{"id":13803,"date":"2018-08-16T01:56:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T01:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=13803"},"modified":"2018-08-16T01:56:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T01:56:00","slug":"heres-why-we-shouldnt-take-jack-dorseys-promise-to-fix-twitter-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2018\/08\/16\/heres-why-we-shouldnt-take-jack-dorseys-promise-to-fix-twitter-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s why we shouldn’t take Jack Dorsey’s promise to fix Twitter seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After initially refusing to take action<\/strong> against notorious conspiracy monger Alex Jones\u2014even after virtually every major platform<\/a> had removed him for publishing hate speech\u2014Twitter seemed to reluctantly admit that it had a problem, and put Jones in “Twitter jail” by suspending his account for seven days. Now, in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post<\/em>, part-time CEO Jack Dorsey has promised to look closely<\/a> at ways to solve Twitter’s troll problem, up to and including changing some of the “incentives” that are built into the social network and the way it rewards users for certain kinds of behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorsey’s promises might seem like a magnanimous gesture, a kind of “we will stop at nothing” declaration of purpose. But for anyone who has paid attention to Twitter for more than a nanosecond, there are a couple of significant issues with what the Twitter CEO said. For example, the Post<\/em> notes that “Dorsey said Twitter hasn\u2019t changed its incentives, which were originally designed to nudge people to interact and keep them engaged, in the 12 years since Twitter was founded.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, only now, more than a decade after Twitter was founded, is Dorsey finally willing to take a hard look at some of the potential negative effects of the technology he and his company created, years after those problems were first brought to their attention. What took so long? The most obvious answer, as with Facebook’s deliberate attempt to ignore similar problems, is that avoiding or side-stepping those negative aspects was far more lucrative than trying to solve them\u2014harassment and flame wars and misinformation are also known as engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIf I had to pick a meme to sum up Twitter, the company, and its leader, it would be this one. Except the dog is @jack<\/a> Dorsey, and the burning room is America.\u201d – @nickbilton<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/rMvi7N3eYK<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/NIAEql6pXi<\/a><\/p>— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) August 16, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote>