WEBVTT - What Trump's Tweets Mean for Twitter, and Democracy 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.199 Don't let your legacy I T systems cost you money, 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.320 innovation and a place at the digital table of the future. 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:09.239 You can change your systems and the economics of it 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:13.720 with software from red hat see how at red hat 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:20.239 dot com. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me, I, 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:25.239 Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear h Donald John Trump, 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:30.280 do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute that I 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:35.159 will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.960 the office of President of the United States. And we 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.840 now have a new president, Donald J. Trump. They're going 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.800 to be lots of fascinating tech storylines to watch over 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.160 the next four years. Cybersecurity, the economic impacts of automation, 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.160 the reinvigorated fight over net neutrality. But the thing that's 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:57.720 going to be most visible to the general public, at 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:02.080 least at first, is the way that the president communicates publicly. Ah. Yes, 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:06.400 the infamous Trump Twitter account. And here's the thing. Trump 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:10.040 tweets a lot. He uses the account at real Donald Trump, 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:14.240 and since Friday afternoon he has controlled the official President 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.759 of the United States account as well, that's at potus. 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.240 For over a year, many people have been waiting with 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:24.000 bated breath for that moment that shows how Trump's style 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:27.600 of tweeting would become a political liability. It looked like 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:29.440 we had gotten there a few times at least during 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.360 the campaign, but but clearly it never came. I mean, 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.480 he did win well. Just to remind us, Josh, what 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.039 kind of messages are we talking about here, Yeah, I 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.800 pulled a couple of examples to start with. Here's one 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:50.080 from June, right when Trump started running druggies, drug dealers, rapists, 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.000 and killers are coming across the southern border. When will 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.120 the US get smart and stop this travesty? And here's 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:59.880 one since Trump has been elected. China steals United States 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.280 and Navy research drone in international waters, rips it out 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:07.440 of water, and takes it to China in unprecedented act. Yes, 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:13.080 he initially misspelled unprecedented, so it said unprecedented. And here's 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.920 one more that got a lot of attention. In addition 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:18.679 to winning the Electoral College in the landslide, I won 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.520 the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:27.760 who voted illegally. Trump tweets nearly every day, so this 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.520 is just a flavor of what he's posted. We pulled 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.280 out these tweets in particular because they raise a few 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:37.680 thorny issues. The one about Mexican immigrants, for example, raises 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.520 all sorts of questions about presidential decorum. The tweet about 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:45.240 China shows how a single message could put years of 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.600 delicate diplomacy into jeopardy. And the last tweet, where Trump 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:52.240 refers to quote millions of people who voted illegally, well, 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.840 that raises difficult questions about fact checking the president. There's 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:59.480 no evidence at all of widespread voter fraud, but millions 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:12.160 of people we'll see tweets like this, Hi, I'm Brad 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.800 Stone and I'm Joshua Boosting. This is our first episode 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.160 of Decrypted since Donald Trump officially took office, so we're 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.680 exploring the new president's feelings about technology and specifically his 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.720 love for Twitter. Twitter was a major form of communication 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.280 for Donald Trump the candidate, and even after winning the election, 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.400 Trump kept setting the news agenda with his early morning tweets. 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.040 Many people thought his tweeting would slow down after he won, 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:41.040 but there's every indication that he plans to continue using 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.720 it now that he's in office. Yeah, it's been controversial, 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.040 to say the least. On the one hand, Twitter, let's 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.520 Trump talk directly to voters, but as quick fire tweets, 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:52.640 sometimes poorly thought out, have been aimed at everyone from 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.640 union leaders in Indiana to the government of China to 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.440 the media itself. It's creating a new paradigm for diplomats, 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.080 journal us and of course, ordinary voters. We'll take a 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.240 look at why Trump's use of Twitter marks such a 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:07.760 break with the past, what this means for the press, 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.200 and why despite all this attention, Twitter is still struggling 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:16.960 to grow as a company. Here's one tricky problem. Some 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:21.200 of Trump's tweets have probably violated Twitter's own rules against harassment. 