Episode Transcript
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hey a quick heads up the second half of
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this episode contains descriptions of sexual
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harassment and graphic threats of
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violence
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exact time codes will be in the shown us
1:00
one
1:05
of my friends was the first female
1:07
engineer at twitter and point of fact
1:09
and she reached out to me monday and she said hey
1:11
down we're starting to see
1:14
occasional spam on
1:16
twitter and when i think about
1:18
bad things on the internet i think
1:20
about you
1:21
dell harvey was twitters twenty fifth
1:24
employ in two thousand and eight she started
1:26
as the head of twitters newly created spam
1:28
and abuse team she was also the
1:30
only member of that team
1:32
harvey already had plenty of experience
1:34
cleaning up bad stuff on the internet but
1:37
something's on twitter still managed to surprise
1:39
or for example brazilian
1:41
teenage girls
1:44
i'm just gonna tell you they one of the strongest
1:47
forces on the planet
1:50
there are a lot of them on twitter and they became such
1:52
a headache for our me that she gave him an acronym be
1:55
t geez and the reason
1:57
harvey was dealing with them as the btg
1:59
is reusing to after to talk to celebrities
2:02
they were especially interested in one celebrity
2:04
who joined the platform in march two thousand
2:06
nine
2:07
percent dad's justin bieber
2:09
see that a bombing some say
2:11
that cause there's just
2:15
so every day it would wake up and
2:17
they would tweet or justin bieber we love
2:19
the some to present at justin bieber we love
2:21
he thundered present at justin bieber we love
2:23
you can to brazil over and over again we
2:26
love you justin bieber comes to brazil is
2:28
a totally fine think say on twitter remembered
2:31
twitters first use case was i'm going to
2:33
this bar the
2:34
problem was the volume of people talking
2:37
to justin bieber
2:38
they weren't intending to spam
2:40
they just really want to justin bieber to counter brazil
2:43
the problem btc is created for twitter
2:45
as they made twitter look like it was
2:47
mostly a justin bieber fan site if
2:49
you want to twitters list of trending topics
2:52
a rudimentary way to see what people were tweeting
2:54
about on the site it was dominated
2:56
by those btg massenet's but
2:59
twitter obviously want to other people to use
3:01
the platform to so dell harvey
3:03
had to figure out a way to d bieber the whole
3:05
thing
3:09
the first thing we did with like you know what let's
3:11
make it so that it's the tweets
3:14
are exact do put cats will
3:16
count one towards the trend instead
3:18
of all ten cool
3:21
done and dusted
3:22
but it takes more than a rule change to derail
3:25
be disease they responded
3:27
by tweaking each tweet just a bit
3:29
at justin bieber we love each hundred percent
3:31
one at us and before we let he kind of
3:33
brazil to at justin bieber we let me
3:36
come to brazil three
3:37
sat now they're not different kids anymore
3:40
so twitter responded again this
3:42
time it's simply changed with trending met a
3:45
tweet this algorithm to consider the freshness
3:47
of a topic not just the sheer volume of tweets
3:49
about so would a real spike
3:51
in conversation for something to trend and
3:54
sense be disease were always tweeting about
3:56
justin bieber they saw the rankings
3:58
problem solved
4:01
and there was a happy ending for the btg east
4:04
i will say the justin bieber did go to
4:06
brazil and
4:11
then they started tweeting i justin bieber
4:13
we love you please come back to brazil which really
4:15
felt like we were full circle on the whole thing
4:29
deeper sam was not a problem dell
4:31
are expected to discover a twitter but
4:33
it turned out to be the kind of thing she dealt with all the
4:35
time should look at weird stuff people
4:38
did on twitter and had to figure out if
4:40
it was okay you know a lot of what
4:42
my job really was
4:45
and a good twenty
4:46
five percent of that at least in the beginning
4:49
was just staring at what people were killing
4:52
and trying to figure out what they were
4:54
doing and if it was problematic
4:57
and if we should stop them
4:58
for help them for
5:01
to tell them what third doing
5:03
is having a negative consequence
5:05
or leave it alone entirely
5:06
dell harvey and twitter
5:08
and of dealing with much much more complicated
5:11
problems that excited justin bieber fans
5:14
but even as twitter drew it never
5:16
outgrew this core conundrums runs
5:19
this place
5:20
the company towards users
5:25
and
5:27
peter caskets land of
5:29
the giants twitter sants
5:39
twitter is a big and complicated places
5:41
for this episode on one of the help exploring
5:43
at some turn in my power learn good forever
5:47
and just age you out that alerts to the senior writer
5:49
and podcast her at wired
5:51
a large hey peter thing for having me be
5:54
a part of this morning
5:55
but on twitter for ever you
5:57
have tried all the things you'd use all the things
6:00
or your job to use all the things would so unique
6:02
about twitter
6:03
well as a journalist i found twitter
6:05
really valuable for a long time because of
6:07
the way it was a portal
6:09
to what was going on in the world i used to connect
6:11
with sources slide into people's
6:13
the and said sort of thing that's one
6:15
example but that's exactly what's unique
6:17
about twitter is that it could be anything
6:20
for anyone having yes you
6:22
are broadcasting things to the world but
6:24
it could also be in your own little space
6:26
on the internet where you sound community
6:28
over for people who cover tech like as it's particular
6:31
interesting because we're used to the
6:33
story of the touch dude
6:35
in a garage or the stanford dorm
6:37
room making the say
6:39
and with twitter that wasn't necessarily
6:42
the case played a with the people
6:44
who are using at who started to do
6:46
kind of weird things on there and not
6:48
me twitter into what it is
6:50
