[chk_ur_autism]

He's doing an admittedly awful job at Twitter. See:

- Russian troll accounts/factories (he even retweeted one) - Inability to clean up harassment/abuse/threats - Stagnant product feature set - Awful (truly awful) ad product

[zaptheimpaler]

He realizes the hysteria around policing online speech and content will be short-lived. He is trying to keep it neutral and not warp it to consist of only the things some people would like to see. Its a strong strategy in the long run.

[untog]

Are there any statements anywhere suggesting he thinks this, or are we save to assume you are projecting your own opinions onto him?

[zaptheimpaler]

You are free to assume as you wish. I draw my assumptions from his actions.

[pron]

Only someone who hasn't been harassed could think this is hysteria. Interaction in communities of strangers (and even in face-to-face societies, like pre-industrial ones) has always required policing.

[zaptheimpaler]

Its an online forum. Anyone being harassed is free to ignore it or block/mute their harassers.

There is no magic technology that can automatically detect and stop harassment. Its a social problem and must be dealt with as such - e.g by shunning trolls online. In that light I don't understand what people want Twitter to do about it. Blaming Twitter is not a productive response given their limited ability to stop it, just as blaming HN would not be a productive response to being flamed in a comment on HN.

[pron]

> Anyone being harassed is free to ignore it or block/mute their harassers.

First of all, it's not so easy to block harassers when there are thousands. Seconds, victims of real-life harassment are also "free" to disconnect their phones and never leave the house. But doing so is letting the harassers win, and society has decided that harassment is unacceptable, and the harassers should be stopped.

> There is no magic technology that can automatically detect and stop harassment.

There is no magic technology that can automatically detect and stop crime, either, but that hasn't stopped every society in the world from establishing some sort of a justice system.

> Its a social problem and must be dealt with as such - e.g by shunning trolls online.

Yes, by an enforcement mechanism. In a strangers society, let alone one when people can have multiple identities, social sanctions don't work.

> In that light I don't understand what people want Twitter to do about it.

The same as anyone responsible over a public or semi-public space is expected to do -- establish an enforcement force. Just as office buildings, companies, and universities have security and often even a reporting and judgment apparatuses.

> just as blaming HN would not be a productive response to being flamed in a comment on HN.

If you think harassment on Twitter is on the same scale and of the same kind as unkind comments on HN, or that Twitter moderation is anywhere as effective as on HN, then you're unfamiliar with the problem. A mere hint of a threat of violence, or even strong verbal abuse gets you immediately banned from HN.

[zaptheimpaler]

I don't particularly have a problem with most of your philosophical positions. But this:

>The same as anyone responsible over a public or semi-public space is expected to do -- establish an enforcement force

Its simply unrealistic... there are roughly 350,000 tweets per MINUTE on twitter. It would take a massive workforce, working around the clock to get even close to policing all tweets or even all reported tweets.

Its easier to police physical spaces/companies/universities because there is a LOT less to police.

And there are no real identities, so even after banning an account the offender may just come back.

As I said above, in that light I don't think Twitter can do a whole lot about it.

[pron]

1. The question of can is entirely separate from the question of should. Sometimes someone should, or even absolutely must, do something even if they currently can't, and the inability to do it does not make the demand that they do unjustified.

2. While I don't think that Twitter can "solve" the problem (neither do justice systems "solve" crime), I don't believe that there is absolutely nothing they can do to effectively fight it and reduce it.

[diogenescynic]

Allowing Russian bots to spread propaganda to meddle in our elections is hardly being neutral. That’s being an enabler.

[craftyguy]

If only people (twitter users) were smart enough to question sources of information rather than taking them at face value..

[philwelch]

> Inability to clean up harassment/abuse/threats

That's a feature, not a bug:

> Twitter was designed, from Day 1, to enable any random person to send messages directly to any public figure. In other words, from Day 1, it was designed to be an abuse and harassment engine. It's not a bug. It's a feature. All that abuse and controversy is how it gets clicks and money.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2016/04/how-i-deal-with-haras...