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.240 The Washington Post ran an op ed calling for Twitter 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.520 to ban the president elect. Far hot Manjou, who writes 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.159 a technology column for The New York Times, said the 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.440 company would be within its rights to ban him, though 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:35.280 he advised they shouldn't do it. Twitter has shut down 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.159 a couple of people's accounts during this campaign. It's often 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:42.120 been because they use the platform to attack other people personally. Now, 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.719 Trump has a tendency to call people out by name himself, 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.760 and when you're president of the United States, that carries 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.680 a lot of weight. Here's a tweet that Trump posted 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:57.560 in early December after he won the election. Chuck Jones, 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.440 who is president of United steel Workers, has done a 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:05.840 terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country. Oh yeah, 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:08.640 there was the famous tweet from last summer directed at 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:12.080 a former Miss Universe named Alicia Machado. Did crook and 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.520 Hillary help disgusting check out sex tape and past Alicia 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:17.719 m become a U S citizen so that she could 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:20.440 use her in that debate. Now it doesn't seem like 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:22.960 there actually was a sex tape, and Trump was criticized 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:30.360 widely for this. Some Mexican currency traders recently said their 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.200 government should just buy Twitter and shut it down because 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.280 that would be cheaper than the negative impact of the 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.800 president's hostile tweets have had on the value of the pace. 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.920 So I think that last thing was a joke. Yeah, 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:43.080 but maybe one of those jokes where you laugh as 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.280 you say what you actually mean. Either way, it does 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.240 make you think, what are the consequences of this shift 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.039 in the way the President of the United States communicates 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.800 with the world. Twitter started out with high ideals. On 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:58.120 its website, it says this mission is to quote give 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.520 everyone the power to create and air ideas and information 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:06.200 instantly without barriers. Maybe they have succeeded it, although perhaps 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.560 not quite in the way they initially imagined. I asked 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.840 Twitter to discuss its role in politics and incoming Trump administration, 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.120 but they said the subject was too sensitive. Luckily, the 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.240 person who led Twitter as partnerships with government officials and 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.440 politicians for the last six years actually left the company 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.440 right after the election. Yeah. His name is Adam Sharp, 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.159 and I gave him a call, and when I did so, 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.160 he said he was hibernating in his house in Connecticut, 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:35.080 kind of recovering from the election. But he did agree 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:42.760 to let me come up and visit. I showed up 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.119 on a frigid day in January, just a few weeks 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.919 before the inauguration. Adam opened the door. He was wearing 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.479 a striped collared shirt and it was tucked in even 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:54.160 though he was in his own house and wasn't even 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:56.880 wearing shoes. So more of a d C guy than 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.000 a Silicon Valley guy. Yeah, it seemed that way. Before 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:02.279 worked for Twitter, Adam was actually a staff around the 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.280 Hill And when he talks about Twitter, you can hear 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:07.960 him just layering the technology on top of his favorite 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:13.000 Washington cliches. At the end of the day, politics is personal. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.320 It's like fee old. Typically, all politics is local. People 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.880 want to have that ground level connection. The best way 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:21.560 to get a vote is still what it was a 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:23.920 hundred years ago, the handshake, the look in your eye. 