Comment by blotter_paper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blotter_paper | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with every call Twitter makes, but I find Dorsey to be by far the most interesting public figure in the social media game. His two JRE interviews[0][1] and his Tales from the Crypto interview[2] are all worth checking out, IMO. He seems to think Twitter should use a blockchain in the future, and that small social circles should have a system for internally moderating content without needing it to be okay by Twitter's standards, but obviously they're still currently taking down content that breaches their policies in $CURRENT_YEAR. I'm really interested in seeing where Twitter goes, I think Dorsey plays realpolitik sometimes but I don't think he has the same goals as Zuckerberg. I could be wrong, and Dorsey could just be a next-level showman, but I'm hopeful that he might do something truly interesting with the platform. I've still never made a Twitter account.

[0]: https://youtu.be/_mP9OmOFxc4a

[1]: https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ

[2]: https://talesfromthecrypt.libsyn.com/tales-from-the-crypt-61...

From what I recall in the JRE and Sam Harris interviews, Jack seemed very reasonable. I think Twitter is something that's gotten away from him (certainly from what he'd like) and is being run by the inmates to a significant degree.

I wish he had a controlling share.

That was my impression as well. It was interesting to see Jack answer and then have the legal council (?) amend Jack's answers or push them in a specific direction. It's very clear that there is a mismatch between what Jack wants, what Twitter shareholders want, and what Twitter's activist pseudo-employee contingent wants.

My impression was the Jack made too many excuses.

But this announcement is absolutely stellar. Who knows if Harris influenced him ;-)

Inmates - does this means the legal team?

Unsure if you’re asking who is running twitter or what’s meant by ‘inmates’ so will attempt to answer both.

I suspect it’s marketing people / short-sighted profit minded people rather than the legal team running the place.

And if you are asking about inmates meaning, it’s an idiom, “the inmates are running the asylum” meaning the least useful/knowledgeable people have taken over from the competent.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+inmates+are+running...

Thanks :)

Glad to help. Which one was it you wanted to know?

I think both / either work in this context, though it seems obvious the inmates running the asylum was the intention now you mention it.

I think inmates would be a good dysphemism for the legal department too.

Word of the day, thanks!

I'm not sure why a blockchain is needed for this. Can't they just have an API where certain posts are "flagged" and hidden in the official UI? If you want to opt-out, you simply use a UI that doesn't hide flagged.

It is not enough because the true goal of moderation is not to hide content people don't like, but to lock out people the majority of people don't like so they can't communicate or work together to spread their (probably hateful) message.

Putting it on a blockchain is abdicating responsibility for any and all content, saying "hey, we just wrote the code, we don't store or propagate any of this ourselves."

Putting it on a blockchain doesn't magically remove responsibility. Twitter would still likely end up hosting that blockchain, since nobody else is going to foot that cost, and then they would still have fully responsibility over it.

If they just want to decentralize & use peer-to-peer instead they could also do that, and a blockchain still wouldn't be a useful aspect there. That's just a mailing list.

> Putting it on a blockchain doesn't magically remove responsibility.

I'm still kind of amazed that the government hasn't cracked down on bitcoin miners for hosting child pornography yet; every full node is hosting it. If the government ever wants to crack down on blockchains they have a valid legal excuse. The longer they go without cracking down, the more it seems like we as a society are accepting the existence of a censorship free medium of communication.

I'm not convinced that nobody else would host it. If they really made a blockchain anybody could post to it would seem difficult to stop other companies from making frontends for it.

> I'm not convinced that nobody else would host it. If they really made a blockchain anybody could post to it would seem difficult to stop other companies from making frontends for it.

How are those companies going to make money from hosting tweets? Are you letting blockchain hosts inject things? If so that's a security & privacy nightmare just waiting to happen. If not, it's financially insane to host it unless twitter pays people to do so. And if they do that then hey they're simply contractors for twitter, and twitter is again bearing the full burden of responsibility.

