I’m not one of the people who follows Donald Trump on Twitter — I get more than enough second hand Trump without mainlining him. I’m kind of appalled that he’s still allowed on Twitter, frankly, since he’s abusive and bullying and vile, but of course, that’s never been a reason to close a Twitter account. And now we have it straight from Twitter itself that they’re never going to ban him.
The actual statement is about Trump’s tweets being “newsworthy,” with Twitter claiming that letting him stay on the platform helps keep people “informed about what’s happening in the world.” This justification helps absolve Twitter of any responsibility for what Trump does, and it saves the company from having to take any specific stand against anything he might do or say. Also, the thread says that Twitter holds all accounts “to the same rules,” which is funny because it’s definitely not true.
That’s such a pile of bullshit. You could say exactly the same thing about Andrew Anglin, the racist who runs the Daily Stormer. Rising racism is “newsworthy”, and we should be “informed about what’s happening”. Your more mundane stalker/harasser, likewise…if he’s significant enough that you’re complaining, then he’s “newsworthy”, and hey, don’t you want to keep informed about what he’s doing?
Twitter has banned some people, at least temporarily. They slapped down Anglin, for instance. But it’s only when their behavior becomes embarrassing to the company. Apparently, two petty maniacal tyrants taunting each other into nuclear war, or the white nationalist leader of a country fomenting racial hatred in the populace, are not at all embarrassing. That’s good business. It won’t be their fault if a few million people get killed because they enabled a tantrum.
Here’s a reason to ban him anyway, though. You’ve heard of all the football fans burning their team jerseys and season tickets to protest football players who don’t exhibit sufficient worshipfulness to a flag? Imagine if Twitter banned Trump: millions of outraged Trumpkins would delete their accounts in protest; all those people with frog avatars and swastikas would vanish. It would become almost paradisial. The majority of users would be overjoyed, and be gushing over the improved quality of the communication. It would be the one simplest, easiest thing they could do to diminish their asshole problem. So it won’t happen.
Quantity over quality, I guess.
So, if you are looking for a microblogging service that is not hostile and abusive like Twitter, please look at Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org/). Our Gracious Host is already on it, on the instance https://octodon.social/, which he neglected to mention in this article.
Not quite OT, but to me the kneeling protest seems brilliant because kneeling before something or someone is an ancient and widespread gesture of respect, much more so than standing.
Quite literally. The only metric Twitter really cares about, and the only reason they can pretend to be worth anything (rather than being seen as the bottomless money pit in desperate search of a viable business model that they actually are) is the number of active users (or more accurately, the rate of active user growth). That’s the metric they put front and centre in all of their investor communications.
Twitter doesn’t give the least shit about “quality of the communication”. The only thing they care about is continuing to pretend that they might one day find a way to turn user growth into money. If being populated by bots and trolls can help them maintain the illusion that they may eventually figure out how to turn a profit, then so be it.
I use twitter to keep up with certain bloggers and podcasters that I like. I’ve cultivated a collection of accounts to follow that make me happy and keep me informed. Some retweet Trump and other nasties, but more often they retweet responses to Trump and others, which I appreciate.
About half of my timeline is pictures and videos of cats, though. That helps keep me level.
Hold on. Isn’t it news only because it is being broadcast by Twitter itself? In other words, if Trump only ever blurted out his opinions without amplification, would they even matter? Isn’t this like a news show saying, “it’s news because we report it”?
I don’t want him banned on Twitter. Every time he sends out a tweet, the Republican Party loses votes. Yes, his tweets are vile, but they’re also damaging to him and his party, so I say give the man a microphone.
Now imagine him losing the presidential election in ’20. Do you think his army of Deplorables would disappear with him? Now that would be a paradise.
Twitter only cares about the number of users, so while this may be a paradise for most people, it’s bad for them. You know, bottom line and all.
Also, this comment from Ars technica hit the nail on the head: while Milo Yiannopoulos has been violating the rules for a long long time, Twitter had not banned him until when he became newsworthy (so bad that it became not worthwhile even with his large number of followers) for them.