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.400 I'm running for office. Can I have your vote? It's 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:31.240 hard to scale that to three million people. During his 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.720 six years of Twitter, he's really seen the platform grow 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:36.640 from nothing in the political world. Yeah, when Adam took 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.040 over in two thousand and ten, only of people in 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:42.880 Congress even had Twitter accounts. It was his job to 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:44.880 go from door to door on the hill and show 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:49.640 incoming lawmakers how the service even worked. Many offices that 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:57.119 I would meet with in social media was something given 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:01.600 to the junior most person. It was the new hire 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.000 or the intern right out of school. Who you get 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.720 all that social stuff? You take care of this because 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.760 it was seen as a check the box. Things have 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.280 changed quite a bit. Adam says that Anthony Weiner getting 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.720 caught sending r rated Twitter messages was actually a big 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.320 boon to the company because it scared people enough into 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.080 actually paying attention. That showed how you could ruin your 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.120 career by acting badly on Twitter. I guess Trump is 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:31.200 demonstrating how you use Twitter to magnify a political message. Yeah, 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.720 and after the wildest election in recent memory, President Trump 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:37.120 is blowing up the playbook on how public officials talk 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.480 to the people who elected them. Basically, he just ignores 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.720 the careful Washingtonian way of speaking and cuts out the 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.240 press in a new way. Here's what Adam had to 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:52.960 say about that Twitter pierces that bubble. Twitter gives the 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:58.400 opportunity to scalably have direct contact between candidates and voters, 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:02.679 elected officials and can ch once. We saw that develop 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:07.120 over time, especially through the Obama years, and now I 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:09.760 think we've seen a candidate in Donald Trump who is 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.000 willing to really hit the accelerator and try to take 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.320 that another step forward. Does Adam think that Twitter, what 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.160 it has evolved into today lives up to the hopes 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:21.920 he had for it when he started at the company. Yeah, 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.400 I'll say this. Adam seemed genuinely optimistic about Twitter's role 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:27.920 in politics, and he picked out a moment from this 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:32.800 campaign that he felt demonstrated Twitter's full potential. Now you 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.440 might find this moment obscure. I didn't remember it, but 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.160 but bear with me. It comes from November during the 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.920 Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton is on stage with Bernie Sanders 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:46.280 and she's asked to justify her close ties to Wall Street. 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:49.920 I represented New York, and I represented New York on 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.320 nine eleven when we were attacked. Where were we attacked. 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:57.480 We were attacked in downtown Manhattan, where Wall Street is. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:00.320 I did spend a whole lot of time in effort 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.400 helping them rebuild. That was good for New York, it 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:04.280 was good for the economy, and it was a way 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.840 to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country. So oh, so, 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.440 she's basically claiming that the Wall Street donations were essentially 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.640 a thank you for helping rebuild after nine eleven. Yeah, 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.400 as you can imagine, this triggered a ton of sarcastic 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:22.360 commentary on Twitter. I remember this. The CBS debate moderator 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.080 spent the next commercial break sifting through Twitter looking at 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.920 how viewers were reacting in real time to what Clinton 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.120 was saying. Then they picked a tweet and put it 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.400 up on the huge screen above the debate stage and 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:36.319 asked Hillary Clinton to respond to the criticism. Here's Nancy 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.520 Cordyce from CBS reading it out loud the Secretary Clinton. 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.240 One of the tweets we saw said this, I've never 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:46.000 seen a candidate invoke nine eleven to justify millions of 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:49.480 Wall Street donations until now, the idea being that, yes, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.720 you were a champion of the community after nine eleven, 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.960 but what does that have to do with taking big donations. Well, 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:01.920 I'm sorry that whoever tweeted that had that impress because 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.480 after fifty years of televised presidential debates and people sitting 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:10.160 at home yelling at the TV, for the first time 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:16.880 those yells were heard on stage. Um, that I think 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:22.800 was the most profound moment of realization of the aspirations 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:26.440 of my six years at Twitter. So Adam has essentially 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:30.240 picked out this one articulate comment from what was probably 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:34.240 a sea of acrimony, name calling, racism, sexism, all the 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.120 rancid commentary that has stirred up on the service during 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.559 these political moments. Still, it's difficult to disagree with him 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:44.080 on the power of this particular example. Yeah, I figured 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.440 that if this was a big moment for Twitter, it 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.920 