Now and then, the worst post posted on social networks receives lots of attention. If a leader lies to accuse a journalist of murder or claims that a mail-in vote is not legal, these are quite awful posts; I think that most people who work both inside and outside the media network are likely to agree with this. Based on my experiences, however, average and tech-savvy people tend to think differently about what to do in response to such a post. Today, I’d like to speak about the reason.
Suppose a user sees an unfavorable posting on a social media site and wants the post to be taken down immediately. They’ll justify their removal based on moral reasons -that keeping the post online is, they claim, just unacceptable. If removed, it will negatively reflect the morality of all employed by the firm, especially the highest-ranking executives. Many will suggest that the top executives should be fired in a moment of disgrace or even be imprisoned. Congress could begin to write letters, and new laws could be introduced so that a post like this is never seen on the internet.
If a tech-related employee reads a bad blog post, they’re almost as likely to be upset as everyone else. If they are part of the policy committee of the company or in the role of moderator, They will be looking at the company’s terms of service. Did a rule get broken? Which one? Is it a clear-cut case of violation, or could the message be seen in multiple ways?
The organization can create a new rule if a blog post is highly injurious yet isn’t allowed under an existing policy. When they do, they will attempt to draft the law narrowly to make it applicable with the greatest amount of words while excluding the most offensive. They will strive to communicate the rule clearly so that a horde of unpaid moderators can understand it. (And that they may have post-traumatic stress disorder and other disorders.)
In other words, when someone is exposed to an awful post, their first instinct is to react angrily. If a tech-savvy person is confronted with a particularly poor post, their first reaction is quick.
This context is essential to understand two Twitter debates that are currently taking place. The first one is about what Twitter should do to address the fact that President Trump is tweeting indefinitely without proof there is any evidence that one among the notable Republicans who frequently speak about him, the former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, may be involved in the death of an ex-staffer. One is about how to deal with the President’s stance on casting absentee votes.
In the first instance, truth: According to the Medical Examiner, the former Scarborough assistant Lori Klausutis died of a blood clot.) Her widow has petitioned Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey to remove Trump’s tweets suggesting there could be some foul involvement. John Wagener wrote up the day’s events for the Washington Post:
In the absence of any proof, Trump has continued to promote a conspiracy theory that Scarborough as a former member of Congress, was involved in been involved in an affair with his husband’s staffer and that he could have killed the woman — a claim which has been discredited by news media, including The Washington Post and that Timothy Klausutis called a “vicious lie” in a letter to Dorsey.
The next morning, Trump went on Twitter again to promote his “opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough,” which he claimed was “not a Donald Trump original thought.”
“So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now!” Trump added. “Law enforcement will eventually come into play.
If you believe that social networks must delete tweets that are sexually offensive and offensive, you can see why you’d prefer these tweets come down. The President has inflicted an emotional wound on an innocent man who has lost his family to gain political points. (Trump has always profited by falsely claiming to his Republican enemies are murderers like Jonathan Chait notes here.)
However, if you are employed to create or enforce policies for a tech company, your next steps aren’t as clear. Examine the facts. Did Trump declare definitively that Scarborough killed someone? He didn’t, “maybe or maybe not,” the President posted on Twitter this morning. Did Trump provoke violence against Scarborough either through indirect or direct means? (Twitter has said it would hide these tweets under a cautionary label but hasn’t done it.) It’s not my opinion, even though encouraging law enforcement to investigate the matter could abuse the President’s authority. Our founding fathers placed the responsibility of reining on a sloppy chief executive not with private firms but with the two other branches of the government.
Let’s be more specific: Scarborough is a public figure, an ex-congressman, no less. Historically, social networks have allowed the most indecent behavior regarding normal individuals who want to shout at powerful and wealthy people when they see the rich and powerful yelling at one another. Suppose two of them are involved in political discourse. In that case, that is the type of discussion that was protected under the First Amendment, which informs many of the fundamentals of the tech company’s speech policies and was aspired to protect above anything else — an expert in tech policy will likely want to give that speech the widest range of freedom.
