Scroll
through your feed for two minutes and build up a righteous anger about how
stupid the leftists/NRA/FBI/reactionaries/whoever really are.

~~~
guiambros
_" Twitter is the closest thing to Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” in 1984. "_

That's a great analogy. I almost tweeted this. Almost.

~~~
rabidvermin
I tweeted it.

~~~
tempodox
You will be hated.

~~~
LoonyBalloony
<3 I don't hate that person. <3

#wholesomeHN

Edit: <(^_^)>

------
nyxxie
It's vaguely disturbing to read the CEO of a company that hosts one of the
world's largest communications platforms talk about "measuring the health" of
conversations and his company's goal to get rid of conversations they deem
unhealthy.

The problems Jack talks about (echo chambers, political bias, misinformation
campaigns) are serious problems that our society faces as a small group of
voices increasingly have the ability to reach millions of real people.
However, I think it's unethical to solve it by eliminating speech based on an
arbitrary group of people's notion of what is "healthy speech".

I think that Jack forgets that he's talking about real people expressing real
thoughts and opinions. Of course he is well within his rights to do whatever
he wants with his platforms, but if we want to view this as a problem of
ethics, Twitter is directly infringing on private individuals' rights to
autonomy of expression and manipulating their view of the world by deciding
what they should and should not see. I don't think that is a solution which
produces the greatest net good.

~~~
joshuaheard
Twitter is a reflection of society. Twitter can't fix society, only censor its
speech, which never works.

Congress needs to look at extending First Amendment protections for users of
social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

~~~
saudioger
I very strongly disagree with applying the First Amendment protections to data
hosted on private infrastructure. 4chan more or less takes the "free speech"
approach and it's a goddamned disaster.

People honestly can't even handle free speech in real-life, let alone
anonymously on the internet. We literally have to create barriers around
Planned Parenthood because people use free speech to berate women who are
already suffering.

Speech needs to be protected, but when it starts to encroach on my pursuit of
happiness it's a problem. Facebook, Twitter, etc don't need to become chan
sites.

~~~
tachyoff
First amendment jurisprudence, thankfully, disagrees with you. But first, some
history.

For most of modern history, speech has been censored in some form or another
by governments. Naturally so, as any kind of divergent thinking can be
dangerous to power structures (this hasn't gone away). In 1663, John Twynn,
was tried and executed in England for printing material that suggested that
perhaps the monarchy should be beholden to the people. The Sedition Act of
1798 was passed by the American Congress and signed into law by President John
Adams. Namely, it prescribed fines and imprisonment for those who "write,
print, utter, or publish... any false, scandalous and malicious writing"
against the government. This was used to jail several members of Congress,
among others.

Modern free speech jurisprudent didn't start to develop until as late as 1917.
The Espionage Act of 1917 was enacted at the start of World War I to prevent
actions that were seen as unfavorable to the war. The Supreme Court upheld the
law as not violating freedom of speech in Schenck v. United States. I believe
there was a subsequent 1917 or 1918 case that began to turn the tide (the
reference escapes me at the moment and I'm at work), but it wasn't until 1969
in Brandenburg v. Ohio that the Supreme Court ruled that inflammatory speech
is protected as long as it satisfies a two-prong test:

1\. The speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,"
AND 2\. The speech is "likely to incite or produce such action."

The case concerned an Ohio Ku Klux Klan member who was recorded saying
particularly horrid and denigrating things about African Americans, but,
notably, nothing specifically threatening. The Supreme Court upheld your right
to say things like "I think we should kill all Jews" because, although a
terrible thing to say, statements like that aren't imminently encouraging
lawless action and not likely to do so.

Past that point, the Supreme Court has regularly upheld this interpretation of
the first amendment. The best argument against a more European, say,
interpretation of the first amendment is that, simply: governments only ever
censor speech that they don't like. That's why the Espionage Act was used to
incarcerate the likes of Emma Goldman and not, say, the people who were
helping organize lynchings. If you were to enact hate speech legislation, and
history bears this out, the people most affected are the minorities: black
people, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ people, pacifists, communists, anarchists,
socialists, etc. Think about all of the police that shoot unarmed black men.
Can you seriously imagine police forces across America protecting the speech
of someone that calls for the abolition of the institution that person belongs
to?

So that's a brief history and law lesson (caveat: I am neither a lawyer nor a
historian). This is certainly a larger discussion to have, and I very much
enjoy debating things like hate speech legislation and speech restriction in
general, but I'll leave you with this for now.

