Inside Twitter's Long, Slow Struggle To Police Bad Actors (wsj.com)

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has personally weighed in on high-profile decisions, frustrating some employees. An anonymous reader shares a report: When Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testifies before Congress this week, he'll likely be asked about an issue that has been hovering over the company: Just who decides whether a user gets kicked off the site? To some Twitter users -- and even some employees -- it is a mystery. In policing content on the site and punishing bad actors, Twitter relies primarily on its users to report abuses and has a consistent set of policies so that decisions aren't made by just one person, its executives say. Yet, in some cases, Mr. Dorsey has weighed in on content decisions at the last minute or after they were made, sometimes resulting in changes and frustrating other executives and employees [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to people familiar with the matter. Understanding Mr. Dorsey's role in making content decisions is crucial, as Twitter tries to become more transparent to its 335 million users, as well as lawmakers about how it polices toxic content on its site.

Last month, after Twitter's controversial decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on its platform, Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Twitter disputes that account and says Mr. Dorsey wasn't involved in those discussions. Twitter's initial inaction on Mr. Jones, after several other major tech companies banned or limited his content, drew fierce backlash from the public and Twitter's own employees, some of whom tweeted in protest. [...] "Any suggestion that Jack made or overruled any of these decisions is completely and totally false," Twitter's chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, said in a statement. "Our service can only operate fairly if it's run through consistent application of our rules, rather than the personal views of any executive, including our CEO."

Comments

Re:Nazis have no value to society

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you point out where he incited violence against anyone? I keep hearing this claim, and haven't seen anybody back it up yet. Too many lies these days get repeated constantly in the hopes that it'll "stick" and people will just assume it's true for it's own sake, and then base further "solutions" on the false premise.

Alex Jones

[that this is not und]

I wouldn't call Alex Jones a 'far right wing' player. I'd call him a nutcase cultist. Back when I used to read the Drudge Report page (I quit frequenting it awhile back) if a link from Drudge took me to infowars.com I had a habit of instantly closing the page, because that site is a loony nest. This was particularly the case during the 2016 election, because you're not doing yourself a favor by hanging out in a loony echo chamber if you have sincere beliefs in a thought out political philosophy. There are similar fever swamps on the left, of course.

-------------------

This is an aside, but I was trawling around on the left political sites this weekend and noticed that the main Trotskyite newspaper in the US is now apparently defending Trump of all things.

Re:Alex Jones

[Raenex]

Alex Jones is a distraction from the far more pervasive censorship by Twitter. The real story is that Twitter was caught mass shadowbanning those on the right, to the point that Republican senators got caught up in it.

And now right before CEO Dorsey is supposed to testify before congress, magically the mass shadowbanning disappears.

And before you knee-jerk reflexively dismiss Breitbart, try attacking the argument, not the site.

Re:Anonymity should end

[Anonymous Coward]

I was around back in the old days, when the university required my real name be on all of my usenet posts.
I made the mistake of correcting a popular figure who was repeating some debunked bullshit. A few months later, I gave in. I moved house, changed my phone number, and have been very careful of my identity ever since. Neither of us was anonymous. Several of the people who called me to threaten me called from their home phones, and since it wasn't a repeated pattern of behaviour by them, the police said it wasn't legally harassment. My phone still rang off the hook with dozens of them every day.
What you're advocating leads to mob rule, where the popular people get to say whatever they like and the little people have to suck it up. I mean, do you really think nobody ever knew what Harvey Weinstein was up to? Was he anonymous? He was just careful to choose victims well down the social ladder from himself. Anonymity is freedom for those of us living at the bottom of the social ladder, that's why it's so popular on sites full of bullying victims, like slashdot. Those of you living privileged lives higher up wouldn't understand.
Yes, there's nazi's and whatever other bogeymen live under your bed down here, but there's a hell of a lot of decent people who just aren't quite as good at playing the social climber game as you. And though you don't want to acknowledge it, there's a lot of socially adept jerks strutting about under their real names because they know their victims will never be able to call them out on it.

I got banned a few weeks ago

[grungeman]

Twitter said that I have to verify my telephone number so I can continue using the Twitter service. Did not give any plausible argument why they kicked me off.

I simply stopped using twitter and will not come back. F*ck it.

Re:Anonymity should end

[religionofpeas]

A better system would be some kind of karma, attached to a pseudonymous user name, like here on Slashdot. As you build up karma, it becomes something that's worthy of accountability. Providing a verified real name could be used to provide initial karma, but it wouldn't be required.