Jack Dorsey: Twitter has no influence over elections(axios.com)
axios.com
Jack Dorsey: Twitter has no influence over elections
https://www.axios.com/jack-dorsey-twitter-has-no-influence-over-elections-351bd1b6-3326-451b-9b19-4d2cf5c3deec.html
7 comments
If they have no influence, why bother censoring some information?
Which is it?
Which is it?
This is a great point.
Not to mention it is THE platform where ALL politicians, journalists and public reside. In that respect it has de facto become the public square for discussing politics.
Not to mention it is THE platform where ALL politicians, journalists and public reside. In that respect it has de facto become the public square for discussing politics.
All the public does not reside on Twitter. Now I will grant you that 90% of my techie coworkers are heavy Twitter users, almost no one else I know in real life is on Twitter. I'm seeing stats online like "22% of US adults" and "38% of adults 18-29"
Additionally, why would advertisers buy ads on an uninfluential platform?
They don't want to be known as the platform where hackers dump their leaks without repercussions. Not everything has to be about the US presidential election...
There is whether those leaks are factual, or not too.
Where it comes from isn't the same thing as what it is.
Where it comes from isn't the same thing as what it is.
If I factually published some random website's password database and posted the link on Twitter, I'd expect them to take it down.
On the other hand, Twitter changed their rules now, so other people will be able to link to the data? I wouldn't be surprised if they have to add another epicycle soon when they don't suppress something the majority agrees they should.
On the other hand, Twitter changed their rules now, so other people will be able to link to the data? I wouldn't be surprised if they have to add another epicycle soon when they don't suppress something the majority agrees they should.
Come on guys! Do you think he’d say - “yes, we can influence an election”? It’s like digging your own grave :-)
Rough place to be. Point well established.
He could but it'd require a backbone and willingness to defend and take a stand for the Constitution - and reminding people that Facebook is private property, and people are still free on the United States to say whatever the fuck they want on the internet - like in their own house, and how in your own house you decide what guests you want in or who you'd consider to be trespassing; I certainly wouldn't tolerate someone being racist in my house, especially not if there were younger, developing, easily influenced minds present as well.
Well, that view is correct, and I agree with it having said, "there is no free speech on the Internet", it being a peer system where people carry your speech for their reasons whatever they are, here and elsewhere many times.
Earlier on, competition was robust.
Today however...
We are at a point where the big players overlap with the public interest.
There needs to be a protected public square, and it needs to be relevant.
The private houses garnered the public trust and are leveraging it for money. I am not speaking to that other than the public appears to find that equitable.
Now, these moves to censor and manage the political dialog have broken that trust, and with that goes the loss of perception of equity, or value. That could be a very costly and litigious change of opinion.
And here we are today, beginning to see that change play out.
Frankly, being a product vs a platform is a part of that discussion.
Partisan politics is another concern. People are talking about how say, FB aligns with the right, Twitter with the left, and so on.
I submit that won't work and either we make it work and honor the Constitution and the idea of free speech, or we lose that idea and or see growing conflict that adds value to no one.
Earlier on, competition was robust.
Today however...
We are at a point where the big players overlap with the public interest.
There needs to be a protected public square, and it needs to be relevant.
The private houses garnered the public trust and are leveraging it for money. I am not speaking to that other than the public appears to find that equitable.
Now, these moves to censor and manage the political dialog have broken that trust, and with that goes the loss of perception of equity, or value. That could be a very costly and litigious change of opinion.
And here we are today, beginning to see that change play out.
Frankly, being a product vs a platform is a part of that discussion.
Partisan politics is another concern. People are talking about how say, FB aligns with the right, Twitter with the left, and so on.
I submit that won't work and either we make it work and honor the Constitution and the idea of free speech, or we lose that idea and or see growing conflict that adds value to no one.
So he think twitter didn't have any influence on the people?
It's such a bad thing to say, and perplexing given the reason they exist.
Any platform that used for information and ideas sharing should have some influence on people knowledge and opinions, and so also the election. Influence is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's such a bad thing to say, and perplexing given the reason they exist.
Any platform that used for information and ideas sharing should have some influence on people knowledge and opinions, and so also the election. Influence is not necessarily a bad thing.
He is saying that to avoid 230. 2nd term will see many of them getting declared as publisher. It will be open season lawsuits.
It depends on the person. You can say the same for a politician or president.
I guess advertising dollars going to Twitter are ill-spent then, Jack?
Users decide what platforms they use and therefore it is the user's deciding what platforms to give attention and revenue to that are influencing the elections. If users aren't happy with how a platform governs itself then they should change to a platform that will impact (through algorithmic decisions, moderation actions or lack thereof, etc) how they feel is acceptable.