~~~
pjc50
None of this is relevant to whether Twitter want to be complicit in publishing
this speech which they are under no obligation to do.

Edit: I'm also wondering why the great examples of free speech that people
reach for are always racism. It's not really surprising that racism is allowed
in a country founded on racism. It might be more interesting to look at what
_has_ actually been banned in American free speech law over the years.

The "ag-gag" laws that were recently overturned are one thing I'm thinking of.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws)
are another.

~~~
tachyoff
> None of this is relevant to whether Twitter want to be complicit in
> publishing this speech which they are under no obligation to do.

Grandparent was arguing that people can't handle free speech and that:

> Speech needs to be protected, but when it starts to encroach on my pursuit
> of happiness it's a problem. Facebook, Twitter, etc don't need to become
> chan sites.

I hear this a lot, particularly from the left (although the right does it
too), on the grounds of protecting people from "harmful" speech. I disagree
with that, which is why I responded, because I don't think enough people know
about the modern interpretation of free speech and the long, storied history
it has (not just in the US but everywhere). I certainly had no idea before I
started reading.

> I'm also wondering why the great examples of free speech that people reach
> for are always racism.

It's not that they're examples, it's that the landmark Supreme Court cases
that established our modern understanding of free speech typically involved
the KKK and nazis (c.f. National Socialist Party of America v. Village of
Skokie). In other words, people with horrible beliefs are the only reason why
you can stand on a street corner and preach about socialism, communism,
anarchy, etc (which might be "horrible beliefs" too, depending on the
individual). 100 years ago, someone distributed a gentle poem by a socialist
and was put in jail, and it was legal. Do you want to go back to that? Because
it is absolutely possible.

~~~
pjc50
Long, storied history dating back to ... 1977?

~~~
tachyoff
I'm going to quote my original post:

> In 1663, John Twynn, was tried and executed in England for printing material
> that suggested that perhaps the monarchy should be beholden to the people.

------
zombieprocesses
Good old "civility". The excuse that tyrants, dictators, liberals,
conservatives and social media tycoons use to justify censorship.

Surprised the other excuse ( "won't you please think of the children" ) wasn't
used.

Can't wait for the next wave of censorship. ISPs banning twitter, news and
pornography to increase "health and civility".

The promise of open and free internet is quickly turning into a nightmare of
censored social media.

Is anyone else concerned that twitter and social media are now openly stating
that they will manipulate content/people to fit their agenda?

If it was china doing this, HN and the media would be attacking it from every
angle possible. Strangely, the same type of behavior in the US is supported by
these same people.

~~~
dfxm12
_Is anyone else concerned that twitter and social media are now openly stating
that they will manipulate content /people to fit their agenda?_

Not really, based on what Jack is saying here, and Facebook's stance of "stop
promoting third party posts and promote friends' posts more[0]".

A lot of what we see on social media now - slews of paid ads and suggestions
based on easily gamed algorithms - are tools of other peoples' agendas... Do
you think you're really in control of your social media feeds?

0 - [https://www.vox.com/2018/1/12/16882536/facebook-news-feed-
ch...](https://www.vox.com/2018/1/12/16882536/facebook-news-feed-changes)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Not really, based on what Jack is saying here, and Facebook's stance of
> "stop promoting third party posts and promote friends' posts more[0]".

Facebook saying that is just a way of saying “Make people using Facebook for
advertising purposes pay more to reach the audience”, which is what Facebook
makes changes to do _frequently_ , usually with the same explanation and no
real change in the amount of non-friend content (just the non-friends reaching
you are more heavily tilted to those paying more for paid reach, i.e., ads
that don't get distinguished from organic content.)