must have been a really big moment for the person 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:52.240 who actually put the tweet out. So I tracked him 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.320 down his name is Andy gray Wall and he's a 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.400 professor at the University of Iowa. At the time of 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.320 the debate, he wasn't a very heavy Twitter user. He said, 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:03.800 he was just kind of killing time until someone came 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:05.720 to pick him up to go out. And at the 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.680 time he only had about two hundred followers. And I 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.000 was having a good time and I never liked tweeted 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.600 an event before. And about an hour in to the debate, 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:19.400 I'm watching commercial break ends and they go ahead and 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:22.520 putting my tweet on the screen that I just put up. 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.800 You know, it's a very surreal moment. Since then, Greg 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.079 Wall says that Twitter has turned into his primary source 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.200 of information, and on the day I reached out to him, 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.120 he was deeply involved in an esoteric Twitter debate over 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.480 Trump's conflicts of interests. So does Andy think Twitter as 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.920 as important to the public discourse as Adam does? Uh? 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:43.960 Not quite. He says he often ends up just being 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:46.200 a place where people can yell at one another, and 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:48.319 often not a lot gets done. But it's it's just 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:49.960 hard to know the influence. I mean, when you spend 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:51.760 all day on Twitter, you spend an hour on Twitter, 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:53.960 and that becomes your whole world, and you think that 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.400 everyone's thinking about Twitter. And sometimes I'll spend a couple 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.320 hours on Twitter and then I go play saw ball 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:05.120 some firefighters or something, and no one cares or has 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.920 any knowledge of what's been trending during the day, and 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.800 you kind of remind yourself that Twitter, I think it's 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.080 a bubble, but a very big one, um, but not 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.600 as big as active users like me might think. I 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.320 think this was a lot of people's experience with Twitter 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.040 in two thousand sixteen. I like to call it the 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:29.360 Twitter paradox. One politician used it quite famously to run 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:32.840 his entire presidential campaign, but at the same time, the 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.960 network never felt so small and closed off from the 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.640 real world. So the campaign seems to have taught us 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:42.959 another lesson that a clever politician and its backers can 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.640 use Twitter to dominate and even monopolize the public conversation. 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:50.720 During the campaign, he would pick up his phone, type 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.280 out a tweet, and bam, that's the news agenda for 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.040 the day. And he's certainly demonstrated pretty much every day 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:01.360 since the election that that technique can work just as 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:07.200 effectively in international affairs, legislative relations, and everything else. As 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:21.360 it could for the daily horse race. Inside the most 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:25.200 successful organizations, I T has gone from supporting the business 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:29.160 to driving the business, but the costs of legacy infrastructure 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:33.160 can impede this progress. Budgets can't stretch enough to pay 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.960 for digital innovation at the speed required. No one gets 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.120 a blank check. The answer is to change the economics 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:44.000 of your I by shifting from ownership to use, from 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:49.320 licenses to subscriptions, from proprietary to open. Change the economics 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:53.160 of it with open software from red hat. Learn more 0:14:53.400 --> 0:15:10.360 at red hat dot com. So this is creating a 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:14.440 dilemma for the news media, especially now since Trump's tweets 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.440 are the official word of the United States. It seems 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:21.080 like there's both a technological question here about how Twitter 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:24.160 changes the way the president communicates with the public, and 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:28.000 a political one about what this president actually says on Twitter. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.760 What's challenging about covering a President Trump because he uses 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:39.800 Twitter a lot. He's putting things up that haven't been 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:43.600 fact checked, that may not be true. Um, and can 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:45.880 you even tease those things apart? I mean, I think 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:50.040 Donald Trump isn't the first politician to use social media 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.160 or online media in general as an n run around 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.400 conventional media. Um that at least journalists are familiar with. 