just the guys who built twitter didn't
6:52
know what they wanted twitter to be in the user
6:55
stepped in and said here's what it's gonna be
6:57
and then they said that one hundred thousand a million
7:00
different times because they created a million different versions
7:02
of twitter right
7:03
and as i think the uniqueness of twitter but
7:05
it's also it's liability
7:07
so
7:08
that's where episode is about say that push
7:10
and pull between platform and people
7:13
and how those people made twitter the
7:16
best and worst place on the internet
7:20
one of the intoxicating things about twitter
7:22
is just how open it is he
7:24
didn't have to be invited to the party to join
7:27
the conversation he could shop to any
7:29
part of
7:30
it sort of was this internet open might
7:32
it was this democratize space
7:35
for you can start as type into the void
7:38
in two thousand and eleven desk help had a
7:40
day job and journalism but
7:42
it turned out what she really liked was typing
7:44
jokes into the twitter void something
7:47
about twitter felt like a literal open
7:49
mike night bus with even lower steaks
7:52
with this sort of like every one dot the same problems
7:54
every day which was like the news
7:56
or the human condition and
7:59
then right into the
7:59
stay with a sentence
8:02
and a half your funny as take what
8:04
kind of funny things for your riding on twitter
8:06
at the beginning
8:07
i remember one that got me disinvited
8:09
from a potluck it was
8:11
so sad and beautiful bad my generation
8:14
well extinguish itself with homemade
8:16
community garden jam populism
8:19
my lovely friend who is still have friends
8:21
made
8:21
a lot of cap at the time missed the purpose
8:23
of it insists she said do it because of your
8:25
tweet please don't come to my potluck
8:27
you know is one of the things are that week i didn't
8:29
get the avatar seven as like att alla
8:34
this was back in twitters early days when users
8:37
were actively trying to figure out just what they
8:39
could do a disservice one of those things
8:41
was follow friday's when users would
8:43
highlight other accounts they thought cooler use
8:45
or whatever it's with the idea that you'd
8:47
want follow them to
8:49
one friday kalb got a boost from an
8:51
actual comedian
8:53
rob delaney
8:54
he wrote super funny person alert
8:56
and then i had my handle and
8:59
then that in since
9:01
my am twitter blew up
9:03
and i went from having one hundred sixty followers
9:05
ted something like eleven
9:07
hundred followers overnight i
9:10
called my mom and she was like
9:12
oh my god how much money does this mean
9:15
and i was a zero zero dollars
9:17
have a good news where it
9:18
is like great you have another two years on our
9:21
healthcare
9:22
normally twitter fame doesn't give you
9:24
anything but more twitter fence but
9:26
in this case it actually did lead to something
9:29
nell scovell a writer for david letterman
9:31
and the simpsons and a million other shows reached
9:34
out on twitter
9:35
see the on the and was like
9:37
hey i just read failure archives
9:40
and you said come to away as sleep
9:42
on my couch and i want to introduce you to some
9:44
people and i wrote back oh
9:47
so flattering thank you so much take care
9:49
all the best but
9:50
scoville was persistent and
9:52
tell flew to l a for about a year
9:54
later she landed a job writing for jimmy
9:57
kimmel she still making tv
9:59
today
10:01
so bechtel made up pretty well on twitter
10:04
at ago for you mind
10:05
well i'm mildly in there as had met that
10:07
i did that is it in follow friday's
10:10
in the early days i'm glad you give that a shout
10:12
out but unfortunately i'm still waiting for
10:14
my tv writing deal from jimmy kimmel but
10:16
that was the whole vibe on twitter back in the
10:18
early twenty pence raid of was fine
10:21
it was chaotic that is also may
10:23
be professionally useful and
10:25
it was so easy to meet interesting strangers
10:28
or better yet to find yourself in
10:30
a twitter corner with strangers who
10:32
were into the same things that you were one
10:34
of my mentors actually the first black woman
10:36
i've ever met who had you know been
10:39
an economist basically encouraged me
10:41
to join something called econ twitter i
10:43
went on twitter specifically to learn
10:45
more about like who
10:47
is concerned economists because
10:49
when i first entered economics i
10:51
go would economics and then
10:53
a bunch of pictures showed up and none
10:56
of those individuals of like me allow them or
10:58
white guys older white guys they are with
11:00
a harvard your friends then as so
11:02
i think for me i was like you know there's this
11:04
community that exists of economists that
11:06
look more at the community that i'm a part of i really
11:09
want to engage with that there was like learning
11:11
from those individuals a real time
11:13
it seems pretty obvious to say now but twitter
11:16
was about conversations
11:18
not comments on facebook he would
11:20
leave a comment on a friend's
11:21
post but
11:22
on twitter ideally you
11:24
were in a back and forth a
11:26
book of argument things that this has changed
11:29
the entire discipline of economics
11:32
twitter has become a little bit like a virtual seminar
11:34
accept everybody can see
11:35
the exchange happening in real time rights
11:38
and anybody can way in before
11:40
twitter everyone knew who paul
11:42
krugman was the most
11:44
economists weren't micro celebrities now
11:47
it was possible to make a name for yourself by sharing
11:49
your ideas on twitter
11:51
econ twitter in my opinion has flat
11:53
in
11:53
economics
11:55
you are people who would never
11:57
engage would somebody because they see
11:59
like there the top department or whatever sliding
12:02
inch others d amps right i this is
12:04
my self insert
12:06
of my favorites of different conversations i
12:08
bought were interesting and i
12:10
didn't expect these people are
12:11
response they did
12:14
i slid into chelsea clinton's the
12:16
ems and now she's my mentor
12:20
so
12:20
here's something crucial
12:21
about twitter it's
12:24
a network of networks all
12:26
running at the same time without and he