------
koolba
From the tweet storm, emphasis mine:

> While working to fix it, we‘ve been accused of apathy, censorship,
> _political bias_ , and optimizing for our business and share price instead
> of the concerns of society. _This is not who we are_ , or who we ever want
> to be.

I don't understand why people don't admit that that their own political biases
exist. Hell I know I have them. It's part of what makes us human.

Apparently we're not alone either:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-
robo...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-robotsbias-
is-the-real-ai-danger/)

~~~
Clanan
Ask any politician - there is power in appearing to be above the frailty of
bias, apathy, etc. Hypothetically, if twitter wanted to purge it's platform of
one side of the political spectrum, it would be far easier to do it for the
sake of "collective health, openness, and civility", than for the real reason
of "we don't like you".

~~~
oldcynic
> Ask any politician

They will tell you they favour fairness and freedom from bias. _It 's the
other side that are biased._

~~~
elcapitan
Bad guys have biases, good guys have _convictions_.

------
ivraatiems
The fact that it took @jack, by my count, 13 tweets to say this is itself
evidence that what he's trying to do will never come to pass on Twitter.
Trying to read it, I kept thinking, "why is this so long?"

It's not. I'd read a Medium article or HN or Reddit post three times its
length and not blink.

The right move to increase civility of discourse would be to stop providing
that discourse via environments designed to discourage comprehension, lower
the attention span of the user base, and encourage flamey, bite-sized "takes."

~~~
oldcynic
Why is it a long-form post more suited to Livejournal or blog post and in no
way written to work _on Twitter?_

That in itself is indicative of the problem.

~~~
cabalamat
It would be nice if there was a platform that was as good at short messages as
Twitter while also being good for longer more deliberative posts.

Of course the problem for any new social network is that it is hard for it to
become successful, due to network effects.

------
clarkmoody
Twitter is taking itself too seriously, believing that if it could tweak
around the edges, it could improve the quality of the debate in the direction
of civility and understanding. Perhaps some nudges and UX changes could
encourage these things (I remember a long article about Facebook tweaking
their "report picture" function to encourage messaging the person to talk
about it before reporting).

BUT

I hate to break it to @jack, but Twitter conversation simply reflects the
nature of humanity in an adversarial political system. Attempting to "elevate
the debate" will never work, since the debate has never been "elevated." There
were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political
differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy.

No. Politics is always adversarial. As a libertarian, both "sides" of the
American political divide feel threatening to me, since all proposals out
there are for one form of authoritarianism or another. All proposals involve
me giving up a little more of my personal or economic liberty. Will @jack do
anything to alleviate my fears that my liberty is being attacked every single
day? Probably not.

He's devoted to "collective health and civility," which reads like a _1984_
thought-police handbook. Of course, the debate always seems civil after the
dissenting voices have been crushed.

(Pre-emptive retort to attack on libertarianism: Yes, I know Twitter is
private property. Yes, Jack can do whatever he wants with his business, within
the laws for a publicly-traded company.)

~~~
wgerard
Huh, your comment actually caused me to re-evaluate my thinking a little bit.

Because you're right, in general this is true:

> There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their
> political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy.

It seems that way sometimes (calm debate and discussion), but US history of
course is full of angry, threatening debates with even politicians themselves
erupting into actual physical violence sometimes [1].

Still, it feels like there's been a notable shift. Compare one of the 1992
presidential debates [2] to a 2016 presidential debate [3]. The former feels
like an actual debate, the latter feels like a segment on a political news
show where basically the loudest voice "wins".

Of course, US politics has always been a thin veneer of civility masking some
extremely aggressive adversarial acts (e.g. Watergate), but it seems like that
mask has now disappeared almost entirely.