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:02.200 You know, journalists are now rather than being the gatekeepers 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:05.200 of right information, they've taken on a role as more 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.800 analyzers and investigators and less a sort of the primary 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:13.400 found of information. That's Ben Mullen, the managing editor of 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.520 Pointer dot org pointers at Journalism Institute based in Florida. 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:21.560 It also owns the Tampa Bay Times. We've been headed 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:23.560 down this road for a while. So, but where Trump 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.320 is different, I think is is that generally those channels 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:33.280 have been used to communicate accurate information, and um, I 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.280 don't think you've seen the same regard for accuracy or 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.880 decorum as you've seen from other other political figures from 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.080 Donald Trump. And so I think the challenge becomes as 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:49.120 the media, well, treat this information as um as you 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.280 would any other record, you know, pars it, analyze it, 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.640 fact check it, make sure it's accurate, and then sort 0:16:55.680 --> 0:17:01.840 of base your reporting from there. We should also know 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.080 that Twitter has been an enormous asset for journalists. It's 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:07.600 a great way to share and promote our stories, to 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.199 communicate directly with sources, and to research people before you 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.600 write about them. You can tell a lot about a 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.160 person from their Twitter feed if they're active. It's also 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.840 a way that journalists keep up on what one another 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.479 is doing, make sure they're not missing anything, and just 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:26.080 stay involved in the conversation. One really good example of 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.680 how Twitter is helpful for journalists comes from the campaign. 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:33.240 It was the work of David Fahrenhold of the Washington Post. 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.159 He's the reporter who showed that Trump wasn't telling the 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:39.280 truth when it came to his charitable giving. Fahrenhold got 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:41.520 a lot of help from people who followed him on Twitter. 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:44.480 He posted updates and what he was looking for, and 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.199 other users helped him to track down the details. This 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.000 is pretty much the idealistic version of Twitter, right, where 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:54.280 social media empowers people by connecting them. It's the Twitter 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.800 that Adam sharp SI's so. In other words, Josh, the 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.600 solution to Twitter's shortcomings are just more Twitter. Of course, 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:02.520 that's a convenient view to have when you work at 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.440 the company, and in any case, we see him on 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.119 a one way road towards more social media, whether we 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:10.680 like it or not. So I asked Molan about this. 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:17.560 I'm wondering if you think that Trump is an outlier, 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.719 and you know, is explainable only through the lens of 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:24.520 Donald Trump, or if something like this was inevitable once 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.800 social media started to become a real central way that 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.480 we communicate with one another. I think Donald Trump, to 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:35.920 some extent is going to be regarded as a pioneer 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.160 in this arena. I think you're probably going to see 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.879 politicians both on the right and the left emulate his strategy. 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:47.720 Maybe maybe not his specific rhetoric, but I think you 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.119 are going to see politicians on both the left and 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:56.239 the right be much more aggressive on social come Is 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.960 that a bad thing or a good thing um? Or 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:05.719 do we just not know yet? Oh, that's a hard question. 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:10.600 I think it's it's a bad thing for the public 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:15.320 to get inaccurate information. I think it's a good thing 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:21.080 for the public to have access to a multiplicity of 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:26.560 sources of information which they can assess um independently. So 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.800 I think, like everything in technology, the rise of Twitter 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:32.439 and the rise of politicians using Twitter is neither a 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.840 bad or a good thing. I think it's just a thing, 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:37.760 and we all have to come to grips with it 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:40.880 and figure out a way that it can be used responsibly. 