http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/11/...
Most definitely. I think the management logic went something like the following:
- Why aren't twitter's ad impressions worth a fraction of Facebook's?
- Because FB uses an algorithmic feed which allows more precise targeting based on engagement, which has a lot more data points than Retweets or replies.
- OK let's build that.
- Done
- Wait, why is there unsavory content showing up as a trending topic on Twitter?
- Because people engage with it, and due to the shape of Twitter's graph, there's a much greater chance of users encountering content that has not been as thoroughly vetted by the social filter (compared to Facebook).
- We must stop this.
- How, we already offer verified accounts and disallow overt harassment.
- Well, let's just remove unsavory stuff from the trending list.
- Done
- Wait, that didn't really stop it, what else can we do?
- Censorship
- Love it, let's do it. We can help the cause of good by preventing users from seeing content that we deem unsavory.
All Politicians lie. Twitter is not in the business of being a fact checker.
> Asked whether Twitter would ever consider banning key government officials or even the president himself, a company spokesperson responded via email: “The Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies.” Pressed on whether that meant that, hypothetically, Trump himself could be suspended were he to violate those policies, a spokesperson confirmed: “The Twitter Rules apply to all accounts, including verified accounts.”
Twitter going out of their way to say that they might ban the US President isn't exactly a sign of the professionalism and maturity people expect from multinational executives.
Are you joking? The press would say "'...', Donald Trump said on Monday".
Anyone who can't infer the "Donald Trump said" part from the Twitter UI shouldn't be unsupervised near a computer or a newspaper.
It also encourages him to publicize views that can withstand press scrutiny. The outrageous stuff we see on Twitter might have been self censored if he had to tell it to a skeptical press that will place them in context.
Prior presidents have been very circumspect in what they say, which has reduced the pressure on this point. Extreme situations pressure us to discard gray areas. In order to maintain a healthy civic discourse, we need everyone to cooperate more and be more generous to the other side, but this can't be done unilaterally or you just get steamrolled.