12:28
prompting from the people who actually run
12:30
the platform
12:31
but twitter users more just creating their
12:33
own space is the also treated
12:35
actual features they wish twitter had
12:38
you might say twitter had millions of people
12:40
working on the product for free
12:42
i think it's important part of the brand
12:45
histories and goldman twitters
12:46
first actual product boss
12:49
i think that the idea that the product
12:51
was so simple
12:53
and allowed for so much play
12:56
that users were unable to
12:58
a kind of pushed the boundaries of what the platform
13:00
obese becomes a really important part of
13:02
the story where even though the project
13:04
was failing from a technical perspective
13:06
people felt very attached to it and
13:08
without that we would have been a lot
13:10
of trouble which
13:11
is how we get
13:13
to the hashtag
13:14
hey justin was a know much to me has said
13:16
jones subdue him busy
13:18
work in has a rising groin hashtag
13:21
is it friday as as as
13:23
by
13:25
twenty third team has tags are ubiquitous
13:28
enough to get spooked by jimmy fallon and justin
13:30
timberlake on national tv not
13:32
a pretty passes for most people except
13:35
river and tic toc which is weird but early
13:37
and twitters life they were a crucial is confusing
13:40
part of the companies architecture even
13:42
though they weren't created by jason goldman
13:44
and true i almost think that i was a
13:46
latecomer to twitter even though i was so
13:48
one thousand one hundred and sixtieth user chris
13:51
messina work in tech in san francisco
13:53
and he was one of those guys who didn't just work and texts
13:56
he loved tech
13:57
he was a self described product sarah
14:01
he did not fall in love with twitter at
14:03
first sight
14:04
if you think about twitter back then it
14:06
was mostly just a message
14:08
fan out service meaning that you post
14:10
a message to the relay and and it sends a message out
14:12
anyone who's like listening the thought there
14:15
were no trending topics that wasn't my can
14:17
explore tab there they wasn't even search
14:19
i mean twitter so primitive was so basic
14:22
that also met messina felt he had an open
14:24
invitation to make twitter better even
14:27
though he didn't work there we had to
14:29
invent and then you know to
14:31
joel twitter into adopting
14:33
some of these formats and ideas and if they were gonna do what we
14:35
gonna do for ourselves mussina
14:37
bios as he invented the hashtag
14:39
but that's not strictly true some
14:42
forms of the internet people were already using
14:44
a pound sign declassify keywords
14:46
in a string of characters and i'm slicker
14:48
the early photo sharing site people
14:50
use hash tags to help described their photos
14:52
which made the site search hubble and more
14:55
social on twitter you could use
14:57
a hashtag didn't really do anything mussina
15:00
saw the twitter should make hashtag link
15:02
above so we inflict on hashtag
15:04
jimmy fallon to find all the
15:06
the tweets from people talking about to be silent
15:09
back in the beginning of a second internet boom he
15:11
didn't really need an invitation to piss twitter
15:13
on something if he had the audacity
15:15
you could just show up at the offices and
15:17
start talking
15:19
like mussina did in two thousand seven i
15:21
wrote this proposal actually made mock ups
15:24
and then i took the idea basically
15:26
right into twitter headquarters in south park
15:29
i kind of what in the front door to there was no security that
15:31
or was like wide open
15:34
the problem with this approach is that twitters
15:36
leaders did not want what mussina was
15:38
selling
15:39
look i will say i hate has tax
15:42
season
15:42
goldman again
15:43
i think part of our bias against them was
15:46
and this is like web one shed
15:48
however i was also against tweet as
15:51
like are now so i get out may
15:53
my taste is terrible chris
15:55
messina is still maybe a little bit
15:57
stung about being brushed off
15:59
as from him
15:59
for the rejection was just so kind
16:02
of kurt just as a too nerdy the summer
16:04
into work yeah the people who
16:06
made decisions about the future twitter we're not
16:08
interested in what i had offer at that
16:10
time
16:11
but eventually mussina and the users or
16:13
maybe reality one twitter
16:15
realized at some point that one double hash tags
16:18
did break the site easier to navigate
16:20
and also they could sell sponsored
16:23
hash tags as an ad product revenue
16:24
so
16:26
any end twitter dot
16:28
behind bastide but it
16:30
was the users to figure out
16:32
what could really make them special
16:34
when i was on twitter at ten o'clock
16:36
at night at eleven o'clock at night when
16:38
i was seeing was very different than
16:40
the new space conversations that i was having
16:43
during the day meredith
16:44
clark is a professor as
16:46
communication studies at northeastern
16:49
university she was also an early twitter
16:51
user so she saw some of the earliest
16:53
task tax
16:54
a lotta things at that time had
16:57
the hash tag after
16:58
dark on them and
17:01
after dark signals the people that
17:03
you know this is sort of like h b o
17:05
after eight o'clock it's not that a b
17:07
p g thirteen we're gonna get into rated
17:09
r territory we guarantee get into read
17:12
it at spirits or a
17:13
the we here is important in
17:16
theory it could be any on after dark
17:19
and reality clark was connecting with
17:21
a specific set of twitter users
17:23
and that is how black twitter became
17:25
apparent to me
17:26
that there were people who are using this platform
17:29
and completely different ways then i think
17:31
it had been conceived
17:32
even by it's creators
17:34
she
17:34
had tapped into block twitter twitter
17:37
is best known homegrown space
17:40
for me two thousand and nine was the year that
17:42
everything started really coming together for black
17:44
17:45
jason param black internet culture
17:48
he wrote an oral history of like twitter for wired
17:50
you
17:50
have the death of michael jackson and
17:53
this is the first time we're really seeing black folks
