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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has posted a long thread in which he laments having to permanently suspend US president Donald Trump’s personal twitter account.

“I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here,” he opened, before going on to argue that the decision was “this was the right decision for Twitter” because the potential for violence to flow from Trump’s tweets was real.

“Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all,” he Tweeted.

Dorsey then said that the ban is ultimately a Twitter problem.

The CEO went on to argue that when Twitter bans a user, they can just go elsewhere. But he noted that last week’s mass de-platforming events are a new and unsettling phenomenon that challenge accepted notions of online openness.

Dorsey reminded readers that in 2019 the company funded an effort to create “an open and decentralized standard for social media” that addresses the spread of disinformation. Twitter hopes to become a user of that tool. But Dorsey said it will take time to build, perhaps because Twitter intends to hire “up to five” people to work on the project.

He ended the thread as follows.

Analysis

When social media companies stuff up, they inevitably acknowledge their error, apologise weakly, then make vague promises to do better in future.

Dorsey’s thread scarcely acknowledges that Twitter has for years erred by doing too little to make itself a source of “healthy conversation”. He doesn’t really apologise for that neglect. And he makes exceptionally vague promises about how the company intends to do better in future.

He’s a little stronger on the issue of free speech, but overall, the thread exposes that Twitter has long tolerated very bad behaviour by some users. And still doesn’t seem to fully grasp the consequences of having done so. ®

source: The Register