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Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

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Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#91

Post by marklgr »

intended wrote: post #43
broodbucket wrote: post #3

>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.

This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the t…

Exactly. And by disrupting the bazaar, we're not talking small time tactics like some guy creating a handful of accounts, but mass scale abuse with army of bots and scientific methodology to maximize the impact and influence on unknowing readers.

Eg. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/04/nigel-oakes...

That's a far cry from the small stand in the bazzar of ideas.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#92

Post by intended »

timthelion wrote: post #85
kelnos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's definitely a difficult question, and I don't claim to have a good answer. I just know that there are good arguments for both sides, and I don't know where it'd be best to draw the line. Maybe it's possible to just ignore the anonymous vs. non-anonymous question and target the speech itself: if it's hate speech, you kill it. If it's lies and misinformation masquerading as the truth, you kill it. If the post…

I have another hypothesis, which is tangential to the hate speech, but rather relates to the low quality of internet information. I beleive that there is a lot of high quality content on the net, but it is hard to find. We're wading through pages and pages of low effort comments to find something that would be worth our time to read. Perhaps the problem there, is that google sucks. Google claims to organise the world…

The information is there, but only a small fraction of people want to actually read it.

Beyond a point, the scale and complexity of the information goes beyond what is required for a simple conversation.

Most people want the information spoon fed to them. The issue is that they may not even be framing the correct question.

To correct that they will always need to (at some point) engage with complexity.

And as long as someone can meme or use cheap arguments to dodge a difficult/complex point, theres no real advantage to that level of complexity.

So the only people who are digging that deep are people who want to figure something out. For them, google works just fine.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#93

Post by russellbeattie »

I stopped using Twitter after the election. The inability to express complex, nuanced, thorough ideas and responses, combined with its popularity (or at least, mass media influence), directly lead to Trump's election. The character limit, which I had perceived as merely an inconvenience for years, is actually a fundamental flaw which enabled a demagogue like him to succeed, and I refuse to participate in that stupidity any more. If Ev really wants to make amends, he should get Twitter to immediately expand the character limit to take away Trump's excuse for short, inflammatory posts, forcing him to try to actually put together coherent, intelligent sentences that express fully thought out ideas.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#94

Post by ManlyBread »

dorgo wrote: post #65
intended wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the t…

I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation management. Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Reduce/forbid redundant arguments. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Add ratings to arguments (a la hackernews).

It won't work for the same reason it doesn't work for reddit - it still needs to be maintained by a human. Which means that bias and agendas will enter at some point of the process and there's absolutely nothing a mere user can do about it.

>Add reputation management

Doesn't work at all for reddit, the "karma" means nothing, the karma requirements for some subreddits only make it harder for new users to join or to have any kind of a meaningful discussion. On top of that posting in some subreddits automatically gets you banned from many others, regardless of the opinions actually expressed, which means you can't even try to have a meaningful discussion with people holding an opposing view. Not like it matters though, any solid argument is labeled as "concern trolling" anyway and thus deemed banworthy.

>Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter.

Again, a human will have to do that, which in case of reddit means biased moderator decisions, selective enforcement of ToS and admins editing your comments.

>Add ratings to arguments

Easily gamed, as evidenced by any upvote system (reddit especially, their "anti-brigade" measures are laughable and pretty much punish everyone aside from the people who are actually "brigading").

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#95

Post by ManlyBread »

kelnos wrote: post #77
stale2002 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh this again. Free speech is an idea, not an amendment. If you censor opposing political views, you are antithetical to the concept and idea of free speech and you should be condemned.

What about censoring hate speech? Racist speech? Sexist speech? Xenophobic speech? Outright lies? False information? Trump has tweeted all of the above from time to time. What value does that sort of speech have? You might find the first three to be subjective, and I wouldn't entirely disagree with that, so how about the lies and false information? Should a person in a position of power be permitted to lie to people…

Who gets to decide whether someone's option falls under these categories? Anyone who is put in charge of classifying such things will have a lot of power that can easily be mismanaged.

Furthermore, for what reason would you trust such a person?

If you already distrust Trump will you trust him more if some nameless moderator will decide which posts are okay and which aren't?