I don't know that Twitter is the cause of any of this (as opposed to just a
reflection of where we're at), but it does feel like things have certainly
shifted nonetheless.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_States)

2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9qB_BIjWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9qB_BIjWY)

3:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s)

~~~
tjr225
> Still, it feels like there's been a notable shift.

I don't know if I agree completely...I watched your videos and yes- the
debates during the 2016 election were absolutely ridiculous, I think that's
mostly due to wider and more public acceptance of conspiracy theory, Fox News,
and your Rush Limbaughs, and on the flipside thought-policing, extreme
sensitivity, etc

It's funny, back to why I somewhat disagree with you, if you watch any news
from the last twenty or thirty years everyone seems to have the exact same
concerns as they do now. Donald Trump (and even Hillary Clinton when she was
running) are just really loud mouthpieces for those concerns.

~~~
throwawayyx96
Setting aside formal debates among politicians, if you want to talk about why
discussion of contentious topics by average Joes and Janes has degenerated
into its current state of pointless shouting matches, I feel like it has less
to do with Fox News, conspiracy theories, fake news, Russian meddling or
whatever else is regularly associated with the alt-right. In the run-up to the
election and the months following it, a large faction on the left has
abandoned any pretense of discussing ideas and policies or of having civilized
debate, preferring instead to become very aggressive with insults, wild
accusations of racism, white supremacy, misogyny, etc., in order to demonize
their opposition. You see it all the time on this forum and others. It's lazy
and harmful, and it's being used as a tool to avoid any self-reflection.

~~~
tjr225
I agree with one caveat- I think it's preposterous to say that the left is
responsible for this- both sides participated in this nonsense and it's
obvious that that is the case.

And, I think you have to take the context in which Donald Trump rose to power
into account- to many (myself included) it's also preposterous that someone
with a track record of failure, bankruptcy, and lack of experience could come
to head our administrative branch...it's hard to have a conversation when the
very idea of his election is so absurd, for better or for worse.

Another edit! I think it's misleading for you to present Fox News, Rush
Limbaugh, et al. as things associated with the Alt-Right. These are very much
poor sources of information and are very much so digested by a huge swath of
conservative Americans.

------
nokcha
To me, the most interesting part is the following:

>What we know is we must commit to a rigorous and independently vetted set of
metrics to measure the health of public conversation on Twitter.

>So we’re seeking help by opening up an RFP process to cast the widest net
possible for great ideas and implementations.

RFP:
[https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...](https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-
health-metrics-proposal-submission.html)

------
retox
There is hate and bile on Twitter because people are full of hate and bile.
This is a frightening time to be alive for a lot of people, full of
uncertainty and a feeling that they have been hard done by and manipulated by
faceless bureaucrats.

The answer to this aspect is "simple"; make people happier.

What makes is easier and more 'acceptable' for people to write these things is
that they don't have to look into the faces of their targets. You can't have
civil discourse when two people are wearing masks. This problem can't be
solved by social media in its current form, or maybe ever. Perhaps VR
communities where everyone is forced to use their own face and have it 100%
accurate and real-time.

Even then people don't have the same sense of humour and understanding of
nuance which is a big reason we choose to associate with the people we do.
It's easy to be offended when you hear two people talk in terms you aren't
familiar with and aren't privy to past discussions and inside jokes. This is
unsolvable by social media without federation, which is basically what
traditional forums are.

------
bob_theslob646
The crazy thing every time I read something like this,is how out of touch tech
companies are.

Isn't technology supposed to enhance our lives? In twitter's case, why cannot
it lead to people having more compassionate conversation.

I think there is difference between free speech and hate speech and because of
metrics such as MAU's and other's Wall Street imposes on twitter and other
tech companies, they are not incentivized to have stronger communities which
may be smaller rather than larger communities who are more distant if that
makes sense.

------
ianai
I can’t take this seriously. Their economic model seems dependent on extreme
messages/people.

