WEBVTT - Jonathan Weisman: Why I Quit Twitter 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:15.720 What's an earth. I'm taking my pels in the vitamins. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:17.479 You know, I gotta stay strong. You know what I'm saying. 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.200 Many of you all probably know. Leslie Jones is one 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:23.400 of the comedians on Saturday Night Live. She's also one 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.720 of the stars of the female version of Ghostbusters, and 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:32.479 earlier this summer, she was eviscerated, really abused mercilessly on 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:39.559 social media, particularly Twitter, with the most hateful, bigoted, disgusting comments. 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:42.000 She really got a lot of attention because she stood 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:44.920 up and she shared this with the world, which really 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:49.400 kind of I think unveiled what a cess pool social 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.839 media can be. Have you experienced much hate speech yourself? Oh, 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.160 I've I've been swimming in that cess pool. Actually, you know, 0:00:56.320 --> 0:01:00.680 people don't really understand how it's like a sucker punch 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:05.440 when people say that such mean, nasty, negative, ugly things 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:10.520 about you, either about who you are, you know, your intelligence, 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:14.760 your appearance, and I think under the cloak of anonymity, 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:20.280 people feel emboldened to say all sorts of horrific things. Well, 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.000 and I've seen what people say about you online and 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:27.280 I know you, I'm your friend, and it's really upsetting 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:33.720 because I know that it isn't true, and thank you 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:38.200 for your support. You're welcome anytime. And I think that anonymity, 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:41.560 as you said, gives people an ability to say things 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:44.520 that they never would dream of saying if they actually 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.640 had to identify themselves or to be face to face 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:49.920 with somebody. We're going to talk with two people today 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.080 who are on the front lines of this issue. First, 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.800 Jonathan Weissman. He's an editor for the New York Times, 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:59.400 and he quit Twitter over hate speech and he did 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.320 something very very brave, which will tell you about in 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.800 a moment. And will also be hearing from Richard Cohen, 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.480 who's president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, Richard's 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:11.480 been mired in this stuff for decades. He'll tell us 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.640 that for every big win against hate speech, there is 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:19.160 inevitably a backlash. But there are still things that we 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.960 can all do to fight these hateful words and deeds. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:25.079 I guess the question is our technology companies doing as 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:27.720 much as they could. Well, it's a tough issue because 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.840 you want people to be able to participate anonymously from 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.680 places like Syria and Iran where they have no choice, 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:37.560 but in this country people are sort of abusing that 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.640 privilege in order to be really nasty and inject a 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.160 lot of poison into the public discourse. Now, of course 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.680 I'm the target of some of this because I'm a 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.600 public figure or whatever. But we wondered if other people 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:54.200 experience that even in their small circles, even among their 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.280 followers on social media. So we decided to head out 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.520 to Times Square, the center of the New York universe, 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:05.040 of course, to find out what other people are experiencing online. 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.520 And here's what we discovered. Hi, can I show a 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.520 quick question? Sure, have you ever experienced hate speech or 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:18.720 somebody being abusive to you on social media or online? Yeah? Political? Yeah? 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:20.839 How does it make you feel when you get those 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.160 kinds of comments like, I don't want to be a 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.800 part of it. I mean, I just ignore it. To 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:28.320 be honest with you, when you see it online directed 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:30.960 at other people, what do you think? In general? I 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.359 don't like any kind of anybody that makes any adverse 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.440 comments to people online because it goes to everybody, and 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.920 I don't I don't agree with that. Leat haters hate Honestly, 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:44.400 They're going to talk about whatever they want to talk about. 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.520 Are you shocked sometimes when you see the level of 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:53.720 discourse online. Well, I'm I'm not shocked because that was 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:56.000 what the Internet was originally supposed to be, which was 0:03:56.000 --> 0:04:00.080 supposed to be an area where it's democratizing opinion to 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.800 send and so forth. So unfortunately it matches up with 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:05.800 the spectrum of the world. I think there needs to 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.640 be some boundary of you know, what's appropriate and what's 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.119 not right. You sort of teach kids and people what's 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:13.960 appropriate what's not and you have to kind of practice 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.000 it in real life. I think have you ever experienced 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:21.040 online bullying or hate? You know you're talking to I'm 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.640 the Finnish dragon for men's health. So basically everything I 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.960 post is he skipped leg days, calves look terrible. I 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:32.280 hate his face. Um, I wish you would die. Do 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.120 you monitor your comments and do you ever remove them? 