[parthdesai]

>In other words, from Day 1, it was designed to be an abuse and harassment engine.

Yeah, you are stretching those words a bit too much. It was designed for normal people to be able to get in touch with famous people or vice versa. Some people misuse it and harass famous people. There's plenty of good that has come because of it as well.

[intoverflow2]

> It was designed for normal people to be able to get in touch with famous people or vice versa

Not so sure about this. Wasn't it just designed to broadcast messages among people who knew each other. The celeb focus came later.

I'd also say it doesn't help that your onboarding focuses greatly on what celebs you're going to engage with on the service.

[philwelch]

I'm not stretching those words; the entire thing (including the "abuse and harassment engine" bit) is a direct quote from Jeff Vogel.

I recommend considering the idea within the context of the entire blog post, which is the other reason I shared the link.

[protomyth]

I’d say it’s even going backwards. Whoever made the decision to put other people’s likes in my timeline really increased the noise and showed a real lack of understanding between a like and retweet.

[StudentStuff]

All a CEO does is set and push forward a certain culture and a handful of goals, but that is a full time job. Square isn't anything revolutionary or particularly special, the only trick they have is picking up customers who don't understand merchant processing and are willing to pay an extra 1% or so to avoid ever thinking about it.

Edit: I'm not referring to what a CEO is accountable for, just what they actually have control over. A CEO is not god, despite what some may believe!

[danpalmer]

> picking up customers who don't understand merchant processing and are willing to pay an extra 1% or so to avoid ever thinking about it

I don't think that's particularly fair to Square, for three reasons:

- For much smaller merchants, it can be cheaper overall than traditional payment processing, as you don't have to buy expensive hardware.

- Not having to "think about it" is probably underrated, the cost structure of traditional payment processing is very complex and can make it more difficult to know how you need to mark up your products to maintain a target margin, whereas with Square you're guaranteed a flat rate which will make a lot of other decisions easier.

- They provide a lot of other services for small businesses, like point-of-sale (I think the software is free for that? Big saving for small merchants) and payroll software (again a time/cost saving).

I think it's entirely reasonable that a thinking person might decide to pay 1% for these things, rather than because they don't know any better.

[chk_ur_autism]

Actually, a CEO is accountable for everything. Absolutely everything. The buck stops at the CEO, and anyone who thinks otherwise is misguided. Therefore, the issues at Twitter are Jack's fault, full stop.

[faceyspacey]

I agree. I also think Twitter's in a rough place for one reason: 140 characters doesn't make sense anymore. But dropping it would be even scarier for them, as that's been their defining thing for so long.

When did 140 chars make sense? In the beginning of the social internet 10 years ago. For people new to sharing, it relieved pressure around saying something. For psychological reasons the false restriction made sharing on the internet frictionless. When the expectation is intentionally low, you don't have to worry if you're sharing enough or too little. And perhaps more subconsciously, such a low limit just kind of speaks to you, saying: "just say anything, and spit out."

But now, people are very accustomed to sharing. They don't need these training wheels.

It seems to me, regular people don't use twitter. Only various professional niches. That's just a problem, and will result in Twitter leaking users from their staple niches gradually over time, and probably has been going on for a long time now.

So in short, Jack's job and the decision he has to make is a very hard one. They've been too scared to make the hardest of decisions, and very naturally as a result have only rolled out these minor attempts. It seems like a very logical sequence of events to me.

They gotta do something bold, or die.

I'm not saying removing the limit is the answer on its own. I think it's more of a symbol of a willingness and capability to get back in the game. Do that along with something totally fresh front-and-center within the feed, and they would have a good recipe for success. Make a big moment out of dropping the restriction, and see what happens. Hell, try it for 30 days, and see what happens as a grand experiment.

[QML]

The 140 characters make sense — if you do textual analysis, the average sentence turns out to be around that number of characters.

