[tsimionescu]

And why do you think Pakistani Twitter moderators would feel empowered to take down tweets by government officials willing to torture and murder?

The request for Twitter to help in this case only makes sense if it assumed it will be taken by moderators living outside of Pakistan, who don't have to fear government reprisal for their actions.

[DoreenMichele]

Hiring locals instead of operating from afar is potentially a means to establish a de facto negotiating position.

"I'm sorry, Pakistan, if you can't behave better, we will have no choice but to evacuate our local offices full of relatively well paid jobs and take our toys and go home. Feel free to explain that to your people however you so wish."

Money talks.

[tsimionescu]

Twitter is nowhere near big enough to hire enough people in a country like Pakistan to matter as much as control of public media does - especially to a fascist government. Not to mention, knowing how such agencies operate, I would bet anything that a good few of any such moderators would be Pakistani secret services agents.

[DoreenMichele]

No, but they could roll out a pilot program for establishing local moderating offices and as part of that program establish a list of qualifying criteria for where they are willing to place such.

They could do something akin to what McDonald's did for the beef industry. It adopted Temple Grandin's list of best practices as its standard and this got adopted by the beef industry because McDonald's buys so much beef.

Currently, these big companies typically have a predatory relationship to such countries, so such countries have no motivation to cooperate. Make them trade partners and things begin to change.

[tsimionescu]

First of all, why would an authoritarian government want an impartial moderating office for media in their country? If anything, I expect Pakistan to soon demand government control over censoring Twitter, not the other way arpund.

Second of all, Twitter is a bit player in media. Comparing it to McDonald's is absurd. If we were talking about Facebook, this may be a different matter.

Third of all, government relation to media is significantly different to government's relationship to beef. There is no government in the world that wants a bad beef industry, but many many governments that actively want a biased media industry, and are more than willing to sacrifice monetary concerns to achieve this goal. Countries much smaller (at least in population) than Pakistan have actively kicked out platforms like Twitter - see Russia for example.

I will say it again: it is not realistic to expect a foreign media platform to fight government propaganda inside an authoritarian country. Twitter is not the BBC or Reuters, and even those places don't often try to publish in authoritarian countries.

[DoreenMichele]

If they can't take the heat, they can get out of the kitchen. If they want to stay, they need to somehow deal with the reality that they are doing business in a dangerous part of the world and their moderating decisions can impact who lives, who dies, etc.

[dnissley]

I have a hard time taking this position seriously -- when did you come to this conclusion? Have you put yourself in the position of someone living in these countries? Some random person having their access to the rest of the world just cut off like that? For their own good?

[tsimionescu]

I agree - I think demanding Twitter stop its service in countries where tweets are likely to cost people lives is a much more realistic goal, and one I would support.

[dnissley]

How is Twitter's relationship with Pakistan predatory?

Also, what is the equivalent to Temple Grandin's list for moderation of social media?