Jack Dorsey says in an interview he's rethinking the core of how Twitter works | Hacker News Reader

Jack Dorsey says in an interview he's rethinking the core of how Twitter works

washingtonpost.com

29 pointsokket79 comments

Twitter is a master class in how not to run a social media platform. They alienate their power users by shutting down APIs which break 3rd party apps. Their censorship seems to have no rhyme or reason to it. They simply do not listen to their users. No one wants "In case you missed it", or to know what someone just liked, we just want to read tweets in order they came in.

> No one wants "In case you missed it"

I do. I imagine many people who aren't constantly glued to social media do.

I don't want a chronological ordering. I definitely don't want to feel like I need to open twitter every 10 seconds. I just want to follow a lot of interesting people and see "some" tweets when I look at Twitter. Not the latest ones, but the most important or interesting ones.

They must know that people like myself are fairly common, maybe the most common.

(I agree they should give users a choice, etc, but I think its a huge mistake to say "no one wants" it)

Chronological ordering of tweets and seeing only the interesting ones are not mutually exclusive.

It's more coherent to see tweets in chronological order even if you're only shown what the algorithm believes to be important.

The latest last straw was when they locked my account and demanded I photograph my drivers license to verify my age because I accidentally clicked the calendar drop down on my business account. Now my business is associated to my real birthday. Why do I want that?

> No one wants "In case you missed it", or to know what someone just liked

Power users don't want that; plenty of others do. Not everyone reads their entire timeline - for a lot of users, twitter is like TV, instead of Tivo - you just flip it on and watch whatever happens to be on.

But you can't turn it off. That's the issue.

Also, it shows things I didn’t miss. They must have tracking on this. Inexcusably lame.

One thing that infuriates me is when I don't get shown a Tweet from an account I follow, only to be notified that someone else 'liked' the tweet. Just show me the Tweet! I follow the account because I want to be kept up to date with it. Not be kept up to date with it when someone else I follow likes it!

I'm very lucky I can just leave Twitter for days/weeks on end. I know for some it's become a necessity.

I'm certain I'm somehow in a b-test where all my twitter push notifications are powered by a random number generator.

I have turned off notifications for most apps. It was just getting unbearable.

>> "No one wants "In case you missed it", or to know what someone just liked, we just want to read tweets in order they came in."

Well, I enjoy "in case you missed it". I don't have enough time to check Instagram and Twitter every 5 minutes. Even with Twitter, checking it only once a day I would miss very interesting content if the Twitter app didn't surface highlights for me. Twitter is a firehose; I cannot possibly read every tweet from every person I follow.

All that said, I don't see why these apps can't just keep algorithimic sorting as the default and let power users check a hard-to-find setting that turns it back into chronological.

I'm just curious how a social media platform should be run. In my opinion none of them do a good job or deliver a likeable experience. If you look at the big ones they all have negative points: FB, Twitter, G+, and so on. Maybe Reddit is the one exception since I can still find what I want and AFAIK they still offer unrestricted API access.

The decentralization after reaching a certain scale is I believe the key to Reddit's success

How is Reddit centralized? The global admins are still there.

By this criteria, Facebook Groups are decentralized.

Step 1 would to try and actually monetize some share of your users without ads.

The worst is their new "XYZ and 7 other people you follow also follow ABC" and then they show you one of ABC's tweets.

That's especially bad. If XYZ and 7 other people I follow also follow ABC, I surely know of ABC's existence, and I don't follow him because I don't want to. The last thing I want is seeing his tweets in my timeline!!

I quit Twitter a while back when it was showing me anti-Muslim tweets. Mostly retweets and likes by some of right leaning tech leaders that I respected and followed. Many of these influential accounts were spreading obviously false tweets. Even when it was true, they would retweet if suspect was a Muslim. But if suspect turned out to be not Muslim, then these accounts would stay quite.

I support free speech but I don't want to see hateful speech when I eating my breakfast. Especially when I am the target of hate & harassment.

