Twitter Says CEO Dorsey Informed in Advance of Decision to Tag Trump Tweet | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Says CEO Dorsey Informed in Advance of Decision to Tag Trump Tweet

nytimes.com

31 pointskoolba26 comments

I'm no fan of Trump but can't he just argue the tweet means something more doing the lines of "where there's smoke there's fire" ie "looting might lead to shooting so we need to stop things before they spiral out of control"?

The fact that Twitter previously allowed hashtags like #KillAllMen to trend doesn't really indicate a consistent policy against "glorifying violence" to me...

Re: Twitter consistent policy

Twitter does have a consistent and long track record of allowing violent Twitter posts by the military personnel of nation states.

Distinguishing acceptable violent speech and unacceptable violent speech is to Twitter a complicated exercise in navigating power and ideology in 2020 America.

Twitter doesn’t need to be consistent about anything. You abide by their TOS or don’t use it, the same way a store with “No shoes, no shirt, no service” can kick you out.

Maybe it's not legally necessary, but consistency is good for user trust. Plenty of things are legal that are still bad for business.

> You abide by their TOS or don’t use it

This is not the case for many people on Twitter. If you're powerful or protected by the powerful, you don't have to follow the TOS.

It doesn't matter what he argues what it meant, only whether a reasonable person would interpret it as a call to violence. That's what the "Report Tweet" button is for.

Hope The President doesn’t find out that Dorsey is also CEO @ Square.

Twitter should have suspended Trump's account (and many others) a long time ago. That they haven't suggests they're more concerned with a loss of traffic than incitements of violence.

I like that they're correcting him instead of banning him. I love that they're getting under his skin.

He was asked about this in a podcast. Episode 148 of Making Sense. The relevant discussion starts at 56:30 and runs for 15 minutes. Unfortunately the episode is not freely available.

Dorsey talks about the 'public interest' of retaining Trump's rule-breaking tweets, how people can add their opinions, how it's expected that our leaders be 'extremely expressive', how it's a 'direct line to the people', how we can 'have a conversation about it'.

I consider his response to be extremely weak sauce. All he's doing is giving excuses for his failure to consistently enforce Twitter's rules. It's difficult to avoid your conclusion that it's motivated by traffic.

There's an enormous echo chamber of ignorance centered around Trump's Twitter account. That's a lot of ad impressions.

And about 50% are bots. I understand non US citizens having a voice but manipulation by bots is clearly not conducive to public discourse.

It's clear Jack doesn't want to kowtow or maybe his ego is bruised but I just don't understand what he expects to come of this. The President has stacked the courts in his favor. He will get his way and twitter will take a massive hit financially.

My best guess is that Jack plans to move the company headquarters out of the US which would explain why he chose to allow remote work indefinitely. But can he get it past shareholders? The President had also stated he doesn't want foreign companies on the NYSE and no other market offers similar liquidity.

> My best guess is that Jack plans to move the company headquarters out of the US which would explain why he chose to allow remote work indefinitely.

So he can have HQ in a cheap country, but pay SV salaries to the now remote workers in SV? Does not make much sense to me.

They have survived so far paying SV salaries. The non-engineering positions are practically disposable but they make up a considerable amount of bloat at many companies. Now would be an ideal time to trim the fat.

Saying that companies can't go against the president because he stacked the courts sounds a lot like a totalitarian regime to me. I really hope the US is not there yet and that anyone, individual or company, can criticise the government without fearing retribution.

Now if getting involved is smart from a business perspective is another question. But but they will have thought about that and also considered the consequences of not acting.

Not to mention the courts have been stacked using the Federalist Society's shortlist. While I personally think they're a bunch of highly educated kooks, I don't think that ideologically they'll side with the President in this fight.

How often do the courts not side with Trump in a meaningful way?

Pretty much weekly or bi-weekly? Like I don't want to go out and make a list of all the court cases and appeals that his administration has lost because it's not short.

Where did I say they can't go against the President? I simply stated the reality of the situation and then my idea of why he'd do it.

Ending section 230 would end every website that has user uploaded content. Nothing will come of this. The biggest risk to twitter is that Trump gets mad and deletes his account.

Does every country have an equivalent law?

You presume any action outside of a near meaningless executive order will get off the ground.

I'll make another bold prediction. This is Trump huffpuff and Twitter won't be going anywhere.

Agreed. Politics is half PT Barnum these days anyway - politicians don't mean half the things they say.

If you think Trump suddenly decided he wanted to make a big deal of this and hasn't been working with Barr and GOP to draft legislation from day one (of Barr's tenure) you've not been paying attention.

You can continue to believe Trump is unpredictable when almost everything he does is signaled far in advance.

I hear trump doing a bunch of outlandish tweets, then suddenly this hits, seems like it was planned.

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