Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has taken to his Twitter account (fitting, I guess) to confirm that the platform won’t be following in the footsteps of Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, Apple, LinkedIn, or Pinterest by banning InfoWars or Alex Jones.
Supporters of the conspiracy theory website have been, in no uncertain terms, losing their minds this week over the news that they have been removed from just about every social media site bar Instagram and Twitter. Jones and InfoWars have played large parts in propping up conspiracy theories like PizzaGate (remember that guy that fired a gun in a pizza place while looking for the children hidden in the basement but there was no basement?) and have in the past been relentless in trying to paint the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre as paid actors.
While other platforms have decided to ban them because nearly everything they report is almost entirely incorrect and the subtext (and sometimes text) of nearly all of their analysis is either racist, homophobic, transphobic or just generally nuts, Twitter is not going that way.
In a series of tweets, Jack said that they know Jones is shit, but that he hasn’t violated their rules and thus they would just be playing favourites:
Truth is we’ve been terrible at explaining our decisions in the past. We’re fixing that. We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Accounts like Jones’ can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it’s critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Seeking true impartiality for your platform is a noble goal, but they of all people should know how social media works. When Alex Jones says a convenient lie that backs up what his followers think, millions of people are going to see it. When someone posts an earnest and exhaustive refutation of that same misinformation, it’s only ever going to be seen by a fraction of the people, and they likely won’t care.
But hey, why take responsibility for the stuff on your platform? That seems like a whole bunch of work.
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