Besides, he's the POTUS and he has a lot of money, if twitter will start messing with his posts he can easily set up a service on his own.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#96

Post by zyx321 »

qb45 wrote: post #60
daenz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evan's quote wasn't about Twitter's architecture though, it was about "speaking freely and exchanging information and ideas," which is the thing he's sorry about facilitating, because it lead to Trump. The parent post seems spot on, to me.

Yes, your parent misrepresented the quote which indeed was about "free exchange of ideas facilitating Trump", but then the co-founder misrepresented what twitter actually is and this is what parent wanted to point out, I think. As a matter of fact, you can't express any serious idea in 140 characters. Twitter really is a tool for mobilizing and organizing mobs of people who are already somewhat familiar with and supp…

>fighting a political battle on grounds where there is no space for actual exchange of ideas but only for appeals to emotions and prejudices, personal attacks and name calling.

The early US election I remember was Bush v Kerry 2004. If you used those exact same words to describe the campaign back then, I wouldn't have disputed it.

Twitter did not even exist until 2006.

Did the internet enable Donald Trump? Absolutely. It enabled him to go face to face with the likes of Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, and beat them at their own dirty game.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#97

Post by croon »

broodbucket wrote: post #36
kelnos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, your problem is that you have a country full of gullible morons who will believe anything if it's framed in a way that jives with their worldview and sense of self-preservation, even if it's mildly misleading to flat-out wrong at best. It's not unreasonable to combat that with moderation, which I don't consider to be "censorship" if done correctly.

"done correctly" = "in accordance with my ideas" If bad ideas are being communicated, then communicate better ones. I understand it's hard, that people can be idiotic and short-sighted, that 140 characters is very limiting, but thinking " only lost because of gullible morons" isn't how (in Trump's case) the Dems will end up winning in 2020. There's a fantastic article about this logic here: https://medium.com/@SeanBl…

> If bad ideas are being communicated, then communicate better ones.

This is assuming that valid arguments always wins. Anyone who's working with technical depth knows that when you start implementing something, your simple idea doesn't jive as well with the thousands of unforeseen caveats, edge cases, and real world conditions.

The truth is always more complicated than a simple lie.

It's similar to how eating junk is much easier than eating healthier, varied food, which is also more expensive.

Exchange "expensive", and "complicated" with "requires more thought" and you'll have the answer. Idiocy always wins unless people make an effort. It's also why politicians talk like they do, and are extremely noncommittal. Speaking frankly about issues pisses off a lot of (pardon the French) idiots, who can't be rational about hard realities.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#98

Post by baq »

zyx321 wrote: post #96
qb45 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, your parent misrepresented the quote which indeed was about "free exchange of ideas facilitating Trump", but then the co-founder misrepresented what twitter actually is and this is what parent wanted to point out, I think. As a matter of fact, you can't express any serious idea in 140 characters. Twitter really is a tool for mobilizing and organizing mobs of people who are already somewhat familiar with and supp…

>fighting a political battle on grounds where there is no space for actual exchange of ideas but only for appeals to emotions and prejudices, personal attacks and name calling. The early US election I remember was Bush v Kerry 2004. If you used those exact same words to describe the campaign back then, I wouldn't have disputed it. Twitter did not even exist until 2006. Did the internet enable Donald Trump? Absolutely…

You're talking as if it was a good thing, whereas it's anything but.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#99

Post by LeeHwang »

broodbucket wrote: post #3

>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.

Yes it's a pretty disturbing message that actually goes against the ACLU's opinion on free speech. Also it worries me I'm seeing more authoritarian traits in silicon valley elites.

Those who make peaceful protests impossible make violence inevitable.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#100

Post by [deleted] »

Hoasi wrote: post #72

Twitter is not a discussion forum. It is great as a polished RSS feeds reader & writer combined though. You can share quick messages and respond to people with Twitter, sure, but that is more like texting. Useful as it may be, it's still not the best way to discuss with someone, let alone with several people together. But brevity and repetition make Twitter an ideal medium for propaganda. No wonder some people use it…

[deleted]
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