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.920 There's a really odd thing about Twitter's role in politics 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.119 that we haven't talked about yet. You would think the 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:58.320 Twitter central role in public discourse would be great for business, 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.919 but as anyone knows who follows it, Twitter as a 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:04.200 company has really been struggling. Yeah, there's really no other 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.440 way to see this. The company's revenue growth has slowed 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.440 to about eight percent last quarter. That's the ninth straight 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:13.280 quarter the rate of growth has slowed, and that's especially 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.520 an issue since the eleven year old company has never 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.600 turned a profit. In the year leading up to the election, 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.359 when Twitter was as prominent as it's ever been, it 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:24.920 added about ten million monthly users. That amounts to about 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.280 three percent growth over the same period. Facebook's user based 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.280 grew by six and that's even though the company is 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.840 more than five and a half times Twitter size. At 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:38.080 one point, Twitter tried to sell itself to another big company, 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.160 but it didn't work out, and Trump's text summit really 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:45.840 added insult to injury. Twitter didn't even get an invite. So, Josh, 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.359 if number one user Donald Trump can't save Twitter, what's 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.399 the problem here? I think there's a couple of things 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:54.959 going on here. The first one is that when someone 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.360 makes news with a tweet. A lot of people hear 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:59.679 about it, but a lot of those people never actually 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:02.159 go to Twitter itself. They see the tweet on the 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.679 news or being talked about somewhere else, and so they 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.560 don't become users of the platform. And the other thing is, 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:11.920 and I think in the news media we can appreciate this, 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.960 is that you can be influential without being a lucrative business. 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:22.800 Here's Adam Sharp again. I think in many ways Twitter 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:30.040 faces the same challenges as the news industry, and that 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:42.080 it is most successful in meeting it's ideals and aspirational 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:52.360 goals for meaningful impact. But making the connection between public 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:58.960 good and shareholder value is a daily challenge, and that 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:02.639 is no different for Twitter than it is for Bloomberg 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.800 or the New York Times. Yeah, because you don't want 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:10.560 to compare yourself the news industry generally, you would think 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:13.640 that hearing about Twitter so much during the presidential campaign 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:15.800 would have inspired a lot of people to try it 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:18.640 out for the first time. I talked to Josh Ellman 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:21.920 about this. Elman was a product manager at Twitter from 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:25.440 two thousand and nine to eleven. He also worked at Facebook, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:27.880 and he's now a partner at the venture firm Greylock 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.480 Elman thinks Twitter's biggest problem is that it's intimidating to 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.119 new users. That's because you have to spend a lot 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:37.480 of time configuring it to give you useful information, choosing 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:41.480 which people to follow, and so on. Look of the 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:44.760 people I know who use Twitter and and like when 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:47.000 you've gotten it set up right for your life, with 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:50.119 your passion, your interests, those unique things you care about 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.080 and follow the right sources. Twitter is still the very 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:55.120 best format for a lot of people to go get 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:58.000 all that information. But it is really hard to set up, 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:01.080 and it's really hard to find your passion. It's really 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:03.320 hard to figure out who to follow and what to follow. 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:05.959 I call that tuning your Twitter, so to speak. And 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:09.720 it's like Twitters hasn't made it any easier after all 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.000 these years to tune your Twitter, and I really want 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:17.080 them to and then they're the infamous trolls. The presidential 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:20.439 campaign seemed to highlight the most hostile aspects of Twitter 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:24.040 as a place to hang out online. Yeah, people who 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:27.920 supported one candidate often sent threats and other nasty messages 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:31.080 to their political opponents. I know that many journalists with 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:35.040 Jewish last names who criticized Trump ended up getting waves 0:23:35.040 --> 0:23:38.720 of messages suggesting they should be putting gas chambers. That's horrible. 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:41.919 At the beginning of two thousand sixteen, Twitter said it 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:43.800 was going to come up with ways to cut back 0:23:43.840 --> 0:23:47.080 on harassment and abuse, but a year later they're basically 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.679 making the same promises. Now. One thing that surprised me 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:53.679 in my conversation with Adam It was how little he 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:56.080 bought into the idea that Twitter has dropped the ball 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.639 on this. Many people take that as a given, but 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:01.560 he feels that politics has always had its nasty elements 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:03.560 and the best way to deal with trolls is just 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:07.040 to drown them out with more useful conversations. Were there 0:24:07.040 --> 0:24:09.800 any times during the campaign where you felt uncomfortable with 0:24:10.640 --> 0:24:15.160