Why Twitter shouldn’t delete user accounts
Plus: Tiny mice; electronic grandchildren; lazy deepfakes and more!
If any social network should function as the world’s “town square” or “social network of record,” it’s Twitter. and that’s why Twitter should strive to provide a platform for everyone to say just about anything — good, the bad and the ugly.
After years of dragging its feet, Twitter has gotten more active at banishing users — deleting the accounts of people who violate terms of service around hate speech, disinformation and personal attacks.
The background of all this is the absurd historical attempt to figure out if social networks are “public utilities,” like the phone system, in which the phone service providers don’t know and don’t care what is actually said, or more like a magazine, in which editors choose, approve and are responsible for every word published.
Obviously social networks like Twitter are somewhere in the middle, controlling content on the edges but mostly not caring what’s said.
More accurately, social networks can’t be reasonably compared to either telephones or magazines. They’re something else entirely.
The weird thing about Twitter is that right up to the point where it terminates an account, it radically amplifies it.
For example, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been approaching the brink of deplatforming on Twitter for weeks because of her comments questioning the efficacy of Covid vaccines. But until Greene gets terminated forever, Twitter is actively amplifying her views by allowing its algorithms to deliver her tweets (and other people’s tweets about her tweets) to many times more people than who actually follower her. Her name is one of the most frequent trending topics on Twitter.
This is madness. Why does Twitter amplify, amplify, amplify then terminate?
I think there’s a better way. For the worst offenders, Twitter should neither amplify nor terminate.
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. Carry the world’s smallest mouse anywhere (just don’t swallow it)
This combination wireless mouse and laser pointer is super tiny. Called ZeroMouse, the device is less than two inches long and weighs only one ounce. And the mouse feature works on any surface and with any operating system, according to the company that makes it.
2. Electronic grandchildren? Why, Japan? Why?
Japanese toy maker Tamara Tomy is selling an electronic grandchild called “Ami-chan” for senior citizens who want a grandchild but don’t care if it’s an actual human or not. The simulated grandchild boasts a 1,600-word vocabulary and face recognition so it can call the grandparent/owner by name. It also sings nursery rhymes, asks questions and even talks in its sleep.
3. Bruce Willis lets Russian phone company use his deepfake likeness in ads
I made the observation in this newsletter recently that deepfake video and audio is becoming ordinary, commonplace, banal. Now I’ve learned that Bruce Willis granted permission to a Russian mobile phone company called MegaFon to create and use a deepfake of Willis in a series of 15 ads that will play in Russia. The stated reason for deepfake Bruce Willis instead of real Bruce Willis is that Bruce Willis doesn’t have to travel during Covid and do the work of performing in the ads. But I think the real reason is that deepfake Bruce Willis is younger and thinner than real-life Bruce Willis. In any event, we’ve now entered the era of using deepfakes for reasons of expediency or vanity. Who knows? If the campaign is successful, they could license Bruce Willis’s deepfake likeness in perpetuity. Talk about die hard.
Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotion
Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:
Behavior transparency: where application security meets cyber awareness
I was on This Week in Tech!
Data-driven personalization and trust: Finding the right balance
Old-fashioned business travel is dead (but don't blame the pandemic)
The art and practice of digital workplace governance
CURRENT LOCATION: Los Angeles, California