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:37.839 We often remove them. That's half my job. He's growing 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.919 to the Facebook feed particular. Yeah, Facebook definitely. So it 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.200 keeps you hate speech, keeps you very busy, It keeps 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:51.160 me employed. Yeah, definitely. There is rough out there, all right, 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:58.920 stay safe out there. A big thank you to everyone 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:01.680 willing to talk thus on a warm summer day in 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.480 the middle of Times Square, very warm now, Let's talk 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:09.240 about Jonathan Wiseman. Jonathan is a very fine writer for 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:13.599 the New York Times, and he confronted really something that 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.880 is so ugly that many of us believed, probably incorrectly, 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.000 had been put to bed a long time ago, which 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:24.120 is just blatant anti semitism. So he's here to talk 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:31.279 about that and what he did about it. Hey, Jonathan Wiseman, Hi, Katie, 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:33.760 how are you. I'm good, Brian, and I are really 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.520 delighted that you're here to talk about what happened to you, 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.440 because I think it's emblematic of the times we're living 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.400 in and how strange and surreal social media can be, 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.560 and how actually upsetting and dangerous it can be as well. 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.640 Let's start from the beginning. This all happened when you 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:55.320 posted an article about fascism. Tell us a little bit 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.840 about why you posted it and what it was about. 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:02.240 You know, if something catches your fancy, um, you tend 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.880 to tweet it out to your followers. It was something 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.640 that I do several times a day. And Robert Kagan, 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.919 kind of a neo conservative author uh supporter of a 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:18.440 lot of military interventions past um now at the Brookings Institution. 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.960 He had written a piece for the Washington Post on 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.040 how fascism is coming to the United States, and I 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.560 tweeted it out to my followers and I had gotten 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:31.200 a response back that I had never seen before. It 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.480 was just simply my name in three parentheses from somebody 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:40.640 who identified himself as Cybertrump. And I tweeted back to him, 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.000 I said, do you care to explain? And you know 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:49.280 that let loose this retuperative anti Semitic rant and it's 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.760 he said, I have belled the cat. Um. And with 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.640 the belling of that cat, the trolls, the neo Nazis, 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:02.480 the white supremacists started just day losing me with Holocaust imagery, 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:08.159 Nazi iconography, really really ugly stuff that I really thought was, 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.080 you know, things of the past. Tell us before I 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:13.840 ask you a little bit more about some of the 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.840 things that were tweeted at you how this sort of 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:21.600 three parentheses thing works, and how it's so called bells 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.160 the cat, because I know that a lot of news 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:28.680 organizations have since written about this. Yeah, I of course 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.720 knew nothing about this until I was sucked into it. Um. 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:37.320 It turns out that this group of neo Nazis and 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.680 white supremacists had come up with an actual piece of software, 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:47.440 a Google Chrome plug in that you can download, and 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:52.600 it puts these three parentheses around Jewish sounding names, which 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.960 allows them, if they have the right software, to search 0:07:56.080 --> 0:08:00.640 social networks m for the three parentheses and then find 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:05.520 targets to go after, because oddly enough, most search engines 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:10.240 don't look for things like parentheses and that kind of thing. 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:14.560 They only look for numbers and and letters and set 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.480 things like the at sign. So they had come up 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:23.000 with an actual organized way to find and target certain 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.520 people with Jewish sounding names. That's just unbelievable to me. 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.240 How long has this been going on, by the way, 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.200 because I know it was recently discovered, but was this 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:36.000 a practice that had been in effect for years? Even? 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.280 I don't think so. I think it's been several months. 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:44.720 And I think the first targets were Jewish conservative writers 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:50.360 and pundits, people like Bill crystal Um, who had been 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.280 targets of what they called the alt right, and now 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:57.960 it's moved to more mainstream journalists like myself. I understand 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:00.640 that Google Chrome was made aware of this, then they 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:04.480 got rid of the software that enables this process. Is 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.600 that right? That's right, it was. It was labeled something 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:12.320 very generic that you would never ever recognize as some 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.160 kind of software targeted for anti semit So they had 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.640 no idea that it was there, and once they found 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.320 out about it, they yanked it off. What did it 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.280 feel like when you first got those tweets that showed 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:29.800 things like dead bodies in the Holocaust and other neo 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:36.160 Nazi symbols. Yeah, I mean the Holocaust. The concentration camp 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:40.040 imagery is such a shock in this context because it 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.080 turns your stomach and the first time you see an 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:47.440 image of like Donald Trump in Nazi garb, flipping the 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.800 switch on a gas chamber in your face inside that 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.320 gas chamber, it's a shock. Now the tenth time you 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.240 see it, you start thinking this is a joke. These 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:01.280 people are just sick um and you start imagining them 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:04.680 sitting in their parents basement in their pajamas. The shock 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:09.720 value does wear off. But you know, the goating, uh, 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:13.920 the anti semited goating, the constantly asking you, well, why 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.600 are Jews always oppressed? Why are Jews always thrown out 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:22.080 of these countries through the centuries. It's very, very frustrating, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.400 And Trump is kind of a funny hero for these 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:30.520 neo Nazis because he hasn't made, to my knowledge, any 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:35.040 anti Semitic comments. He in fact has a Jewish daughter 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:38.240 and son in law. His daughter converted when he got married. 