11 votes

Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants: A Q&A with Twitter’s CEO on right-wing extremism, Candace Owens, and what he’d do if the president called on his followers to murder journalists.

12 comments

  1. [9]
    clerical_terrors
    Link
    Most of the interview reads like pretty standard Silicon Valley evasiveness, many insubstantial promises and lots of "we're listening" but when pressed for detail he either redirects or doesn't...

    Most of the interview reads like pretty standard Silicon Valley evasiveness, many insubstantial promises and lots of "we're listening" but when pressed for detail he either redirects or doesn't answer the actual query.

    9 votes
    1. [7]
      Cosmos
      Link Parent
      Yeah, Pretty sure an interview with Steve Huffman would go the same exact way. It's pretty crazy how these people are all clones of one another.

      Yeah, Pretty sure an interview with Steve Huffman would go the same exact way. It's pretty crazy how these people are all clones of one another.

      6 votes
      1. [5]
        clerical_terrors
        Link Parent
        Birds of a feather I suppose. Being able to bullshit your way through life seems like the most useful skill to have in the Valley some days.

        Birds of a feather I suppose. Being able to bullshit your way through life seems like the most useful skill to have in the Valley some days.

        4 votes
        1. [2]
          Deimos
          Link Parent
          I don't think it's really anything specific to SV, it's pretty much just standard PR with an extra dash of "yeah, we're working on applying algorithms/machine-learning to that issue". It might...

          I don't think it's really anything specific to SV, it's pretty much just standard PR with an extra dash of "yeah, we're working on applying algorithms/machine-learning to that issue". It might just feel a little different because it seems more common to have direct contact with CEOs in tech companies than other, more "traditional" companies.

          6 votes
          1. clerical_terrors
            Link Parent
            Yes, usually when a "traditional" company's CEO came forward with a message it was more or less expected to not default to a bog-standard PR speech, and if it was it was often mocked for it, since...

            Yes, usually when a "traditional" company's CEO came forward with a message it was more or less expected to not default to a bog-standard PR speech, and if it was it was often mocked for it, since it implied a kind of gravity where a simple company statement would not suffice. But I suppose this has changed both in and outside of SV as of late, and CEO's are more and more starting to also fill the role of spokespeople.

            2 votes
        2. [2]
          Cosmos
          Link Parent
          Not just the valley. Trump bullshitted his way through life too and look where he is now.

          Not just the valley. Trump bullshitted his way through life too and look where he is now.

          4 votes
      2. SourceContribute
        Link Parent
        At RightsCon last year that's exactly how it went. The fireside chat was with another exec or top-level person at Reddit. I had a lot of respect for Huffman to say that the issue with censorship...

        Pretty sure an interview with Steve Huffman would go the same exact way

        At RightsCon last year that's exactly how it went. The fireside chat was with another exec or top-level person at Reddit.

        I had a lot of respect for Huffman to say that the issue with censorship and hate speech and all that is a difficult problem and that it should essentially be turned into an engineering problem, especially at large/massive scales (you can't hire enough humans to moderate content).

        But then, the evasiveness of the answers and the whole "well we can't just ban people, that would be uncivilized!" theme is...annoying.

        1 vote
    2. SourceContribute
      Link Parent
      Funny how the idealism of SV turns into the same old tired guarded political/business-person hiding behind neutrality and risk-avoidance.

      standard Silicon Valley evasiveness

      Funny how the idealism of SV turns into the same old tired guarded political/business-person hiding behind neutrality and risk-avoidance.

  2. [3]
    croc
    Link
    Reading this just makes me double down on my hatred for Huffpost..

    Reading this just makes me double down on my hatred for Huffpost..

    1. [3]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. croc
        Link Parent
        Sorry for being lazy but yeah I should have said why. Their opinions are always in your face and very fiery. Never neutral. It's like liberal Fox News. This particular article is bait-y like my...

        Sorry for being lazy but yeah I should have said why.
        Their opinions are always in your face and very fiery. Never neutral.
        It's like liberal Fox News.

        This particular article is bait-y like my comment. "Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants".
        Yeah he does. He just doesn't want to share with everyone.
        He runs one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.

        He's smarter than the interviewer that is questioning him. That you can tell off the bat.
        Instantly she says "You unfollowed me on twitter"
        Okay? Relevant? No. He plays it off like, uh, why are you asking me this.

        The rest of the article reads like a passive aggressive back and forth from the journalist. She's trying to get answers, but she's not getting them. She wants to know the RULES and REASONING behind Twitter doing what it does, and Twitter does not owe anyone those rules. In fact, spelling them out on paper would mean the death of Twitter for various reasons I don't want to explain here.

        Twitter is not Facebook, and Jack Dorsey is not Zuckerberg. He's been fair, open and honest with his platform. He makes mistakes, and apologies. Twitter is a digital jungle where anyone is allowed to post anything for free. The problem is people, not Twitter. And Twitter doesn't have to "fix" people.

        Anyways, back to Huff. Their headlines are TMZ level bait and it's super cringe. Some of their articles are alright, but not this one.

        4 votes
      2. papasquat
        Link Parent
        Not him, but this entire interview just read like someone's desperate attempt to nail someone for a soundbite. "Why did you unfollow me on twitter?" "What would you do if donald trump told people...

        Not him, but this entire interview just read like someone's desperate attempt to nail someone for a soundbite.

        "Why did you unfollow me on twitter?"
        "What would you do if donald trump told people to murder journalists"

        Like, wtf kind of questions are those? The interviewer is just on the offensive the entire time, hoping for a slipup they could use as a title for the story. When they didn't get one they settled for "Jack Dorsey has no clue what he wants" because he didn't make definitive statements on hypotheticals with zero context.

        What a rag.

        1 vote