~~~
chippy
Well, if Facebook were able to change the news feed to focus more on friends
and family and away from their $-cow companies and advertisers, then maybe
Twitter can change.

~~~
vidarh
If anything we should take it extremely seriously in as much as we're getting
to a point where private companies undertake research projects on how the can
alter the public discourse through algorithms.

I'm not saying that _has_ to be bad. It could very well be good too. But it
does open some fairly terrifying possibilities as well.

------
moduspol
This reads like an arms wide-open embrace of politically correct language and
inoffensiveness, along with a shunning of everything else on the platform.

I'm honestly not sure how much I blame Twitter. It's not their duty to stand
up for offensive ideas and they'll undoubtedly be more commercially successful
by limiting the discussion to things that result in algorithmically good
"conversational health."

It's just a bit disappointing to see us take yet another step away from free
expression--particularly in this case because it follows major Democratic
senators threatening action if they don't [1].

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16591646/facebook-
senate-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16591646/facebook-senate-
hearing-feinstein-russia-google-twitter)

------
chippy
You can submit research proposals to Twitter about this commitment, and get
funding for it. (I think they are after peer review research level proposals,
rather than "ban $politician")

[https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...](https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-
health-metrics-proposal-submission.html)

* Your proposed health metrics, and methods for capturing, measuring, evaluating and reporting on such metrics

* Anticipated resource requirements and methodology

* Proposed output from your proposal and estimated time needed to capture, measure and evaluate health metrics

* Relevant, peer-reviewed, publications and papers

------
theNJR
Why is there not a national public social platform? Certainly this has been
discussed, yet in all my years of geekery, I haven't come across a
conversation about it.

Whenever the topic of YouTube/Facebook/Twitter censorship comes up, it always
ends in "Well, it's their platform so they can do what they want". That's
true. But don't we need a platform where they can't, that is owned by we the
people?

~~~
leereeves
The Internet itself used to be owned by the public and the government
privatized it.

------
jessaustin
Yeah they are so concerned. If they had started adding decent shadow-ignore
capabilities to curb the harassment ten years ago, it would already have been
scandalously late. Twitter is what it is, and no amount of executive window
dressing could change that. If they were a firm capable of major functionality
updates (or profit!), they would have shown some sign of that before now.

------
lukev
Civility is nice, but I don't think it's what's fundamentally wrong with
Twitter. One can (and people do) express hateful ideas quite politely.

Preserving some concept of free speech while also preventing it from growing
into an ideological cesspool is required to give Twitter net positive societal
value, but mere civility ain't that.

------
egfx
Twitter is deeply depressing. Their best feature, lists is lost and goes
completely unnoticed. Meanwhile we get moments plus hashtags which link us to
literally every minor iteration of the exact same story. A measure of madness?

------
munificent
Looks like Twitter finally reached a level of toxicity that it's negatively
impacting shareholder value.

------
panic
Online trolls love figuring out and exploiting automated systems. Any
computer-evaluated "health metric" will just become another weapon in their
hands. You need human moderators!

------
gfodor
Twitter should just realize they are the "you're gonna have to throw one away"
of global-scale internet discourse and just shut it down and try again.

------
mudil
Twitter might have its quirks. But the truth is that the content on the
internet been supplanted by these mega-malls, called Google, Facebook and
Twitter and Reddit and VK, and such. And these mega-malls want to be
everything to everyone. And at the same time they are aiming for the lowest
common denominator just to attract more and more people to its platforms. So,
of course the quality of content and discussions will go down. These platforms
control the digital ad market. Real journalists can barely survive. Fake news
proliferate. Internet is becoming increasingly similar to the strip malls you
see everywhere around you, and they have all the same offerings of choices
(McDonald's, Subway, Verizon store, etc). Here's a good read:
[https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-
publishing-...](https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-
digital-age.html)

------
brudgers
On the one hand I am hopeful because it is a decent sentiment about a real
problem and because Twitter is the only possible entity in a position to fix
it. On the other, the format of the message suggests how daunting the task is.

    
    
         Thanks for taking the time to read and consider, 
         and also, come help us:
        +-------+---------------------------------------+
        |       |                                       |
        |       |     Twitter Careers                   |
        |       |     careers.twitter.com               |
        |       |                                       |
        +-------+---------------------------------------+
    

Twitter does not make it easy to know when to STFU.