17:55
coming together grieving for this person
17:57
who in some way felt like a family member to them
18:00
a few days later you hit the bg awards
18:02
and then later that year you have the past
18:05
a sort of threads everything together you know you're
18:07
black lan
18:09
ashley letters than is an entrepreneur
18:11
and new york city and two thousand and
18:13
nine she was working with singer and former
18:15
disease sars adrian bile on hudson
18:18
letters than was trying to drum up hashtag
18:20
seven help connect violent hotan to her fans
18:23
was raining and there was a girl walking outside
18:25
and she threw a plastic bag over her head
18:27
and i turned to eight are now as i you know you black
18:30
land girl and
18:32
see started die laughing later
18:35
that day i got on the train and i saw
18:37
another moment that
18:39
just
18:39
dislikes learned my black folks again
18:41
to be a nice guy i got
18:43
off the train and i
18:45
threw the hassada added started going
18:47
crazy
18:48
she likes you know you're black when
18:51
you can pull your plans when it's raining outside
18:54
and with them a few hours
18:57
it is it's volcanic we
18:59
hadn't seen black folks will be corralled
19:01
together on a specific as tag
19:04
you know you're black
19:04
when you get the i this after eating a hearty
19:07
meal you know you're black lab
19:09
you show up during
19:10
puberty and you're on talking about your bee
19:12
stings you have people piling
19:14
on top of the original
19:17
tweet you know you're black when
19:19
you know used to have twenty rooms rams
19:22
people sharing experiences that feel
19:25
powerful to them on
19:27
a platform around the testers
19:29
for me it was another day playing with the hashtag
19:32
what it meant to other black people though across
19:34
twitter was that there is the space of us
19:37
as a threat to laugh at ourselves as they
19:39
stress unite
19:42
people weren't code switching in the space
19:45
we were using words phrases of hash
19:47
tags that had significant cultural
19:49
meaning with in black communities so
19:52
it wasn't is happening in a barber shop
19:54
or in a beauty salon or in
19:56
a traditionally are historically block oh
19:59
what was happening on
19:59
the internet where anyone could see
20:02
what those conversations were light
20:04
meredith
20:04
clark again something
20:06
else that made that frankness possible
20:08
was the platforms anonymity on twitter
20:11
your account didn't have to be connected
20:13
to your real identity you could use whatever
20:15
name you wanted and for some
20:17
people that meant they could be more authentic
20:20
so
20:20
was using it professionally but then i
20:22
also had a burner account so
20:24
that i could have fine without
20:26
you know damage or risks of my
20:28
job have you ever shared that
20:30
burner account name absolutely not have
20:33
a specific
20:35
like twitter could be all kinds of things it
20:38
was also one thing and particular black
20:40
twitter is funny because
20:43
black people particularly in the united sates
20:45
often use humor as a coping mechanism
20:48
for the things that we experience so
20:50
everything from everyday racism
20:53
to really traumatic incidents
20:55
i can even go back to one of the best
20:57
days with embark twitter was
20:59
the day that yahoo news published the story
21:02
the headline was trump once
21:04
a bigger navy but someone
21:06
accidentally hit the n t instead
21:09
of the be t
21:10
and so it's trump once
21:12
and n word navy
21:14
and black twitter took that
21:17
idea
21:17
of you know what a
21:19
black navy would look like
21:21
even is using this pejorative and
21:24
just had an absolute field day
21:26
making
21:26
fun of what that might be
21:28
light and that is a reflection
21:31
of what it's like to use
21:32
humor to cope with the use
21:35
of painful
21:35
epithets even when they are
21:37
accidental with the reality
21:39
of being black in this society
21:42
as think what black twitter does so well
21:44
as his idea of signifying and
21:47
been able to remix an idea and sister
21:49
meeting of it just a little bit jason
21:51
par him again so
21:53
black life for so long have been devalued
21:55
in the media as we've been told that it's
21:57
it's one thing and so twitter
22:00
gave us the chance to ces
22:03
that to radically alter that
22:05
perception and saying hey
22:07
look what's actually happening are look what's happening
22:09
in our communities
22:12
over the years black twitter became
22:15
a force of it's own even
22:17
if you'd never heard of that you bounced
22:19
into it on the platform and in
22:21
real life black twitter created
22:23
culture our power that any
22:25
user could happen to like
22:28
take he james james is
22:30
an avid burger who often found himself
22:32
on bird twitter which as
22:34
you can probably guess was a place for people
22:36
who liked tweeting about birds but
22:39
and twenty twenty the conversation
22:41
seems had online and especially
22:44
on twitter saints
22:45
were
22:46
reflecting on the news
22:48
of george floyd for taylor
22:51
and a mod aubrey
22:52
arbor he was lynched while jogging through a suburb
22:54
in georgia this was close
22:56
to home for james
22:58
a lot of people go birding in the same
23:00
way that he would just go jogging
23:02
in some neighborhood or near a neighborhood
23:05
secret
23:05
of happen to any one of them
23:07
then same saw a video of christian
23:10
cooper a black bird watcher
23:12
in new york being harassed
23:14
and a park the your blew up
23:16
on twitter and and on national tv
23:19
new details this morning other central park
23:21
confrontation gone viral prison
23:24
camp was similar to
23:26
those impulses a white woman
23:28
calling the police after a black man says
23:31
he asked her to lease her dogs
23:33
and central park
23:34
please call sense as a sudden
23:36
there's african american men threatening my list
23:38
please tell them whatever you like this
23:41
african americans and
23:42
myself
23:45
and my voice
23:56
the story of the
23:58
cooper incident
23:59
how
23:59
it was told we realize
24:02
they're so much attention of
24:05
the racial dynamics of this country
