Twitter’s design flaw that stunts healthy, civil, productive conversations
Last month, the Twitterverse stumbled upon an all-too-common situation that is worth discussing in more than 280 characters. Deleting a Tweet is the deficient but only available option to stop the viral spread of incomplete information as new context arises. Twitter has a product design flaw that stunts productive conversations, and it’s time to lobby Twitter to make a change.
This is Part 2 in the series. In Part 1, we looked at the ‘side effects’ of an attention economy.
Last month, I posted a Tweet that went viral and garnered 1.7M+ impressions (see Part 1 for details). As more people saw the tweet, I learned additional context — some confirming and some denying elements of the Tweet.
The following two days were a frustrating experience, because I was not able to add any context into the conversation. Only the original Tweet goes viral.
Twitter has a huge flaw in its product: the author of a post has only one suboptimal way to slow down the spread of information — delete the Tweet. This design flaw hinders our ability to engage in an open, civil, and public conversation around the world.
I believe we need to be responsible for the things we say/put out into the world, and share how we’ve shifted our thinking over time as more information becomes available. I don’t want to create a culture where someone can say “shithole,” deny it, and obfuscate truth. Deleting a Tweet obfuscates truth, and we lose the conversation and clarifications.
Last month, some users crafted shame-inducing arguments stating that I kept the Tweet for popularity reasons.
I can feel the outrage. When something is broken, it is easy to shift blame to the individual instead of fighting for a system change (see fundamental attribution error). Ad hominem attacks are effortless; shipping paradigm-shifting product changes takes work.
There are many product updates Twitter could ship to give power back to the individual and slow down the flow of information while a Tweet’s veracity is under review:
(1) Allow the author of the Tweet to turn-off retweets.
(2) Allow the author of the Tweet to cluster multiple Tweets. If a user wants to retweet the original post, s/he would have to retweet a bundle of Tweets. If this option were available, I would have added the Instagram CTO and Dopamine Labs clarifications. If Twitter is concerned about this feature clogging the feed, it could turn on after a certain level of virality.
(3) Give the author the ability to “flag” a Tweet. This could be a general flag or spectific — perhaps “under review” or “read the full thread.”
(4) Give the community the ability to “flag” a Tweet. What if I went away for the weekend and couldn’t append updates? If members in the community see an error, allow them to flag — or downvote.
(5) Give the author the ability to prompt the user with a message before re-tweeting (e.g., “read the full thread before retweeting” or “new facts have emerged, retweet with caution”)
I would have used any of these features last month, but they do not exist yet in the app.
(6) While I don’t strongly support this option, Twitter could give the author the ability to edit the Tweet (HT Casey Newton). If this option is selected, the Tweet should have an audit trail similar to Facebook post updates that include the history.
If we all agree that fake news erodes trust in our society, deleting a Tweet is the worst option we have to stop the viral spread of information. We lose the ability to link back to the offending message, and the conversation and context becomes challenging to reconstruct.
The criticism that struck me the most was from Benedict Evans, a senior partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), who posted multiple Tweets over the weekend pushing me to delete the post. Andreessen Horowitz is a VC firm well-known in the Valley for investing millions in crypto/blockchain technologies, which I also strongly support. The a16z team has made multiple arguments about how blockchains are powerful sources of truth because they have immutable, time-stamped records, removing the risk of having a rogue central system administrator edit, modify, delete, or alter records. In a blockchain-based future, it’s not possible to delete.
In the Internet we have today, once something is said publicly, copied, and shared to multiple sources, the high fidelity option we have is to move forward and to append.
As an individual, I’m responsible for what I write publicly and for updating my position as more information becomes available.
As a system platform, Twitter, is responsible for providing tools that stop the spread of misleading content while preserving an audit trial so the community can discern truth.
The platforms we use to communicate impact how information spreads and have consequences on elections, politics, society — and they have meaningful, visceral impacts on our individual behaviors and emotions. The platforms have tried to dodge responsibility by claiming a “neutral” platform, but product decisions impact the accessability of information, audit trails, and accuracy.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged that the platform needs to optimize for different metrics and released a request for proposal to “increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation.” This is a landmark moment for the company as it asks the public for ways to create a better system.
If we are serious about “fixing” social media, it’s time to step into the arena, update the system, and fix product design failures. If you are committed to quickly verifying the truth and stopping the flow of misleading content, if you recognize that more facts will emerge over time, submit a proposal to Twitter for how to ship a better product.
I’ve submitted mine.
#ForAHealthierTwitter
Many thanks to Dan Romero, Diana Kimball Berlin, Renee DiResta, Ellen Chisa, Seth Rosenberg, Yasmin Razavi, veronicaosinski, Addison Godine, Fred Ehrsam, Caitlin Strandberg, and three [redacted] others who talked with me about the Tweet and read through this series to provide feedback/ideas for how we can make our digital worlds better.