------
nan0
This is kinda related to the topic, but does anyone have any resources
relating to how we as humans are not phycologically ready for mass
communication on the scale that we have today? I know it's broad , worth a
shot though.

~~~
mattbierner
Not communication directly, but I’ve been reading Future Shock and found many
of the points relevant even 50 years later. One that comes to mind: the past
few generations have seen an enermous erosion of belief in institutions and
systems that once gave people purpose (religion, family, community,
craftsmanship, ...) This, combined with extremely rapid change, has left a lot
of people feeling unmoored and lost in their own time. How they react to this
is unpredictable but it is often strange or sad, and sometimes even dangerous

------
riffic
Twitter should implement federation with an open protocol:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub)

------
DisruptiveDave
I've been strongly doubting that there is such a thing as "the collective
health and society." At best, we're in a growing pains situation as a species.
At worst, we're simply not built to have this type of communication. There is
nothing in nature that makes me think this simple, open-sky way to
"communicate" with hundreds of thousands of faceless people is necessary.

------
deevolution
I think this might call for some fundamental changes to their algorithms.
Maybe automatically penalize hate filled comments/flame wars and reward
conversation that adds "value". Maybe charge bots on a per post basis? Perhaps
reward real users with utility tokens like steem?

------
neonate
Bershidsky's take here:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-02/twitter-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-02/twitter-
s-attempt-at-self-regulation-won-t-work).

------
zaroth
I’m sorry Jack, but just log into your own service and try to read the message
you just posted, and maybe it will dawn on you why Twitter as it currently
exists is antithetical to healthy and civil conversation.

And once you’ve lost trust (which you have on all sides) any steps or
“measures” you implement will inherently be distrusted.

Good luck with your “hate machine” as another poster aptly describes it.
You’re going to have to dig a lot deeper than sentiment analysis to find
anything close to redemption.

------
ProAm
I look forward to seeing how they are going to deal with the US President's
tweets from this point forward.

~~~
brianmurphy
Or for that matter look at the replies to Trump's tweets if you want an
example of vile hatred.

------
aestetix
Isn't this what their "Trust and Safety" Comittee was for?