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:43.800 Why do you think he's become so celebrated and protected 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:49.720 by these people online? They in in his language on immigrants, 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:53.600 they see a kindred spirit. They think that he's sending 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.640 signals that that there's much more to it than he 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:58.720 would that he would like to say, but he can't 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.280 say it because he's running propresed it in. So. Wolf 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.199 Blitzer one time was talking to Donald Trump and brought 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:08.480 up the anti Semitic goating of of journalists and asked him, 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:10.200 what do you think about this? Do you were you 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:14.199 repudiate that? And he basically said, I don't speak from 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:16.160 my followers. I don't speak for all my voters. No, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.920 I I think anti semitism is terrible. But he did 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:24.160 not overtly repudiate them, did not say I do not 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.560 want your vote, I do not want your support, the 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:31.640 way Ronald Reagan once did when the clan had endorsed him. Jonathan, 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:35.480 one interesting thing that you did was you didn't mute 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.200 these people. You didn't block them from your account. You 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:44.360 actually retweeted so all of your followers could see what 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:46.760 they were saying to you. Why did you want to 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:51.160 do that? Because if you, you know, just ignore them, 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:53.880 it's hard for somebody to go onto your Twitter feed 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:56.640 and and see what you're seeing. If you retweet, then 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.440 everybody who follows you seese it. At first, I would 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:01.920 make a little comments to make sure that nobody thought 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.640 that I was, you know, in endorsing them by retweeting, uh, 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:09.120 And then I just started just retweeting, retweeting, retweeting to 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.560 create a record, uh, and to show anybody who wanted 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.440 to see how ugly things were could just search for 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.160 at Jonathan Weissman and find all sorts of evidence right there. 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.079 What was the reaction when you were retweeting? Because I 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.040 was following your Twitter feed and I was looking at 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.400 how some people were coming to your defense. Did you 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.560 get much support from the journalistic community? And I've gotten 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.319 a ton of support. And when I decided to write 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.840 about it, it was actually then there was another reporter 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:46.280 for Air. It's one of the Israeli newspapers. He's the 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:49.120 one that came up with the idea that we should 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:53.800 all put those triple parentheses around our names, um, to 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.520 show that we're not cow, to show that we're not afraid, 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.800 but also to thwart the software. And I thought that 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:03.160 was an amazing moment of solidarity because now I if 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:05.440 you look on Twitter, you see a lot of people 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:09.160 with these triple parentheses. So yes, I do feel supported 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:13.160 and I do feel like I have accomplished something. But 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:17.439 you quit Twitter because you were upset with the reaction 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.600 you got from the company. Tell us what transpired? Who 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.720 did you call, what did they say, What were you 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:28.920 hoping to achieve, and what didn't you get? So as 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.320 as you said, Katie, I wanted to create this trail 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:35.439 of anti semitism so people could see what they were 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.160 what they were doing. And I thought, I'll leave all 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.320 this stuff out there for a little while. But now 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.319 I'm kind of growing sick of this. So I started 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:49.240 reporting the most vicious anti Semitic tweets coming at me 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:53.559 to Twitter. Because Twitter has something called the terms of service. 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:57.160 When you sign on to Twitter, nobody ever reads them, um, 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.240 but you click on something saying okay, I under stand 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.319 the terms of service, and those terms of service say 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:09.920 no harassment, no singling out people for ill treatment based 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:17.720 on race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin. You're vowing to 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:22.200 to to follow Twitter's rules. So I started reporting them 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.040 to Twitter, and at first I would just get a 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.200 little acknowledgement saying, we got your report, we're looking into it. 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:31.320 We got your report, we're looking into it. Then one 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:35.200 of the New York Times social media people, we have 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.760 people who you know, we're hired to look after our 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.240 social media she's she decided to take upon herself too, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.680 to put together a compendium of all the worst things 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:49.280 that had had come my way and send them in 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.360 a in a package to Twitter. And then she got 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.400 one of these notes back from Twitter saying we've looked 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:57.600 at what you've sent us and we see no violations 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.400 of our terms of service, which shocked me. I mean, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.640 I mean honestly. And and then I remember, remember her 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:06.440 name is ari a. Re sent me this, and I 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.360 sent her a little frowny face back, saying this is ridiculous. 