As it has been for more than a decade, Twitter became the place to look for breaking news updates following the Texas Church Massacre on Sunday. And as it has been increasingly in recent years, Twitter became a hive of lies, propaganda, misinformation, and fake news. People searching for the name of the alleged shooter […]
As it has been for more than a decade, Twitter became the place to look for breaking news updates following the Texas Church Massacre on Sunday. And as it has been increasingly in recent years, Twitter became a hive of lies, propaganda, misinformation, and fake news.
People searching for the name of the alleged shooter were just as likely to come across a legitimate news report as they were to stumble across deliberate misinformation as pro-gun bots swung into action:
Of course, not all of them were bots:
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This is circulating on FB. Seems that Devin Patrick Kelley might be a member of ANTIFA and hates fellow whites.#TexasShooter pic.twitter.com/TtnrX3YqvN
— Gregory Montfort (@GregMontfort) November 6, 2017
More than 11 years into its existence, the situation feels hopeless for Twitter. We have gone around the same circle too many times. The same Antifa propaganda was being spread almost immediately after the Las Vegas Massacre. The company claims it is cracking down on fake news and bots and adding transparency and blahblahblah but nothing changes.
The cynics among us would like to argue that Twitter intentionally turns a blind eye because such things are critical to driving users and ad dollars. But maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe, the problem is that these issues are so deeply rooted into the very nature of the Twitter platform that nothing can be done about them.
And in that case, it seems time to have a discussion about whether Twitter has become so dangerous and toxic that there should be a movement to shut it down. What exactly is the value to the public good of something that facilitates harassment? Makes people dumber? Stokes hate and anger? Becomes a weapon to subvert democracy?
Clearly, shutting down Twitter isn’t something the government could do. It would also be a longer-than-longshot for a private citizen to conduct a hostile takeover and pay north of $20 billion to buy and close the company.
No, this would likely need to be a combination of investors punishing the company by abandoning the stock and advertisers refusing to have their brand associated with Twitter. Again, both longshots. It would require massive pressure from users, or former users, because neither investors nor advertisers are going to willingly walk away from something that they think can be used to make them money.
Still, the ongoing missteps, pratfalls, and revelations are creating a solid foundation to argue that Twitter’s very existence is worth questioning.
This latest episode comes after a week that was even more embarrassing than usual for Twitter. There was the miscue about shutting down President Trump’s account for 11 minutes, because it turns out access to such tools was a bit too loose. My colleague Emil Protalinski took Twitter to task for this last week:
“How in the hell can one person do so much damage in so little time? This is a public company we’re talking about, not the White House. It’s frankly insane that a Twitter customer support employee can ban an account so easily. Unlike the U.S. government, Twitter apparently doesn’t have many checks and balances in place.”
Twitter also updated its user guidelines for what seems like the 100th time this year to try again to make it clear what kind of behavior will get one banned. But the problem is not just the policy, it’s the application of it. The company apparently has banned right-wing conspiracy theorist Roger Stone following a fusillade of profanity and threats.
But conservatives asked a legitimate question:
Twitter claims they deleted Roger Stone for profanity – how do they explain not banning Keith Olberman pic.twitter.com/ETJmlFNJqL
— Drew Liquerman
(@DrewLiquerman) October 29, 2017
I’m more sympathetic politically to Olberman than Stone, but the point is fair. Why ban one and not the other? It’s not that Twitter lacks rules. Rather, it often seems they are arbitrarily applied, making them incomprehensible. The company pledges more transparency and rewrites its terms of service, but it never seems to be able to sufficiently explain itself, leaving all sides feeling alienated and suspicious.
All this came as Twitter joined other tech companies testifying before Congress to explain how it was abused by Russian propagandists during the U.S. election last year. One Senator noted that Twitter “seems to be vastly underestimating the number of fake accounts and bots pushing disinformation.” Twitter admitted to finding 2,700 accounts with Russian ties after saying a month earlier it had only found 200. And then there were tweets offering fake vote-by-text instructions. No one seemed to believe that only 5 percent of the accounts on the system were bots. The arguments about the need to allow anonymity on Twitter seemed to be wearing thin.
In the middle of all this, Twitter made a splash by announcing that it had banned the Russian-based Russia Today from buying ads to promote their content. This move seemed laudable, but was then undercut by RT officials who released a pitchdeck Twitter had sent previously soliciting their business.
Could the week get worse? Why, yes it can!
Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia arrested Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and charged him with money laundering amid a massive government crackdown on political rivals. The prince had invested $300 million into Twitter back in 2011, making him the second largest shareholder after CEO Jack Dorsey.
Oh, and just to add to the fun: An ongoing series of document leaks known as the Paradise Papers confirmed that a Kremlin-backed bank was the source of much of the money that Russian investor Yuri Milner pumped into companies like Twitter, giving him a 5 percent stake in the company at one point. Just to bring that whole Russian thing full circle.
Just to be clear, many of these issues touch on Facebook as well, and also some other Silicon Valley companies. But I’ll save that for another rant. Because Facebook still remains a distant second when it comes to the ineptitude and shown by Twitter in handling this dizzying array of dysfunctions.
So far, Twitter has managed to avoid a major reckoning for its failures. It faces a social media and PR backlash. Then the world moves on. Then Trump tweets, or someone gets harassed, people get angry, repeat.
At some point, it has to stop. At some point, people have to say “enough.” At some point, we have to ask whether the value of a service that lets us share cat GIFs and restaurant photos outweighs its poisoning of our politics and culture and civil society itself?
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