Sorry cannot hide behind freedom of speech when your real motive is money. Now people are leaving your platform, so you all of sudden care about controlling hate and harassment on your platform.

There are real life victims because of hate and harassment that these companies protected for so long.

The people you followed shared that content. Not sure it's twitters fault here. Why follow or continue to follow tech leaders who post content you find offensive?

At what point are you responsible?

It is because on twitter, your favorite tech person can mostly tweet boring tech stuff, but will be unable to resist, like the rest of us on twitter, retweeting the inflammatory extremist tweets when they show up in their own feed.

I am more and more convinced that one of the root issues with the current state of Twitter is the retweet button. So easy to spread misinformation when you can act on impulse.

Agreed, add a barrier. I have been tempted to retweet false tweets too cause they enrage you and you want to do something. But I had a rule, never retweet a tweet within an hour of reading it.

I don't think these people really go out of their way, but when they see something that confirms their preexisting biases, they are tempted to retweet immediately.

Indeed. It's sometimes hard to acknowledge when the people you admire and look up to turn out to be horrible people.

> I quit Twitter a while back when it was showing me anti-Muslim tweets

Without wanting to be provocative, I have the same feeling about the BBC website but for the opposite reason. Why the need to push pro-Muslim/PC stories all the time? I have to sift through the agenda-driven pieces to get to the actual news, and anything that does not support the globalist/leftist agenda is given cursory treatment and buried hard. I want things to go back to normal! Just show me proper news! Not another story about Lena Dunham's endometriosis..

That is funny. The reason I don't follow tech people on Twitter is that they spend all day posting about left-leaning US politics, feminism, LGBTQ-whatever, etc. which are things I couldn't care less about.

That's one of the bad things of social media: you want to read about tech or movies or sports or whatever so you follow someone in the field but you also have to read his political opinions, see pictures of his kids, see the latte he just ordered, etc. Insufferable.

Exactly one of the few reasons I still enjoy coming to hacker news. I hope we can keep our little community here.

That's been increasingly less likely though, as some of our more prominent posters freely post their politics.

I've taken to flagging politically motivated topics with some amount of success.

I am more of center and care about right-leaning issues. At least, I want to be informed. So I follow not only tech leaders but also other right-leaning leaders too.

And when I say tech leaders, they may not be celebrities like Mark or Jack but they are still leaders in their smaller communities. I am talking about developers who built frameworks, people from here, and other communities like Indie Hackers etc.

I won't out anyone but one example is some these leaders were complaining about lack of coverage on CNN of Hamas firing rockets into Israel. Of course, CNN covered it and many people refuted them by posting links/screenshots. But these same leaders have never complained about lack of coverage on Fox/CNN when Muslims or other minorities are victims.

everyone has a favourite injustice in online politics. It's somewhat understandable as there are so many injustices happening around the world that it's impossible to pay attention to all of them. So we pay attention to the ones the media covers - if the coverage is perceived as biased in one direction or the other, the other side will charge in with whatabout-isms. The Israel-Palestine conflict is a classic example of this.

Heh, what you said I find it absolutely true. Now instead of being influenced by their political opinions I find their tech opinions dodgy. They work like anti-influencers on me.

> Mostly retweets and likes by some of right leaning tech leaders that I respected and followed. Many of these influential accounts

Influential right-wing tech leaders? Do such people still exist?

The right-leaning people I know around silicone valley have been driven into hiding. I don’t know a single one who would show their hand on twitter. People are fired for tweets these days.

They are there. Look in the smaller communities.

Unless you are looking for extremist/racists, most of these rightwing tech leaders have very reasonable views.

libertarianism and classical liberalism are still alive and well in tech. Just depending on how loud the far left is, they may go into hiding in specific circles.

Jack's continued unwillingness to state in concrete terms what Twitter intends to change sure looks a lot like he's trying to deflect scrutiny around censorship while still engaging in it.

I try to be as generous as I can when I hear things like this but I'm inclined to agree with your sentiment here. Perhaps I've become cynical but it just doesn't sit right with me.

