Gadgetory

so I love Twitter okay it's no secret but at the same time I am very much aware that it has problems it faces challenges it is somewhat of a toxic environment so what can Twitter do to sort of just make it a little better right so Twitter has been working for the past couple years to provide all these apologies and maiya culpas and say we're gonna do better we're gonna do better but it never really actually changes Jack Dorsey very recently said look what we're gonna do is we're going to open up verifications they're gonna open it up they say to just about everybody so the idea is is that the bots the trolls a lot of these other folks that cause a lot of problems on Twitter maybe they wouldn't be verified and it's a little bit more of a buyer beware you wouldn't you wouldn't have to worry as much or maybe those folks would fall back a little bit more into the into the ether they wouldn't be as persuasive or as powerful as they are now if more people have verification but don't they also face the problem of people conflating that badge with some sort of endorsement yeah right it's a big so it's good that you mentioned that so there's this guy Jason Kessler he was he's a white supremacist and he was behind the Charlottesville March last year Twitter gave him a verification badge right and people flipped out they really didn't like it because they thought that this was Twitter basically endorsing a white supremacist and they go and they say no that's not what we're doing we're just confirming the fact that Jason Jason Gesser like that piece of is that piece of basically right maybe it helps out with accountability I mean that's got to be some of the you know focus is to sort of pin these things remove the anonymity to some degree and have people be more responsible for what the right yeah the only problem is is that as I started with Twitter has been trying to clear out the toxic behavior the negativity the scamming all this other nonsense on its site for years is this something that's really going to solve the problem I don't know maybe the verification is there there are people that are gonna scam that and figure out ways to game that too and then that little checkmark that little badge price so why did it take so long I mean I know like you said they've been fighting this over and over it seems like they can do no good every time there's some sort of controversy they have an immediate response and it seems like they just dropped the ball over and over again and I'm not saying this is something that should have a defined playbook but why is it only now that they decided to do more widespread verification okay so first of all they had to come up with the idea yeah a lot of these different social media platforms they have like the check mark it's not just Twitter it's Facebook its Instagram and they're all basically like for celebrities for your Kim Kardashian's and your Donald Trump's and everything to verify that but I a lot of it is also like a cat-and-mouse game where once you pivot to something else once you switch this this policy or whatever folks that are gonna troll they're gonna figure out ways to troll things or they're gonna create new accounts I mean like at this point you still don't need to like give your driver's license to Twitter to open up an account and I don't think you should but that would be a way of verifying your identity but look it makes sense it's like what's the point of it being a vanity right if you could make verification a little bit broader and make it so that people actually know who they're talking to a little bit more sure I mean then then let's let's top it with the whole thing that like I'm just burnishing my reputation with this little checkmark yeah I mean we're getting to a point where Twitter has become the sort of it's like the stenographer of life right and we're sort of documenting every last thing why not get to the point where everyone is sort of identified as who they say they are on Twitter if anything because it has become the world sort of like press release machine and why not be verified on something like yeah it was for a time it seemed as though Twitter might just basically die and you know get crushed by its own weight yeah and it wasn't gonna solve those problems I think Donald Trump has obviously reinvigorated the platform and proven that Twitter is gonna last a very long time because it's too important as this marketplace of ideas is this place where everybody goes or a lot of people go just express themselves and to express what's going on in this very breaking news fashion so the more the Twitter can do something whether it's these verification check marks or something else to try to keep things going and make it less crappy that could I hope benefit everybody right all right awfully Twitter on itself [Laughter]