Amid Blocks, Bans, and Criticism, Dorsey Mulls a Twitter Redesign

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Infowars host Alex Jones is "on a timeout," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tells NBC News.

Dorsey spent the by week defending Twitter's conclusion non to ban Jones after Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube all banned him or removed Infowars content from their platforms over hate speech and threats of violence. Twitter relented on Tuesday, banning Jones from Twitter and Periscope for seven days following a tweet from Jones that pointed to a Periscope video urging viewers to ready their "battle rifles" against the media and others.

Twitter followed up on Wednesday with a 7-day ban for the Infowars business relationship too. Both accounts are still public and visible during the pause, but the business relationship holders cannot tweet from them.

The saga has sparked renewed fervor over Twitter's rules, which Dorsey controversially tweeted that Jones didn't violate. Yet, a CNN report speedily disputed Twitter'south merits; information technology cited 20 past tweets from Jones and Infowars that violated Twitter'southward hate speech and anti-harassment policies. Following CNN's report, all xx tweets were subsequently deleted

"We can't build a service that is subjective merely to the whims of what we personally believe," Dorsey told NBC of Twitter's reticence to take action against far-right accounts. Notwithstanding, when asked whether the week-long "timeout" volition modify Jones' behavior, Dorsey was noncommittal.

"Whether it works within this case to alter some of those behaviors and change some of those deportment, I don't know," Dorsey told NBC. "But this is consistent with how we enforce."

He subsequently expanded on his explanation with tweets stating that "enforcement gets tougher with further reported violations," but that there may never be a perfect solution.

We have some prove to show this does work. It won't in every case. And we need to constantly evolve our enforcement actions. In that location will never be a perfect endpoint.

— jack (@jack) Baronial xv, 2022

Backfire and Big Changes

In the days before Twitter took activity against Jones, near fifty,000 people joined a campaign to protestation the inaction by striking the company where information technology hurts — with advertisers.

Silicon Valley marketing consultant Shannon Coulter, who organized the #GrabYourWallet move in 2022, chosen on Twitter users to cake every Fortune 500 company on the platform to protest Twitter's refusal to block Jones and Infowars. She even created an piece of cake way to do information technology all at once.

Adept morning! To encourage Twitter to drib Alex Jones, I merely blocked the Twitter accounts of every Fortune 500 company west/ a Twitter presence. Fix to mass block Twitter'southward well-nigh lucrative advertisers with me? There are three quick & piece of cake ways. Instructions are in this thread.

— Shannon Coulter (@shannoncoulter) August 12, 2022

The week-long "timeout" ban hasn't washed much to stop the protest action. Coulter said when Twitter removes Jones' account for good, she will unblock all companies on the list, then for now the #BlockParty500 campaign is still going strong.

The Jones fiasco is only the latest in a seemingly countless parade of controversies for Twitter. The social platform has become enmeshed with the national discourse, given that President Donald Trump uses Twitter as a chief means of advice. This has sparked discussion over whether Trump'due south decision to block his critics on Twitter is unconstitutional to the President's claims of "shadow banning" confronting Republican accounts.

Daily Twitter employ is beset by trolls, bot accounts, and false news. Equally the Alex Jones saga shows, it has as well get a stage for intensified partisan debate over what is considered harassment or detest speech on the platform.

Twitter has responded by rolling out features focused on security and trust such as hiding troll tweets using machine learning and past undertaking a mass purge of fake accounts, simply Dorsey said the platform is experimenting with far more drastic changes. In an interview with the Washington Post, the CEO said he'south "rethinking the core of how Twitter works."

Based on the proposed changes Dorsey mentioned, the Twitter of the future may be an even more codified version of the vitriolic political battleground information technology has go. Dorsey told the Washington Post that Twitter is thinking about labeling bots and redesigning user interface (UI) elements such as the like push and follower count displays. Only the most notable changes he mentioned are features that would promote "alternative viewpoints" in Twitter'south timeline to accost misinformation and reduce 'echo chambers.'"

"The most important matter that we can do is we wait at the incentives that we're building into our product. Considering they do express a point of view of what we want people to practice — and I don't think they are correct anymore," Dorsey told the Postal service.

Almost Rob Marvin

Rob Marvin is PCMag'southward Associate Features Editor. He writes features, news, and trend stories on all way of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture uppercase, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, G&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag'southward Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University'south Southward.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You lot can also discover his business concern and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Play a joke on Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for …

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/28898/amid-blocks-bans-and-criticism-dorsey-mulls-a-twitter-redesign

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