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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're pretty much left with trying to determine the degree to which, and the content which you're willing to censor.
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"
So until then, everyone has to choose between erring on too much or erring on too little.
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.
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.