Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

• Jack’s goal with Twitter – Make it a place where people can learn from conversation
• Sam has some pretty good ideas for improving Twitter:
  • In addition to a “like” button, there should be a “this changed my mind” or a “I learned something from this tweet” button
    • There was a proposal at one point for the “favorite” button to be changed to the “thanks” button –This would have, in Jack’s mind, allowed people to more easily express gratitude for tweets that they found valuable
  • Twitter should implement some form of dashboard, so people would be able to see how siloed they are in terms of information – “People might not know or be aware that they’re only getting one side of a story”
• As of right now on Twitter, you can only follow an account – not an interest, a topic, or a conversation
  • Perhaps this will change in the future
• Why can’t people edit tweets?
  • It would add a significant delay into the system
    • Certain “Twittters” rely on very real time information – like NBA Twitter
  • There’s also the issue of retweets
    • If you were to tweet an idea or thought, and people were to retweet it, but then you went back to change the tweet to an opposing view…..you can see how that would be an issue for the people who retweeted the original tweet
• Twitter is thinking about implementing some sort of “clarification” function
  • This would allow people to clarify what they meant in an older tweet
• Twitter is looking into allowing users to have the ability to have more control over who replies to specific tweets
  • For example, perhaps you would be able to hide replies from the conversation that people see
• Jack views “tweeters” as the “host of a conversation”
• Donald Trump has not been banned from Twitter because…
  • “We do have a set of rules that we enforce on every account. We have an exception of newsworthiness and public interest, and we do believe that a lot of the things that people might assume Trump to have violated have a public interest aspect to them.”
• “I want to get to a world where people are walking away from Twitter feeling like they learned something new that benefits them”

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org



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In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jack Dorsey about how he manages his dual CEO roles at Square and Twitter, the role that Twitter places in journalism, how it’s different from other social media, what makes a conversation healthy, the logic by which Twitter suspends people, the argument for kicking Trump off the platform, Jack’s practice of meditation, and other topics.

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