------
nickgrosvenor
They should create an authenticated badge on Twitter, if you confirm your
identity, you can get one, then users could filter by “authentic badge only”
so you’d experience twitter with only vetted, real people. This would greatly
reduce trolls imho.

~~~
allpratik
This is something which can be done and is easily achievable.

I have seen (and currently seeing) that to create an echo chamber a certain
number of troll armies have to create it one first, trend it and then people
take over from that.

Having a verified tag will really help and go long way. Sure, even the KYC
process will hurt and potentially can be gamed with but having this visual
cues will alert the user about the source and maybe the authenticity of the
content.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I think we've heard something similar from them for years now. When will it
happen?

Twitter is now part of everyone's life in the U.S. given that the president
uses it as a bullhorn. It needs to clean up its act, now.

------
westurner
First Amendment protections apply to suits brought by the government. Civil
suits are required to prove damages ("quantum of damages"). There are
opportunity cost, pre-judgement, and post-judgement interest calculations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost)

There are many open platforms. (I've contributed to those as well). Some are
built on open standards. None of said open platforms have procedures or
resources for handling the onslaught of disrespectful trash that the people
we've raised eventually use these platforms for communicating at other people
who have feelings and understand the Golden Rule.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule)

The initial early adopters (who have other better things to do) are fine:
helpful, caring, critical, respectful; healthy. And then everyone else comes
surging in with hate, disrespect, and vitriol; unhealthy. They don't even
realize that being hateful and disrespectful is making them more depressed.
They think that complaining and talking smack to people is changing the world.
And then they turn off the phone or log out of the computer, and carry on with
their lives.

No-one taught them to be the positive, helpful energy they want to attract
from the world. No-one properly conditioned them to either respectfully
disagree according to the data or sit down and listen. No-one explained to
them that a well-founded argument doesn't fit in 140 or 280 characters, but a
link and a headline do. No-one explained to them that what they write on the
internet lasts forever and will be found by their future interviewers,
investors, jurors, and voters. No-one taught them that being respectful and
helpful in service of other people - of the group's success, of peaceful
coexistence - is the way to get ahead AND be happy. "No-one told me that."

Shareholders of public corporations want to see growth in meaningless numbers,
foreign authoritarian governments see free expression as a threat to their
ever-so-fragile self-perceptions, political groups seek to frame and smear and
malign and discredit (because they are so in need of group acceptance; because
money still isn't making them happy), and there are children with too much
free time reading all of these.

No-one is holding these people accountable: we need transparency and
accountability. We need to focus on more important goals and feel good about
helping; about volunteering our time to help others be happier.

Instead, now that these haters and scam artists have all self-identified, we
must spend our time conditioning their communications until they learn to
respectfully disagree on facts and data or go somewhere else. "That's how you
feel? Great. How does that make your victim feel?" is the confrontation that
some people are seeking from companies that set out to serve free speech and
provide a forum for citizens to share the actual news.

Who's going to pay for that? Can they sue for their costs and losses?
Advertisers do not want a spot next to hateful and disrespectful.

"How dare you speak of censorship in such veiled terms!?" Really? They're
talking about taking down phrases like "kill" and "should die"; not phrases
like "I disagree because:"

So, now, because there are so many hateful economically disadvantaged people
in the world with nothing better to do and no idea how to run a business or
keep a job with benefits, these companies need to staff 24 hour a day censors
to take down the hate and terror and gang recruiting _within one hour_. What a
distorted mirror of our divisively fractured wealth inequality, indeed.

"Ban gangs ASAP, please: they'll just go away"

How much does it cost to pay prison labor to redundantly respond to this
trash? Are those the skills they need to choose a different career with
benefits and savings that meet or exceed inflation when they get out?

What is the procedure for referring threats of violence to justice in your
jurisdiction? Are there wealthy individuals in your community who would love
to contribute resources to this effort? Maybe they have some region-specific
pointers for helping the have-nots out here trolling like it's going to get
them somewhere they want to be in life?

Let me share a little story with you:

A person walks into a bar/restaurant, flicks off the bartender/waiter, orders
5 glasses of free water, starts plastering ads to the walls and other peoples'
tables, starts making threats to groups of people cordially conversing, and
walks out.

------
monkeyfoop
Great, more censorship and them determining what is "fake news"

------
rotrux
Man. This is exactly what happened to the democrats.

------
joncp
"Committing twitter" sounds like a crime. An all-too-common one at that.

~~~
ygaf
I read it in the "committed to an asylum" sense. And that it must be Tim
Berners-Lee talking, until you see the source.

------
j-c-hewitt
Ehhhhhh.

There's like two things that I want from Twitter as someone who buys internet
clicks:

Lower prices. More cost effectiveness. Those two things are two things that
Twitter has never offered.

------
Clanan
The political/philosophical diversity of awardees will illuminate just how
genuine this effort is.

Interestingly, these social media companies which are engaging in censorship
are now being reminded that if they decide to censor by politics, they may be
held liable for everything posted to their platform.

------
0800
First things first, Twitter. Small baby steps before you shoot yourself in the
foot.

Focus first and foremost on getting rid of radicalizing terrorist content.
That has been on your backlog for years now, while you prioritized more
pressing matters, such as cutting off access to developers and apps. You kind
of owe it to society and the parents of your teenage users to make this right.

Then, when it is 2023, go after the grieving trolls. Those who mock suicide
victim families, DOX innocents, post indecent pictures of naked black people
doing lewd things to watermelons. Some people may even help report such things
manually for free.

Then bots. Kill 99% of all bots, keep only those with a 1000+ legit followers,
or make bot owners verify them with a cute droid badge.

Then after one of Trump's tweets starts WWIII, and you are as significant as
Myspace, maybe you can have a look at the health and civility of online
conversation.

I'd start with a "My Safe Space" button, where you can automatically
unsubscribe to all posts about a certain topic/containing a certain trigger
word. If you can't wait that long, there is an easy fix to remove 50% of
uncivil content by going back to a 140 character limit. I feel that was closer
to the healthy and civilized discussion platform you envisioned Twitter to be
when you started it.