The same question can be asked of Twitter. Twitter serves up other content alongside tweets, and makes a profit doing it (as of last year). Is this a privacy nightmare? Yup. Is it more of a privacy nightmare if a different company does it? Depends on the company. Maybe a given user will trust a given provider more than they trust Twitter, or maybe they'll like their ad policy more, or maybe they'll be willing to pay a premium to not be served ads, or maybe they'll want to search through tweets using more specific filters than Twitter allows. To me, choice of provider sounds like something that should increase security for those who desire it and educate themselves. For those who don't, there are other tradeoffs they can make.

This all assumes I'm interpretting Dorsey's statements correctly, and of course I may not be.

> Twitter would still likely end up hosting that blockchain, since nobody else is going to foot that cost

Why do you assume that? Modern blockchains are not proof-of-work, and the only info you need on a blockchain are permissions and encryption keys to data on other distributed storage networks (e.g, IPFS.)

So the cost isn't really very high, and probably worth the tradeoff for groups that feel alienated or disenfranchised.

Modern blockchains don't host images and face twitter's level of traffic, either.

Bandwidth & storage isn't free. Why would anyone voluntarily just do that for Twitter? Even if it's literally entirely free to setup & host, that's still someone's time & motivation to do so. People do this for blockchain because they're trying to get rich off of it. There's no money in hosting tweets.

> Putting it on a blockchain is abdicating responsibility

Yes, that is the point. Making censorship more difficult is one of the main goals of blockchain technology.

Yeah, but then they could be ordered to take it down. I think the idea is to be censorship resistant in such a way that the company itself cannot make exceptions when pressured by a court, but I'm forgetting if that's me reading between the lines or if Dorsey explicitly talks about censorship resistance.

We've learned that you can't get around the law (eg. court orders) "because blockchain". The government has shown us that the law prevails.

But it actually is being shown to work.

When was the last time that a court successfully reversed a transaction on the Bitcoin Blockchain? The answer is never.

Sure, they have sent court orders to companies, or whatever, but the blockchain itself has never been reversed by court order.

Telling the government "I know you've told me to take it down, but we specifically designed it in such a way that we can't take it down" sounds like an incredibly good legal strategy that will definitely not backfire.

So far, the "we can't do that" defense has worked for companies that provide E2E encryption. The government may change the rules, of course; they keep talking about it.

I guarantee you that if you tell a judge you can't take something down "because you use blockchain" the judge will not care and just sanction your company.

To the degree that you provide a service the courts can order you not to provide it. If you've built something which makes it necessary to remove all content to remove any content, that's on you.

Author Moderated Replies https://twitter.com/TwitterCanada/status/1149327628106641408

Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning left of course. Still , he s the only one who dares give Trump a megaphone. I think he handles the whole situation exceptionally well.

However shouldn’t the president have a “megaphone?” In the old days, when a president spoke, the media would “interpret” what he said. Politicians being able to speak directly to the population is a good thing.

I like that politicians can speak directly to the media—I just wish orgs like Twitter would apply their rules and guidelines fairly to everyone.

I'm starting to see these "rules" more like "laws," and starting to look more closely at how some of these platforms are governed in the same way I look at how governments are governed:

- Who makes the laws? - How does one become a lawmaker? - How long can one be a lawmaker? - Who enforces the laws? - How strong is the rule of law? - What are the consequences of breaking a law? - etc etc.

How does this analogy sit with you?

Of course. Like it or not, the transparency that Trump's twitter provides is unprecedented and a win for democracies.

> Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning left of course

Since the left has a embraced intersectionality, you can't be a "libertarian" and lean "left", that's completely incompatible, or I'm not sure what left you are talking about. That Dorsey puts up a facade because he lives in the silicon valley? sure, just like the higher ups at Alphabet.

> and yet he's generally leaning left of course

Words clearly do not have meanings anymore

clearly. But let's say "socially very left/progressive"

It does not take a whole lot of courage to give a megaphone to someone who's making you millions.

My impression of Dorsey is that he doesn't really know anything but me makes statements (like the OP, and the Bitcoin gunk, and making Twitter more "conversational") that don't make sense or stand up to scrutiny, but use a bunch of words that try to convey a position of leadership on not topics.

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