I've been having the same feelings towards every social media platform as of late and it's starting to make me feel old and jaded.

Wait, isn’t most of the criticism at the _lack_ of censorship? I personally hate that half the platform is nutty conspiracy bots and hate speech.

Both are valid criticisms of Twitter. However, Jack could simply state what they intend to do about these problems. Instead he obfuscates, stonewalls, says things that sound vaguely like plans of action, but increasingly look like a tactic to fend off critics while they continue to avoid accountability.

I think it's because he doesn't know. They're just holding onto the tiger as best as they can.

Twitter's getting it with both guns from both sides because Twitter is attempting to operate in American culture, which is currently in the middle of a civil war.

There's a group of people whose value system places "I want everyone to be able to say everything they want, with no repercussions" to be their most important value. From that point of view, Jack is a horrible person, and what he's doing will destroy Twitter.

From the point of view of someone who doesn't want to wade into that cesspit, doing nothing will destroy Twitter. The two viewpoints are largely exclusive.

But for the second category "features that would promote alternative viewpoints in Twitter’s timeline" also isn't a clear good: it could easily mean "show my tweets to more people that don't want to see them and will react badly to it, and show me more tweets from people I want to avoid". Limiting who you interact with is also a feature, not just a bad echo chamber.

Quite. "Inserting tweets into my timeline to turn it into less of an echo chamber" seems like it cannot do anything other than insert tweets from the far right about how people with darker skin colours should be second class citizens (or worse).

There is an entirely reasonable reading that Twitter is not competent enough to do this without making the platform more toxic, not less. I'm personally of the opinion that asking Twitter to do more moderation is not a great idea, because it's proven beyond all doubt that Twitter is no good at it and has no mechanism for improvement where it would ever get better. All they're going to do with more moderation is make more mistakes.

I don’t know if it’s that slippery a slope. Couldn’t you start with conspiracies about child victims of shootings and see how it goes.

What do we do when the 1 out of 100th conspiracy theory turns out to be true?

Just months ago there were massive conspiracy theorizing about the first lady's absence over a period of days. Should that discussion have just been shut down?

It's not a clear judgment call, even for one person, for what to allow and what not to allow. That's the problem.

I agree with your description of what the real, practical problem is, but I'd like to hear your opinion about solutions. Personally, I do think a viable answer could involve rule-makers/enforcers making subjective judgements on sometimes unclear issues (even if that group must be small to feasibly operate). The practice is necessarily common because that's the nature of many of our social systems. We introduce as many abuse-curbing objective elements as possible, but in the end there will always be some amount of human judgement. If the balance tips one way, the system loses effectiveness, and if it tips the other way (the "slippery slope"), it becomes a new problem. Personally, in the example given, I don't think it would be impossible to find a balance that allows the mean-spirited speculation about why the first lady wasn't around, but disallows the borderline calls to violence and direct calls to hatred of people whose children have been murdered. Again, I agree that the problem is "how", but I absolutely am not pessimistic about it. I think we can use content moderation, despite its subjectivity, to find a balance - certainly not a perfect balance, but a better one than exists today.

Nothing is forcing people to wade into that cesspit though.

Currently what's actually going on is "Jack, ban the people I don't like or I will leave."

That's a really shitty ultimatum.

It's very unfortunate that people of a certain mindset have taken to describing any users they disagree with politically as "bots". The term bot has a clear meaning.

What you're doing here is fantastically dangerous - you are dehumanising people with different politics to yourself. This is exactly how the very worst episodes in history started. Convince yourself that people you don't like are somehow not quite as human as yourself, that they're lower people, that they are best suppressed and shoved under the carpet.

Half of Twitter isn't "nutty conspiracy bots", that's clearly itself a ludicrous conspiracy theory. Bots aren't capable of holding even Twitter-level conversations. They're people who believe things you don't.

He seems like a man totally paralyzed, unable to actually commit to anything.

Is he still running Square too? Maybe he needs to go all in on one and quit doing this back and forth dance.

Well that or he really doesn't have a mental framework, and intestinal fortitude, to make hard decisions.