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:11.720 The next morning I woke up and there was somebody 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.320 I would have sent her something more than a frown face, 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.840 but you were very polite. I was. I was much 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.840 more angry at Twitter than I was by this point 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:24.440 at the neo Nazis because I've got grown used to them, 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.720 um and and I went on to Twitter. I said, 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:30.440 this is a brief rant, and I said I'm getting 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.480 off Twitter because Twitter will not follow its own rules 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:37.440 and will not police itself. And almost immediately as soon 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:41.280 as I did that, I started getting notes back saying 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.080 We've looked at this count and we've suspended it. We've 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.200 looked at that account, we've suspended it. We've looked at 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:47.680 some of the accounts, and they said, we don't see 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.680 we still don't see, um a violation of our terms 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.760 of service. And I, honestly I went back and I 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.880 could not figure out what criteria Twitter was using to 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.239 decide that this guy's account is going to be suspended 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.200 and this guy's account was fine. I honestly didn't see 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.000 any difference between them. What about this argument that the 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:11.240 conundrum that some of the social media outlets ostensibly find 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:15.800 themselves in Jonathan withdrawing the line between free speech and 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.520 hate speech. It's a question that I've gone over in 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:21.640 my own head for a long time now, a lot, 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:26.040 well the last few few weeks, and my attitude at 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.360 this point is if Twitter wants to make an announcement 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.480 saying we're doing away with our terms of service. We 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:35.360 don't care. We can have a wild West. We're gonna 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:38.560 have open free speech. Say what you want. You know, 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:40.600 if they did that, I'd probably signed back up. At 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.160 least they were being honest. Or I find offensive is 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.560 that Twitter can wear the halo of the terms of 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.440 service that says we don't put up with harassment, we 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:55.120 don't put up with racism or anti semitism or homophobia, 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:57.040 we don't put up with these things, but then don't 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.520 do anything to police it. So they have to make 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:02.640 a decision. Asian, they are either one thing or another, 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:06.240 but they can't have it both ways. And the suspensions 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:11.080 you talked about are meaningless because you're suspending the accounts, 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:13.840 but not the people behind. All of those people can 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:18.439 just set up additional hate spewing accounts. So what do 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.520 you think Twitter actually ought to do to fix this 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.960 problem short of turning it into a wild West. It's 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.480 it is a conundrum. It is very hard to puzzle out. 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.320 And a lot of people have said, well, who cares, 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.560 are just a bunch of trolls, And my answer is 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:36.960 you're right, who cares? Why do I why do I 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:41.440 need Twitter? So I just my attitude was why if 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.400 if I'm offended by the way Twitter is policing itself, 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:47.960 then I will just say goodbye to Twitter for a while. 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:50.880 Did you hear from anyone like Jack Dorsey or any 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.200 executives at Twitter after this whole bruhaha? Because I think 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.800 you put them in a terrible light. I've been expecting 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.320 to hear from somebody and I haven't. They've really been 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:05.480 remarkably quiescent about this whole thing. They don't seem to 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.240 want to engage. What do you think this says about 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.320 the state of our country? You know, I wonder did 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.359 these people always exist? Are we just now seeing them 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.119 because they have a platform they can express their views. 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:26.119 Is there something going on that the numbers are multiplying? Um? 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:28.919 What's your take on what this says about us as 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.119 a country? When Katie to jump in, I mean, the 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:36.959 polling does show that deeply entrenched anti Semitic views, at 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.119 least according to the A d l S poelling, have 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.719 have gone down from about twenty nine percent of Americans 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:47.960 in n twelve percent. But it's still twelve percent of 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:51.879 the American people anyway, And that surprises me. Surprises you 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:54.360 that it's gone down. No, it surprises me that it's 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.399 at twelve percent. I mean, remember in Washington, especially where 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:03.080 where you see this high partisan uh commitment to Israel 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:08.439 and politicians of every conceivable stripe from from very liberal 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.720 to very conservative tumbling over each other to get to 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.199 to get to the right side of Jewish voters. I 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.360 would never have thought it was twelve franc I would 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.480 have thought it was considerably lower now. But we've seen 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:25.480 if you look on a newspaper website, if the comments 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:32.240 sections under articles allow anonymity, the tone of the discourse 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:36.600 is horrific. It degenerates so quickly. But if you have 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.840 to use a real name, it stays at a certain level. 