24:07
in so many of them are focused on trauma
24:09
it is true the black experience
24:12
has trauma because of what
24:14
this country is
24:15
however the black experience goes beyond
24:18
trauma the black experience includes
24:20
joy pride resistance
24:23
strengthened style and what can we
24:25
do to celebrate that into
24:27
center that in a way that we
24:29
all really need it right now
24:31
has sag like burger sweet
24:35
ass i thought on thousands
24:37
of people started tweeting about their own experiences
24:39
about being black and being outside
24:42
i have a friend of mine gave
24:44
me the data center for black burgers
24:47
week for i think it was the week and a couple days
24:49
after over three hundred
24:51
million impressions point
24:53
that hashtag to show that
24:55
there was that much attention that much appetite
24:57
that much celebration james
24:59
doesn't think that black voters we could have happened
25:02
on any other platform
25:03
twitter was public what
25:05
are the most public forum for
25:08
someone to post a video make
25:10
it's we'd share a hashtag that anybody
25:13
else can just tap clicks
25:15
and then get into said
25:17
twitter users helped turn twitter into
25:20
a powerful place but who
25:22
got to use that's our
25:24
and how to use it as
25:27
after the break
25:35
support for land of the giant
25:37
comes from mint mobile traditional
25:40
phone companies seem to have lost the plot
25:42
when it comes to contracts me this phone
25:45
plan appears simple for but it turns out to be a minefield
25:48
of hidden fees for what can you do
25:50
everyone he meets a phone right so just
25:53
as a navigate the financial hazards the phone company
25:55
throat as we do not mint mobile
25:57
was doing things differently to
25:59
the for the company to ditch retail locations
26:02
which was some paso savings on to you
26:05
to browse by as that reform plan totally
26:07
online easy shopping experience
26:10
for to save you time and money have done it myself
26:13
with my own money at work right
26:15
now mint mobile plan started fifteen dollars
26:17
a month and every plant comes with unlimited
26:19
talk text was high speed
26:21
five to get your new
26:23
unlimited wireless plan for just fifteen bucks
26:26
a month get their plans ship
26:28
to your door for free go to mint
26:30
mobile dot com slash giants
26:33
sets mint mobile dot com
26:35
slash giants such
26:37
a wireless felt assisting bucks a month that mint
26:39
mobile dot com slash giants
26:47
are so
26:52
here's a pattern
26:53
twitter users start doing something
26:55
on their own because it makes sense to them
26:58
then eventually twitters leadership
27:00
turns those behaviors into seizures
27:04
as i was one example there are
27:06
other even more primitive once i
27:08
get first the read sweet with
27:10
a user hat when people wanted to share
27:13
someone else is sweet they would copy
27:15
and paste the original tweet and then they would type
27:17
the letters are t in front of that
27:20
and at the same thing with be i medicine
27:23
at one point if he wanted everyone in your
27:25
twitter timeline to see what you were saying to another person's
27:28
you added that a period in front of the at
27:30
symbol and then the person's handle
27:33
these hats were just that tax
27:36
and only a subset of die hards even
27:38
under said how they worked until
27:40
twitter integrated them both into the platform
27:43
which is cool but new features
27:45
come with new
27:46
problems you know it's the
27:49
starry
27:49
eyed visionaries for a leg
27:51
these guys created something
27:53
that they thought would be fun and
27:55
then it took off they
27:57
were focused on the building and the create
28:00
the and all the cool things that come along
28:02
with that
28:03
dell harvey again
28:04
and it also meant that i at
28:07
that point would usually be entering much
28:09
like debbie downer with the
28:11
law
28:11
law so
28:14
guys here's
28:15
a thing i was thinking about
28:18
harvey
28:18
was the one who had to deal with the unintended
28:20
consequences like three tweets
28:23
retreating was when quote tweet came
28:25
about
28:26
right because then it became the dunked
28:28
on the i let me i'm a hum and every yeah
28:31
and then shoot it out to my
28:33
followers who might be a very different
28:35
audience than the original tweet was intended
28:38
for you can see where things can
28:40
go awry so while it's
28:42
free to listen to your users it's also
28:44
complicated which users
28:46
do you listen to michael
28:49
sippy who was twitter vp of product
28:51
back and twenty third team was grappling
28:53
with this when users started complaining about
28:55
a fundamental part of the sites the
28:58
block function block
29:00
allows you to cut someone off from seeing
29:02
or interacting with your tweets the
29:04
thing is if you blush one they
29:07
could find out
29:08
we were hearing about this from folk
29:10
swiss very large followings
29:12
the rewards hey what's happening is like or try
29:14
to block somebody and other
29:17
people will com and essentially attacked me
29:19
some
29:19
users like celebrities
29:22
one it a more polite way
29:24
to filter certain
29:24
people out of their be it's
29:27
says if he thought
29:28
okay
29:29
why not replaceable aka in with mutes
29:33
here's dell harvey again
29:34
so just mute right lakes
29:38
you're not blogs to conceal follow me and cel
29:40
mai clinton that i don't have to see all
29:42
of your clinton
29:44
you can read my tweets you can respond
29:47
but i will never see anything and
29:49
you will never know which is exactly
29:51
what the people complaining to sit be want it
29:54
so
29:54
we ship that and it was
29:56
a mistake they
29:57
rolled out the launch and
30:00
immediately people
30:01
started absolutely
30:03
losing it
30:05
that's because a whole bunch of other people
30:07
relied on twitter is block function specifically
30:10
they relied on having control over who
30:13
could see what they row maybe for
30:15
instance they were blocking a troll
30:17
and it just felt safer to know that
30:19
troll put it monitor their tweets
30:22
we have a lot of feedback from a community that