I wonder if he can just say "Look guys, I am not looking to block neo-nazis, far-left nutcases or whatever unless they break some law where we operate and law enforcement want us to ban the account" He can sit back and chill. Will the constantly whining no-gooders will leave twitter in hordes? abuse and physically threaten Jack? or just keep whining as if they heard nothing what just being told?

Think about it this way. You're a bagel shop. You don't have the best bagels out there, but your bagels are okay.

One day, Tom Hanks starts coming to your bagel shop. Every morning, he comes in, buys a bagel, and eats it at the counter. Suddenly, people are flocking to your bagel shop to see Tom Hanks.

But Tom Hanks never cleans up after himself. He never tips.

Now you've got plenty of people coming in. They're all here to see Tom Hanks. And they never clean up after themselves. And they never tip.

Do you say something? Do you kick people out who leave bagel crumbs all over the floor? If you do, Tom Hanks might stop showing up. If you ban people who make messes, but you don't ban Tom Hanks, it's going to be obvious that you care more about money than principles or being fair.

Twitter is being propped up right now in a huge way by Tom Hanks, and they need to tread carefully around the situation less they risk Tom Hanks visiting another bagel shop and potentially taking everyone else with him.

I introduce new bagels with a higher price tag. I phase out less expensive bagels. I continue this practice until the crowd thins itself.

Without censorship, Twitter, like any online forum, quickly becomes unusable. Bots, commercial spam, non-commercial spam, users whose sole goal is to drive other users off the platform, extremist groups, et al, will happily take advantage of an unmoderated space. You don't get a thousand flowers blooming, you instead get a thousand Neanderthals with typewriters.

You're pretty much left with trying to determine the degree to which, and the content which you're willing to censor.

I am conflicted with this because I fall on both sides of this particular fence.

On the one hand, I despise when platforms are over-run by people spouting ridiculous things and driving everything into heated discussions.

On the other hand, I place an extremely high value on individual freedom and feel that because platforms like Twitter are SO large and have SO much control over the public narrative that we can't allow the platform to start picking and choosing lest we end up with their version of the "truth" being the only available version.

I wish I were smart enough to know the answer to problems like this, but my current rationale is that these platforms should only be banning genuine bots and people spouting hate speech with genuine evil intent IE - "Hang XXX person because of YYY racist/sexist/garbage tier human being reason"

The main issue is that it isn't possible to codify what is genuine evil intent as of yet (and perhaps, ever).

So until then, everyone has to choose between erring on too much or erring on too little.

> The main issue is that it isn't possible to codify what is genuine evil intent as of yet (and perhaps, ever).

It won't ever be possible. This is why, when faced with these questions, platforms set it as "What is considered acceptable by most people in my society" plus/minus some amount of leeway (Which is where the platforms vary). Both the amount of leeway, and the kind of leeway is, naturally, subjective.

Your newspaper's opinions column gives negative leeway. Running your own samizdat publication gives you a lot of positive leeway. Broadcasting through Twitter gives you something in between.

I think it's the retweets that are to blame for this. When you can act on your impulse with the simple click of a button, which in effect spreads misinformation or a negative attitude, then you have problem.

Twitter became successful because of the ease with which you can act out your impulses. At this point, to remain successful, I think they've got to reimagine the site to tone this down.

I've got no clue why you are being down voted. The problem is never censorship, it's lack of transparency while censoring. But censorship is necessary, for the same reason we take out the trash periodically: our house gets flooded with it if we don't.

Yes, people keep acting like this is new and the internet was a complete free-for-all before, but it wasn’t, not even close. In the early days, anything commercial was out of bounds. More recently, most mainstream platforms disallow things like images of people’s genitals or unauthorized reproductions of copyrighted works. This is a minor adjustment to the details, not some big change.

> Dorsey’s openness to broad changes shows how Silicon Valley leaders are increasingly reexamining the most fundamental aspects of the technologies that have made these companies so powerful and profitable. At Facebook, for example, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has commissioned a full review of his company’s products to emphasize safety and trust, from mobile payments to event listings.