I had a great time discussing with ex-Twitter employees involved in policies and speech issues. Most of the time, they believed that Trump’s Scarborough tweets should remain on the site. One reason is that the tweets do not violate any existing policies. Furthermore, they believe you shouldn’t create a policy to ban these tweets and doesn’t significantly restrict speech on the social media platform. A former employee once said, “If speculation about the unproven crime is not allowed, I have bad news for anyone who wants to tweet about a true crime podcast.”
It’s now possible to think of the day Twitter will have to respond to tweets. There was a time that Alex Jones’ tweets and videos on his involvement in the Sandy Hook school shooting also included “speculating about true crime,” despite the fact that the conspiracy theories he formulated were most likely believed to be fabricated in bad faith. Then Jones’s followers began harassing and stalking victims’ families and sometimes threatening to shoot the people. Ultimately, Jones was removed from all the major social media platforms.
In the event that Trump continues to propagate the falsehood about Scarborough, it is likely that certain of his supporters will decide to take things to their own. It’s only been a few months since one of them got 20 years of prison for sending sixteen pipe bombs those whom he thought were Trump’s foes. If anything similar happens in the wake following Scarborough’s tweets, Scarborough tweets Twitter is likely to be criticized for its inaction. This is a very bad situation for the company to find itself in.
However, it’s generally an awful thing that the President can do. And as citizens of a democratic country, we have recourses for bad conduct that go beyond the request of a tech company to discredit a politician. You can speak your mind or march in the streets and even vote. This is why, for most political speech issues, I prefer to increase speeches in the shape of more voting.
This brings us to today’s unexpected conclusion: Twitter’s choice to declare, in the very first instance, some of Donald Trump’s tweets as potentially false. Makena Kelly has the details on The Verge:
The day before, Twitter labeled two tweets by President Donald Trump making false statements regarding mail-in votes as “potentially misleading.” It’s the first time the social media platform has verified the President’s remarks.
The label was placed upon two tweets Trump tweeted Tuesday morning affirming the “mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent” and could lead to “a rigged election.” The tweets were focused on California’s efforts to increase mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic that is a novel. On Sunday, it was reported that the Republican National Committee sued California Governor. Gavin Newsom over the state’s move to expand mail-in vote.
According to an official Twitter spokesperson, these tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.” When someone sees tweets of Trump, there is a URL from Twitter that reads, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” The link takes you to news articles and tweets disproving the President’s claims.
The story is shocking due to a variety of reasons. It is about Twitter, an organization known to be susceptible to inaction and making an uncompromising move to take on its biggest user. This will result in a lengthy period of partisan debate over the next tweets of other politicians that should be treated similarly and the issue of whether one side or the other is getting a disproportionate amount of punishment. It also places Twitter prominently in the spot it’s long fought to avoid “the arbiter of truth,” tweeting whenever the President lies and claims it is legal to vote using an absentee ballot.
Yet, in the same way, Twitter’s decision was founded on the principle. In January, Twitter started allowing users to mark tweets containing incorrect voting process information. The company has since applied the policy with fair and reasonable accuracy. Some have criticized the label’s wording and design – “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” isn’t the most effective way to say “the president is lying about this.” However, it’s still an improvement, not just a minor one.
Social networks that have a global scale are always prone to very bad content, many of which are posted by their most famous users. Because these platforms are now so crucial to the political discourse, I’d prefer the decisions on what goes up and what goes down be determined by the will of unelected, unreliable founders.
Twitter’s decision to delete some of Trump’s tweets and label others as misleading will only please some. However, this is a situation in which the company has taken some difficult choices in a reasonably prudent manner. Anyone who attempts to create a stronger or more uniform policy that goes over “this is indecent, take it down” -is likely to find that it’s a lot more difficult than it appears.