30:24
like changing a block into a mute socially removes
30:27
the agency of the person has actually doing the blocking
30:30
and it was very was really upsetting and i and much
30:32
i actually i really regret
30:34
that decision
30:36
new kid only lasted a day
30:38
there was after all a simple solution
30:41
keep both
30:42
you can block or you commute
30:45
but the fact that there's all dot so complicated
30:48
and that i got emotional he then for
30:50
some people is a testament to how
30:52
messy i can be for a platform
30:54
to follow the users lead sometimes
30:57
even the most well meaning users
30:59
will disagree on what they need so
31:02
what happens when twitter is caught
31:04
in a push and pull with users
31:06
who are not so well meaning people
31:08
who don't want to make twitter better people
31:11
who want to make it works
31:13
as a good view of a couple hundred million people on the
31:15
internet and one smokers and it doesn't
31:17
take a lot of people to actually make
31:19
it bad for everybody else
31:23
rail and us a crockett is an artist
31:25
and writer normally their timeline
31:28
was full of tweets about black radical thought
31:30
seven as theory and of course scandal
31:33
have takes but
31:34
when crockett logged on a bus from a twenty four team
31:36
they noticed something off
31:39
i'm saying sweet saying things like oh well
31:42
if he celebrates in your upholding
31:44
the patriarchy because fathers
31:46
are the patriarchy one of them
31:48
have their father's day the sexual assaults so
31:51
is this is ridiculous it's completely
31:53
like it's just bonkers
31:55
this crockett notice the
31:57
hashtag and father's day
32:00
everywhere it was the kind of for phosphorus
32:02
get a load of this idea that people couldn't help
32:05
but share on twitter at migrated
32:07
the way wild stuff on twitter often migrates
32:10
from there to the rest of the world and
32:12
some outlets like fox news
32:15
took the idea at face value
32:18
will start out as itself but the hashtag
32:20
and father's day is picking up steam
32:22
with feminists online with others and
32:24
social media center
32:25
just like interested in ending father said
32:27
interesting and the then that's really what they
32:29
want
32:30
crockett wasn't new to the internet and
32:33
something smell that they knew where to look straight
32:35
to fourteen and the anything goes
32:37
message board beloved by trolls and
32:40
other creeps sure enough crack
32:42
and found them their ginning up a hoax
32:44
they're
32:44
idea was that we're going
32:46
suits macys plausible women
32:49
of color feminists of color and
32:51
we're going to make these avatars is say
32:53
the most unhinged things it's the most ridiculous
32:56
saying you know the idea is to poison
32:58
the water so that these type of women
33:00
would not be taken seriously
33:02
it was pretty easy to unearth a fake
33:04
father's day to here
33:06
is a cell with astro turf because we
33:08
didn't know who these accounts were but
33:10
we never seen before
33:12
patrols didn't use their real names of course but
33:15
you could sniff that out crockett
33:17
and others respondents they would read
33:19
sweet and tag the fakers with their own
33:21
hashtag your slippers showing
33:24
and encourage their followers to block
33:26
the trolls and in the truth responded
33:28
to crockett response
33:30
they regrouped in there was a like rights or
33:32
think we learn from this using far right
33:35
web spaces to organize
33:37
and then amplifying the
33:39
harassment by treating numerous
33:41
accounts to turn up the volume
33:44
and like overwhelmed their targets
33:46
there
33:48
moments where
33:50
certain events give you
33:52
a preview of the future they says
33:55
what's possible
33:57
john donovan is a professor at boston university
34:00
that's why is an online misinformation
34:02
and disinformation when it
34:04
comes to social media we don't really
34:06
know what was
34:08
going to happen especially the difference
34:11
between what happens when one
34:13
person's doing something and what
34:15
happens when thousands
34:17
of people are doing something done
34:19
again says that and father's day was
34:21
a key moments a moment that crystallized
34:24
a certain kind of trolling behavior it
34:27
set up libor make fake accounts
34:29
to use that i target campaign use
34:32
that campaign to capture more attention
34:34
and then repeats later
34:36
that year twenty fourteen the
34:39
troll of the lessons from and father's
34:41
day and supervise
34:42
them i suddenly gotten
34:44
threats on the internet before but
34:47
you've gotta understand this was
34:49
a to use of them beyond
34:52
what any when spring could process
34:55
brianna
34:55
wu is a video game developer she
34:58
got into the industry because she loves
35:00
games and she wanted more
35:01
people to love games
35:03
i'm a child with the hobbies
35:04
and ninety it's i've always
35:07
felt that is in this is really
35:09
true hims kids we always shift
35:11
games when men got to
35:13
be busy rope and women were
35:15
always get the word with the fran
35:18
to have you know just the
35:20
thing you are searching for
35:22
the
35:24
happened was super mario brothers and eighty
35:26
five
35:29
so i really just wave to build
35:32
games where someone else got
35:34
to be the star
35:35
who ran her own game development studio
35:38
she was also an online conversations
35:40
about the game industry chauvinism the
35:42
stuff that happens both on screen and
35:45
behind the scenes and that
35:47
and reached a certain part of the
35:49
internet
35:50
we really a weekend this right
35:52
wing reactionary forces
35:54
on lines that pursued us
35:56
and tried to silence us
35:58
in twenty fourteen
36:00
woo became the target of one of the
36:02
most coordinated and overwhelming
36:05
online harassment campaigns in the history
36:07
of the internet the men who
36:09
came after whoa and other women use
36:12
the hashtag gamer gate just
36:15
like and father's day they wanted
36:17
to undermine the genuine conversation
36:19
women were having about massage any any
36:21
industry or less as boards
36:23
outside of twitter trolls plotted