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:42.760 It just it's like road rage. If you don't have 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.640 an identity, I don't know. I guess it's as old 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.560 as Lord of the Flies or older than that. Um. 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.119 But I do think that the tone of this presidential 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:57.960 campaign and the tone set by Donald Trump have empowered 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:02.600 people to bring out views that they used to only speak, 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.160 you know, in the privacy of their home. Around there, 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.560 around the angry dinner table or something. I mean, people 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:13.400 seem willing to speak in public the way they used 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:17.120 to never. I mean, I get your point about Trump 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:22.840 not being strong enough in condemning David Duke or anti 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:28.600 Semitic pronouncements, But are there elements of his campaign, of 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:35.000 his platform that you think are attracting white nationalists anti 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:39.920 Semites even though white supremisists and yeah, even though what 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:46.040 he's saying of the time is not anti Semitic. But 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.320 I think if if you call for a blanket ban 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:54.000 on Muslim immigrants, if you call for a giant wall 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.760 on the southern border, if you talk about Mexicans as 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:01.880 rapists and thieves, I think you're sending a signal that 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:06.840 exclusionary politics are now mainstream. Do you think that. I 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:10.600 know that a number of newspapers have done away with 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:15.560 the comments section, or they're monitoring them more carefully, because 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.400 you look at them. It is so depressing to see 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:24.000 how the discourse quickly devolves into basically a verbal fist 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:31.000 fite between respondents, and the kind of vitriol and nastiness 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.520 that is so pervasive. Then I read the letters to 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.000 the editor in the New York Times, and I think, Wow, 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.359 my faith in America has been restored because people have 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:44.120 different opinions, but they're all sort of thoughtful and well written, 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.879 and it's just it's it's like they're two America's. Well, 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:52.639 you know, the Wall Street Journal did a great exercise 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:57.119 where they created a blue Facebook and a red Facebook 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.000 and if you are a conservative you're tending to see 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.040 on Facebook, and if you're a liberal, what you're tending 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:05.840 to see on Facebook? And they made a very very 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:11.640 compelling illustration of how different and how divided the country 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:15.040 is along political grounds. I mean, if you look on 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:18.800 the on the New York Times comments, now, they're curated. 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.880 There are editors picks, there are readers picks, and so 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:26.640 we we empower certain readers to actually go through and 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:29.800 select the best ones you can click on, you know, 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.960 see all as well, but those are policed. I mean, 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.320 we actually employ people to go through them. So what's 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:39.080 the solution, Jonathan, I mean, what have you learned from 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:46.960 this whole bizarre and really upsetting experience. I think that 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:51.560 part of the solution is to not care so much 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:55.360 about social media. You know, since writing off Twitter, I've 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:59.480 been spending a lot more time actually reading the whole 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.640 article off of you know, off of the New York 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:07.000 Times in the Washington Post apps and not becoming almost 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:12.159 like an automaton consulting my social media feed. Um. I 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:15.640 actually feel like it's been good to pull back from 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:19.280 that world, and I think we could all do with 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:22.200 a little less time on social media, right. And it's 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.320 kind of narcissistic, don't you think, because it makes you 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:29.320 obsessed with what people are saying about you instead of 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:32.480 looking outward and saying what you think is going on 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:35.960 in the world. It's a weird inversion, isn't it. I 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:39.480 have teenage daughters and they measure, you know, their self 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:42.960 worth by their Instagram following and their life. It's crazy. 0:23:43.200 --> 0:23:48.000 It's weird that they can quantify their popularity on social media. 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:51.480 But I really wish they would just leave it alone. 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.359 You know. Do you think, Jonathan, that there's a broader 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:58.880 challenge for the mainstream press this election cycle? Um, when 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:04.359 it seems like some reporters have crossed the line from 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:10.840 just covering the campaign to describing Trump and his candidacy 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:14.480 and his supporters in ways that might have seemed too 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:18.400 much like advocacy, UM for the other side or against 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:23.440 one side. Do you think that the mainstream press reinforces 0:24:23.480 --> 0:24:27.520 this narrative of a liberal bias based on the way 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:31.679 some are covering Donald Trump. I think I and a 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:37.000 lot of journalists involved in watching this campaign are wrestling 0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:40.880 with this because on the one hand, we have an 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:46.080 obligation to fact check and to cover any candidate with 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:50.080 a jaundiced eye, with a sense that they can't just 0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:53.199 get away with the big lie saying something over and 0:24:53.200 --> 0:24:56.280 over until we all accept it. It's our responsibility to 0:24:56.400 --> 0:25:01.119 point out when something is just factually in accurate, untrue. 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:05.760 I think that you know, famously, the Huffington Post declared 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:08.600 that they weren't going to cover Donald Trump as a 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:10.879