The issue is that Twitter is seen as a medium of expression, but I don’t think it’s suppose to be a platform where people go in-depth with their thoughts; more for momentarily formed opinions, ideas, or announcements.

For publishment, people should be using something like Medium.

[speedplane]

Every new medium of communication effects the substance of that communication. I doubt they can change the 140 character limit without changing the substance of conversation, but that may be the point.

[StudentStuff]

Definitely, a CEO is accountable for everything, but a CEO's influence is quite limited overall, their biggest power is to shut down whole divisions of a company, but actually changing said division? That is a much more difficult task that a CEO cannot achieve on their own, no matter the effort put into said task.

[jdmichal]

The biggest power of a CEO is culture. Look at Uber and all the negativity their culture is getting, fed by the specific instances where that culture allowed terrible things to happen.

And yes, a CEO does not change the culture on their own. That's impossible by definition -- the culture is the sum result of all the actors within the company. But a CEO is expected to lead the culture of the entire company, typically by stating values and setting goals and incentives that actually match those values. If they cannot do this, then they are unable to do their primary internal-facing job. This is one of the reasons that Steve Jobs was so well regarded. For whatever flaws he had, there was no mistaking the culture he was leading, and the results matched.

A great example, from a development perspective, is unit tests. Everyone loves to talk about how much we need unit tests. How great unit tests are. How they will make our software better. This is stating values, but you also have to back that up, and that's where things fall apart. The moment any kind of crunch happens, unit tests are the first things thrown out the window. Despite the fact that when you're working quickly, you probably need those tests even more. And all this is because, even though everyone states the value of tests, it's not actually part of the culture. The goals and incentives aren't there; there's no penalty to not following the line.

[speedplane]

Also, developing big projects practically require tests. I haven't seen a large project without them. Not sure where you work, but if they are the first thing that is thrown out, there is something definitely wrong not just with the culture, but with the engineering.

[jdmichal]

Completely agree with you. Part of the big fight is getting people to understand that tests are an asset and not a liability to working quickly and safely. There's a huge visability problem, in that management doesn't have insight into all the times when a bug wasn't committed because of a unit test. Functional and integration testing doesn't have this problem as much, because those typically have much better visability.

[speedplane]

> The biggest power of a CEO is culture.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this, but it seems a bit simplistic. CEO's are also in the position to be thought leaders, public advocates, build hype, and internally, guide the company to specific results. Workplace culture is extremely important, but not everything.

Also, I'm not sure that enforcing unit tests is exactly a "cultural" issue. How many unit tests you write is a decision that weighs current development speed against future development speed and reliability. That is of course influenced by culture, but not exactly culture itself.

[jdmichal]

> I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this, but it seems a bit simplistic. CEO's are also in the position to be thought leaders, public advocates, build hype, and internally, guide the company to specific results.

At least the first three of those are different ways of setting culture. The last one is so loosely defined that it could mean anything.

The sum of all actions of all actors within a company is its culture. If people act in an obsessive way about UX, then you have a culture of obsessive UX.

The CEO has the power to shift these cultures. There are many tools, as you point out, but the biggest one is setting appropriate goals, with the proper aligning (dis)incentive structure. These are set on his subordinates, who then filter it down and specify it for their subordinates, and so on down the entire chain.

> Also, I'm not sure that enforcing unit tests is exactly a "cultural" issue. How many unit tests you write is a decision that weighs current development speed against future development speed and reliability. That is of course influenced by culture, but not exactly culture itself.

If you supposedly have a culture that values writing unit tests, then that should be reflected in action. The idea of tossing unit tests should be met with disdain, the same way we value not murdering people and murder is meet with disdain. It's not about tradeoffs, it's about stated cultural values (talk) versus the actual culture (walk). If there's nothing holding you to the stated cultural values, that's a management failure.

[chk_ur_autism]

Saying "whats up" to the down voters who work at Twitter or Square. Sorry about your RSUs!

[dang]

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Comments here need to be civil and substantive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html