INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
[Heavy sigh]
Twitter is doing that thing again
That thing where it stands by an incoherent policy choice that is only consistent with its long historical record of inconsistency.
Late
Tuesday, Twitter Jack Dorsey took to the platform to defend his company choice to keep manic conspiracy theorist and hatemonger Alex Jones
and his Infowars empire alive and tweeting.
Last week, that choice wouldn''t have turned heads, but after a kind of sudden and inexplicable
sea change from all of the other major social platforms over the weekend, Twitter stands alone
To be fair, those social platforms didn''t really assert their own decisions to oust Jones — Apple led the pack, kicking him out of its
Podcasts app, and the rest — Facebook, Spotify and YouTube, most notably — meekly followed suit.
Prior to its new statements, Twitter
justified its decision to not ban Jones first by telling journalists like us that Jones didn''t actually violate Twitter terms of
servicebecause most of his abuse and hateful conduct, two violations that might get him banished, live one click away, outside the
platform.
The same could be said for most of the hateful drivel that came from the infamous account of the now-banned MiloYiannopoulos
Yiannopoulos was eventually booted from Twitter for violating the platform periodically enforced prohibition against''the targeted abuse or
harassment of others.& Jones is known for commanding a similarly hateful online loser army, though in his case they mostly spend their time
harassing the parents of Sandy Hook victims rather than black actresses
Twitter point is that this kind of harassment needs to actually take place on its platformto get a user kicked off, which in a world in
which Twitter policy was uniformly enforced (i.e
a world in which Twitter dedicated sufficient resources to the problem) that would at least be a consistent policy.
Instead of articulating
that policy in a clear, decisive way, Twitter said some unnecessarily defensive things that kind of miss the point via an @jack tweetstorm
and a tepid blog posttouting the company vague new commitment to &healthy public conversation.
If you didn''t read either, you&re not
Here an excerpt from the blog post:
Our policies and enforcement options evolve continuously to address emerging behaviors online and we
sometimes come across instances where someone is reported for an incident that took place prior to that behavior being prohibited
In those instances, we will generally require the individual to delete the Tweet that violates the new rules but we won''t generally take
other enforcement action against them (e.g
This is reflective of the fact that the Twitter Rules are a living document
We continue to expand and update both them and our enforcement options to respond to the changing contours of online conversation
This is how we make Twitter better for everyone.
Great, crystal clear
Right If it isn''t here a taste of Dorsey new tweetstorm:
We didn''t suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday
We know that hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn''t violated our rules
And we&ll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment by ensuring tweets aren''t artificially amplified.
mdash; jack (@jack)
August 8, 2018
Truth is we&ve been terrible at explaining our decisions in the past
We&re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term,
and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.
mdash; jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Here the gist:
Alex Jones and Infowars didn''t break any of
Twitter is very bad at explaining its choices and trying to get better, maybe
Twitter won''t follow other platforms for policy enforcement decisions like this because it thinks that sets a bad precedent
Twitter doesn''t want to become a platform &constructed by [its creators&] personal views& (this delusion of neutrality bit is where he
really started losing us).
Dorsey finishes with a fairly infuriating assertion that journalists should shoulder all of the work of
addressing hatespeech and generally horrific content that leads to real-life harassment, it not really Twitter problem
Believe us, we&re working on it!!
Accounts like Jones& can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it critical
journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions
This is what serves the public conversation best.
To the bit about journalists, all we can say is: Twitter, just own your shit.
Even for
those of us concerned about the precedents set by some of tech occasional lopsided gestures toward limiting the myriad horrors on the
extremely totally neutral platforms that definitely in no way make tech companies publishers, Dorsey comments suck
Sure, the whole thing about staying consistent sounds okay at first, but Twitter is the platform most infamous for its totally uneven
enforcement around harassment and hate speech and the one that leaves its users most vulnerable
If the company is truly making an effort to be less terrible at explaining its decisions — and we&re skeptical about that too — this is
prettyinauspicious start.
Added to this, former Twitter VP of comms Emily Horne responded to Dorsey with some notable points, including a
claim that Twitter has already begun taking into account user behavior offline
That makes the lack of action against Jones all the more baffling.
.@jack, please don''t blame the current state of play on communications
These decisions aren''t easy, but they aren''t comms calls and it unhelpful to denigrate your colleagues whose credibility will help explain
them 1/4 https://t.co/IKo5UiWiWH
mdash; Emily Horne (@emilyjhorne) August 8, 2018