It's not as simple as that. I'd like to delete my Facebook account but it would be impossible to keep up with all my friends and family who don't use other platforms. Equally, Twitter is the platform for political and academic statements. You can cry "free market" but it's hard to argue there is no monopoly.
Then you create rules for interoperability for direct communications, you don't force sovereign private individuals or companies (groups of individuals) for how to set their algorithms - but you can take down the walls from between direct messaging apps/functionality.
Likewise if you did a UBI-like mechanism where everyone was allocated $100/year for digital services like Twitter/Facebook that would flood the market with revenue, non-manipulative ad based revenue too, and many more startups could survive and do R&D, etc. to help break up the monopoly which primarily exists through economies of scale - if people have $100/year though (or whatever amount is figured out to be minimum viable) then there's excess/buffer funds to cover higher bandwidth and computing costs of smaller competitors who can't compete on scale metrics.
There are likely additional options than these above, options other than taking away the sovereignty of official individuals/companies - which is a very dangerous path towards implementing mechanisms useful for tyranny - sovereignty being the diversification and de-risking counter mechanism to tyranny, allowing individuals to "vote" by which service(s) they decide to use.
The $100/year for digital services is mimicking the Democracy Dollars $100/year voucher policy idea of Andrew Yang, allowing all eligible voters to give $100/year to their candidate of choice, which will washout for-profit industrial complex lobbyist money 8:1 with money from citizens who will have far more diverse needs than lobbyists.
E.g. imagine how much innovation would occur on federated platforms like Mastodon if people had $100/year they could only allocate to such a service, and they didn't want to find Twitter or Facebook.
Otherwise to parrot your comment, in conclusion, it's even further "not as simple as that" - as in you need to design the system to counter tyranny as well, there needs to be balance maintained where freedom is what is outweighing control; and freedom will cost more than control - it's quality over quantity (economies of scale), necessary cost is something we shouldn't be hypersensitive to or hypervigilant for, however most of us are due to the now artificial scarcity mindset most of us have, where mechanisms like $1000/month UBI will allow us as an organism to destress, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and focus on/care about the more holistic, less focused on self and survival of only self.
Likewise if you did a UBI-like mechanism where everyone was allocated $100/year for digital services like Twitter/Facebook that would flood the market with revenue, non-manipulative ad based revenue too, and many more startups could survive and do R&D, etc. to help break up the monopoly which primarily exists through economies of scale - if people have $100/year though (or whatever amount is figured out to be minimum viable) then there's excess/buffer funds to cover higher bandwidth and computing costs of smaller competitors who can't compete on scale metrics.
There are likely additional options than these above, options other than taking away the sovereignty of official individuals/companies - which is a very dangerous path towards implementing mechanisms useful for tyranny - sovereignty being the diversification and de-risking counter mechanism to tyranny, allowing individuals to "vote" by which service(s) they decide to use.
The $100/year for digital services is mimicking the Democracy Dollars $100/year voucher policy idea of Andrew Yang, allowing all eligible voters to give $100/year to their candidate of choice, which will washout for-profit industrial complex lobbyist money 8:1 with money from citizens who will have far more diverse needs than lobbyists.
E.g. imagine how much innovation would occur on federated platforms like Mastodon if people had $100/year they could only allocate to such a service, and they didn't want to find Twitter or Facebook.
Otherwise to parrot your comment, in conclusion, it's even further "not as simple as that" - as in you need to design the system to counter tyranny as well, there needs to be balance maintained where freedom is what is outweighing control; and freedom will cost more than control - it's quality over quantity (economies of scale), necessary cost is something we shouldn't be hypersensitive to or hypervigilant for, however most of us are due to the now artificial scarcity mindset most of us have, where mechanisms like $1000/month UBI will allow us as an organism to destress, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and focus on/care about the more holistic, less focused on self and survival of only self.
Yep, I totally agree there are ways to make social media competitive, and you’ve given some good ideas. I hadn’t thought about a UBI style fund for social media. Not sure it would work in practise with the global nature of social networks, but cool idea
Platforms have the problem of scale. If I don't like how facebook or twitter are contributing to the information ecosystem I could go hang out on Gab or some other niche platform - but the tradeoff is that the people I want to interact with aren't there. These systems are inertial - while it is a great idea that future platforms should implement design choices that incentivize a well informed public and discourage conspiracy-mongering and misinformation that doesn't fix the issues with the current information ecosystem for years if not decades to come. Even if users were well informed about content moderation policies (they aren't), and users were rational actors (they're not), there are other goods involved that prevent that sort of ordered transition scenario. Frankly large scale platforms need to make significant changes to how they handle their role in information-space.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13594558/mark-zuckerberg...
2017: "Mark Zuckerberg: I regret ridiculing fears over Facebook's effect on election"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/27/mark-zuck...