36:26
how to take down the women speaking up
36:28
they pretended to be upset about quote unquote
36:31
ethics and video game journalism
36:34
but this was basically is bogus as
36:36
and father's day gamer gate
36:38
was so powerful that it became
36:40
shorthand for how a very small
36:42
group can organize and harass people
36:44
are mine was first
36:46
instinct was to ignore it which
36:49
was the standard advice for dealing with all
36:51
my bullies
36:52
don't feed the troll could keep
36:54
your head down don't say the wrong
36:56
thing and don't get drawn into public fights
36:59
rapes i thought about it emerged
37:01
a really ask myself if i
37:04
would be able to live myself five ten
37:06
years down the line if i just sat down
37:08
to nothing so time of women were
37:10
being run the game industry right and
37:12
left
37:13
a and
37:14
i realized i would rather if i didn't
37:17
search him back on womb and the
37:19
said guess what game are gave i'm not going
37:21
anywhere
37:22
who sent out a series of tweets
37:23
mocking that roles the
37:26
tolls escalators
37:27
the success comes back and says guess what
37:29
birch are know where you live your
37:32
dad mutilated corpse as can be on the
37:34
front page just about tonight i'm
37:37
gonna cut off her husband's asian
37:40
teams a summary be with it until you
37:42
bleed is he has a children's are
37:44
going to die to egypt
37:46
something worthwhile with your life
37:48
and a whole bunch of other harm
37:51
in one hundred people they're telling me there but
37:53
come murder of got him
37:55
men in the skull mask holding a group
37:58
of the camera and exclaiming for home it
38:00
could do my thrift on video
38:03
i mean there's no other word for it for traumatizing
38:09
people
38:09
i've been behaving badly on the internet
38:11
since dial up modems but
38:14
twitter is where and how
38:16
brianna wu was harassed the
38:18
trolls used twitter seizures to supercharged
38:21
her campaign has tax
38:23
help them coordinate their efforts three
38:26
tweets daves thousands of people access
38:28
to her private information like her
38:30
home address twitters embrace
38:32
of anonymity let the trolls operate
38:34
without worrying about repercussions
38:38
when we got in touch with twitter dell harvey
38:40
with no longer working on her own
38:42
she now had a team who could help who
38:44
deal with the worst of the attacks
38:47
twitter gave me resources
38:50
on the twitter cluster safety team where
38:52
i could send a death
38:54
threat and have had taken more seriously
38:56
than he knew just someone
38:58
without the compact the twitter
39:01
trust the safety team was trying to counteract
39:03
the next moves of the mob
39:05
that the mob move fast changing
39:08
their
39:08
tactics
39:09
kramer he figured out a way to
39:11
ah right spots that every
39:14
time i would tweet something no
39:16
matter what he would link
39:18
a bunch of like seat for this information
39:21
and right underneath it in an image links
39:23
and it would also spam that anyone
39:26
who replied to me
39:27
twitter tried to catch up with
39:29
was help
39:31
eventually moved him helping
39:33
the dissolve policies around
39:35
how to suspend the killed says said
39:37
multiple death threats it was
39:39
this real almost unpaid engineering
39:42
advisory role the she took her would twitter
39:45
just trying to help them understand
39:47
what was going on and technical level and
39:49
make a better product
39:51
going back to that time period how
39:53
did this whole experience change the way
39:55
you use social media
39:59
i say
39:59
there's a short term answer this
40:02
is really damaged raised in
40:04
a very public way in
40:06
i think there's a later answer
40:09
that a kind of took a certain
40:11
degree of my humanity away from me
40:14
near the reality is that kind of abuse
40:16
you don't come back from it he just he
40:18
tapes and nowadays
40:21
when someone sends me a rape
40:23
threats i will look at him
40:25
and
40:26
he i sit there and ago i know should
40:28
be feeling something i know i should
40:30
be feeling scared angry
40:33
his staff afraid
40:36
i know or should feel something and i
40:38
just
40:39
i feel numb and soft
40:42
and
40:43
a know i'm so much more
40:45
cynical today than i was turned
40:47
gamer tag and i i really regret
40:50
losing those parts of myself
40:52
even that embedded in that quests and
40:54
how did you change the way you use social
40:57
media really puts the onus on you whereas
40:59
the platforms said have changed
41:02
ideally society would have evolved but
41:04
instead it's really still aren't you
41:06
the person who was harassed
41:08
email i really believe see build
41:10
a community and products you
41:13
have a responsibility to make is
41:15
safe for people to use it but
41:17
that's just not the culture we're
41:20
we're gonna whoop grew up loving video games
41:23
and she no longer mix them in
41:25
some ways the trolls one
41:28
who didn't leave the internet entirely
41:31
she still on twitter and
41:33
after an unsuccessful run
41:35
for congress and twenty eighteen she
41:37
turned her attention to helping progressive
41:39
politicians with their online strategies
41:45
gamer gate help solidify
41:47
bad behavior as part of a twitter
41:50
brand so
41:50
much so that and twenty first team twitter
41:53
see ya dick costolo did something other
41:55
social media bosses never did
41:57
he owned up to it
41:59
and a
41:59
pretty wide memo castle or wrote
42:02
we suck at dealing with abuse and we
42:04
sucked at it for years it's no
42:06
secret and the rest of the world
42:08
talks about it every day we lose core
42:10
user after careers are by not
42:12
addressing simple trolling issues they
42:14
face every day remembers
42:17
even when twitter was growing fast it was still
42:19
a time platform compared to face but and
42:22
eventually twitter stop growing fast and
42:24
that man and had to work harder to find and
42:26
keep new users being known
42:28
as a toxic calcite didn't help
42:31
me and we were seeing abuse on the platform
42:34
and i think that me out i can just look
42:36
back and say we didn't best enough as
42:38