Why yes, business leaders are absolutely open to making changes to ensure their products stay powerful and profitable. Why does this paragraph try to make them seem like the paragons of open-mindedness and virtue?

I heard an interesting angle on a podcast recently: If these social media platforms continue to narrow the scope of allowable viewpoints, then it could be considered editorial discretion and the companies may be on the hook for defamation lawsuits.

A court may also hear a case for damages against the censored parties. Interesting times.

Also, we should probably stop calling these networks "platforms" if they continue to shape allowable speech.

What about just showing everyone you follow's tweets in the reverse order they were tweeted?

It's funny that there have been a number of tweets from Twitter Product Managers over the past couple of days saying "We want to hear from you why you used these third party clients" and "What can we do better?" and the like, and almost every single response is the above.

They're not actually listening of course. Twitter, as a company, just doesn't seem to understand large segments of their users, and it's really strange.

"...reduce “echo chambers"" a.k.a get rid of non-left leaning opinions.

Haven't you heard? It's ok to be racist as long as you say 'just kidding!' afterwards, but don't forget, this doesn't apply to racism targeted at anyone other than white people.

Are you following racist peoples' twitter accounts? Why are you seeing it? Or are you even seeing it?

I'm referring to this Sarah Jeong character and similar overtly anti-white messaging. Whatever the supposed justification, I fail to see how this coarsening of public discourse can be considered constructive.

Jack meets with right wing people fairly often, and @Jack follows Cernovich etc. I wouldn't worry about him removing right-wing opinions.

In fact, Jack gave a rather lengthy interview on the Sean Hannity radio show just a day or two ago. He came across as fairly even-handed and it was clear the difficulty of the situation and striking a balance between an open platform and removing posts which cross the line (threats, violence, illegality, etc.).

>One solution Twitter is exploring is to surround false tweets with factual context

I quit Twitter because they started choosing for me what they show me. Before it was all what I chose to follow in chronological order, nowadays you get lot of other stuff that you didn't ask for. It's a salad of content. And now they want to add even more unwanted stuff. Way to go.

> More context about a tweet, including “tweets that call it out as obviously fake,” could help people “make judgments for themselves,” Dorsey said.

Yeah, I'm sure Dorsey envisions the surrounding tweets gently explaining what a parody account is, or that something isn't factually supported - but the reality is going to be that every tweet will be surrounded by a buzzing cloud of nazi-gnats, gnashing their teeth about crisis actors and virtue signaling.

I agree the far-right stuff is a huge problem but one of the other reasons I deleted my account was the sheer amount of militant pro-LGBTQ+ people on there. Don't get me wrong, it's a cause I support, but some of their supporters aren't really promoting the community in a positive light and Twitter seems to be the platform of choice for people with extreme views on both sides.

I doubt you'll get right-wing stuff, this looks like it will be handpicked by some human, and only enabled for tweets they deem too controversial. i.e. Alex Jones says something, and then some human at Twitter HQ slaps a CNN tweet and a Snopes article next to the tweet without any permission from Alex Jones.

But in truth I don't really care if they want to shove tweets from nazis or communists or liberals or potato salads in my face. I only want to see what I follow. Is that too much to ask for?

try "some algorithm". Twitter would never be able to hire enough people to hand curate that.

As I said above, I believe this will be some kind of emergency measure to discredit handpicked tweets that have an enormous amount of retweets or made by specific users with an enormous amount of followers. It doesn't matter if it doesn't scale because it won't be used at scale.

> I doubt you'll get right-wing stuff, this looks like it will be handpicked by some human

That's definitely not going to be the case. It wouldn't even remotely scale. Heck, Twitter don't even have staff that speak many languages.

Use lists.

Twitter censorship is pretty extreme. My Libertarian friends and Islam critics get partially banned almost every week. It is pathetic and I think there is a larger market for more free speech. Twitter is probably becoming like SF, a shoddy hipster town full of junkies all around.

Too little, too late.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com