Twitter has to up its game

As Twitter’s executives wring their hands about the meaning of ‘dehumanising speech’ and insist they want to be good citizens, the patience of governments and regulators seems to be running out, writes Raymond Snoddy

Twitter may be the fastest thing on wheels when it comes to breaking news, yet the company is very much the laggard when it comes to dealing with what co-founder Jack Dorsey calls “dehumanising speech.”

The company’s problems in this regard were cruelly exposed over the weekend out of the mouth of Dorsey himself, in what was presumably seen as a PR exercise for the company to explain itself.

First two reporters from the New York Times were invited to a Twitter conference room in the company’s 1937 headquarters on San Francisco’s Market Street to watch Dorsey and no less than 18 colleagues discuss how to make Twitter a safer place for users.

In over an hour’s discussion, according to the reporters, no agreement was reached on what constituted dehumanising speech.

The only outcome of the meeting was that Dorsey agreed to draft a policy about dehumanising speech – itself a rather vapid euphemism – and open it up to the public for their comments.

The meeting and its outcome was a perfect symbol of far too little too late by Twitter in the face of Alex Jones and his hate-filled conspiracy theories, including the claim that the Sandy Hook school murders were a hoax.

First Dorsey said he could do nothing about Jones because he had not broken Twitter rules. Then when journalists pointed out he certainly had, not least in the personal targeting of everyone from school shooting survivors, Muslims, transgender people and journalists, radio-host Jones was given a one-week Twitter suspension, which expired on Tuesday evening.

Dorsey then dug his PR hole a bit deeper by giving an exclusive interview to CNN’s Brian Stelter for his Reliable Sources programme.[advert position=”left”]

Among the revelations – the admission that “sometimes we are a bit behind,” that maybe more context would help, and that Twitter is small compared with its West Coast peers and simply doesn’t have the resources to check everything.

There was also a claim that Twitter was taking more action than in the past but most of it was invisible.

As for the Jones suspension, Twitter’s experience was that such suspensions often modified behaviour.

In the case of someone who believes Sandy Hook was a government hoax?

Really.

For his pièce de résistance Dorsey, with nose ring, fashionably long beard and arm tattoo, suggested: “It would be dangerous for a company like ours to be arbiters of truth.”

The Twitter chief executive was immediately mocked by a CNN commentator for talking like a philosophy college professor agonising vaguely over the issue, when there was a clear need for urgent action.

While there are obvious problems of definition, there is no excuse for sounding like a cross between What is Truth Pontius Pilate and Truth Isn’t Truth Rudy Giuliani.

There is no shortage of pressing human issues with a multitude of respectable arguments. But there should be no excuse for tolerating hurtful, damaging conspiracy theorists spreading information that is demonstrably false, as in Sandy Hook.

And if you can’t go after the facts, or lack of them, go after the people who regularly purvey that which can be proved to be untrue.

At the moment Twitter rules forbid direct threats of violence and some hate speech but does not prohibit deception or misinformation.

The Twitter reluctance to take more permanent action against Jones and his Infowars site is in marked contrast to Apple, Facebook and Google’s YouTube which has already got rid of Jones videos and podcasts.

Twitter has to up its game even though there are many signs it means well and is trying to do the right thing. It recently took an 8 per cent hit on its share price by removing millions of fake accounts, thereby undermining its growth rate, something that was very necessary for the credibility of its business and advertising.

It is precisely because it is the most significant social media operation in the news domain that more should be expected of Twitter – much more.

Twitter must be aware that its larger neighbour Facebook has hired no less than 20,000 monitors to try to root out the unacceptable, despite the drain on revenues.

The threat is multi-faceted, as the latest news demonstrates: Facebook has had to delete hundreds of accounts emanating from Iran and Russia seeking to interfere in the British political process.

Frighteningly, the accounts were being followed by more than one million people.

As Twitter executives wring their hands about the meaning of “dehumanising speech” and insist they want to be good citizens, the patience of governments and regulators seems to be running out.

Julian King, the EU’s commissioner for security has told the Financial Times that although the EU would have preferred a voluntary approach it had not seen enough progress from the social media giants on spotting and removing terrorist material.

The EU is now drafting rules that would require the tech companies to remove terrorist material flagged by law enforcement organisations within one hour of notification.

Despite all previous undertakings, a study by the Counter Extremism Project found that between March and June 1,384 videos supporting Isis were uploaded to YouTube and got 163,000 views.

One consequence of all this activity and moves to make the tech giants more responsible for what they transmit, will be to even up the struggle for survival of the traditional media – at least to some extent.

Intriguingly a backlash is coming from the right’s gathering strength.

Imagine that Twitter does draw up better definitions of dehumanising speech and starts to take action on people peddling complete falsehoods.

Would their most famous Twitterer, President Donald J. Trump – who is almost running the US through the power of tweets – pass muster in such a context?

Trump is clearly aware of the potential problem and has already railed against what he sees as the social media giants censoring conservative views.

Trump believes that it is “very dangerous” when social media platforms start self-regulating content.

“I won’t mention names but when they take certain people off of Twitter or Facebook and they’re making that decision, that is really a dangerous thing because that could be you tomorrow,” said Trump.

Indeed it could, though somehow when Twitter’s draft policy on dehumanising speech is produced, there might be an understandable reluctance to apply it to the President of the United States.