michael sippy again who ran product under castilla
42:41
we had a fantastic trust and safety to him
42:44
by they were perennially understaffed
42:46
which again is partly on me
42:48
and partly on the rest of the executive team but
42:51
it's possible twitter could have never spent
42:53
it's way out of this problem jason goldman
42:55
thanks one reason twitter was slow to react
42:57
to some of these issues had to do with who
42:59
was running twitter
43:01
the executive team apo twitter and
43:03
most of the other social media companies is
43:05
predominately white dude and like you just
43:07
experience a different level of
43:09
online interaction then literally
43:11
any other group of people in the world
43:14
by whether you're a woman or you're
43:16
black or your are non english speaker
43:19
and we were just kind of blind to that
43:21
the golden also things to twitter along
43:24
with every other social media company was
43:26
just too slow to realize just
43:28
how much work it would have to do to
43:30
manage the way users used and
43:32
abused the platform that moderation
43:35
isn't an afterthought
43:37
it's the business
43:40
for too long the industry and i put
43:42
myself in this category thought of content moderation
43:44
as like fixing bugs like all like
43:46
people abuse the system and will just like kind of patch
43:48
as we all live pregnant on and else these are bugs
43:51
that you need effect this is like the feature
43:53
this is like what you are actually providing
43:55
to the world is a better experience
43:58
for the type of content that is being
43:59
in
44:00
dell harvey says senior leadership
44:03
wasn't really interested in abuse and
44:05
less it ended up a new stories them
44:07
it asked her how did this happen
44:10
and then you explain and a night owl the
44:12
have a mortgage is some more engineers and
44:14
then the engineers dot com and then you
44:16
have the conversation again the next time
44:19
harvey understands why her team didn't
44:21
get the resources she needed but
44:23
that's different than feeling good about it you
44:26
know the
44:26
starry eyed visionaries wanted
44:28
all of those things that i
44:30
wanted to support and trust and safety
44:33
and and challenge was that when
44:35
you're looking at the short term and your options
44:37
are spenders quarter building a new
44:40
user say saying cool feature
44:42
worse than this quarter building
44:44
internal infrastructure and tooling that
44:46
will make your ability to respond
44:49
to axe tickets
44:50
much more robust
44:52
these are facing feature tends
44:55
to land and not so much the internal
44:57
tools
45:00
those trade honest intentions harvey
45:02
is something about the blind
45:05
spots goldman is talking about
45:07
exists everywhere at every
45:09
internet company
45:11
but there's something else going on
45:12
with twitter
45:14
what is unique about twitters ability
45:16
to amplify ideas
45:19
says it's just made it and it is so different
45:21
from other platforms saw
45:22
the damn journalists
45:24
turned on of then again and note
45:27
taken a journalist
45:29
like me and peter weren't hanging
45:31
out on twitter and telling people about all
45:33
of the outrageous stuff on a say maybe
45:35
there wouldn't be so much outrageous
45:38
so
45:39
i mean it's really the place reason that
45:41
the most attention
45:42
with twitter it was so much easier
45:45
said yet at the people you
45:47
wanted to harass because of the openness
45:49
as a platform
45:51
and also to get attention for harassing
45:53
people by dragging and journalists
45:55
and and using the ems
45:58
and replies to
45:59
make it known
46:01
that this was happening
46:03
the people who build twitter didn't really know what
46:05
they were launching when they launched at but
46:08
they all agreed that it should be a place
46:10
where anyone could say anything now
46:13
we've realized how tricky and maybe
46:15
and possibly turkey that notion
46:17
can be
46:18
we have to take the paradox
46:21
of social media seriously which
46:23
on the one hand it does all of this connect
46:25
is worth that brings us
46:27
closer together with like minded individuals
46:30
but
46:30
it also does all this
46:31
connective work that brings us together with like
46:33
minded individuals
46:35
on the far right and extremists
46:39
so here was the conundrum the
46:41
users may twitter some
46:44
made the site delightful others made
46:46
it miserable and
46:48
for the users who invested time and energy
46:50
to turn the platform into their homes twitter
46:53
wasn't something they could just abandon
46:55
their was so much to the last within
46:58
communities of feminists and women
47:00
and people of color on line
47:03
trains people because
47:05
social media for so long
47:07
before that had been
47:09
a place where they said
47:10
reach out and find says
47:14
they could join
47:14
groups and builds
47:16
resiliency together so
47:18
the idea that you would just walk away from
47:21
a all
47:21
because you're being serially
47:23
harassed or frauds for
47:26
a lot of people
47:27
wasn't an option because it lead to further
47:29
isolation by
47:31
twenty fifteen twitter was
47:33
in such bad shape that even the people running
47:35
it talking about how bad it was the
47:38
users had created this platform and now
47:40
some of them on making it unusable
47:43
and what was about the change that the reality of twitter
47:45
online was shaping how reality offline
47:47
and ways we could never match
47:53
the day of january sex i
47:55
am told to things
47:57
i am supposed to do one is
47:59
too
47:59
you find are reasons and
48:02
away to permanently suspend donald trump and
48:04
to to make the instructions
48:07
and our next episode twitter
48:09
tries to save itself from
48:11
some of it's users
48:19
audio clips from the tonight show jimmy
48:21
fallon today show good morning
48:23
america and fox and friends land
48:26
of a giants the twitter fantasy is a production
48:28
of box and the box media podcast
48:30
networks special thanks to lauren
48:33
good for co hosting this episode and for help
48:35
reporting and producing at
48:37
a lower coming a lot assume he produced this episode
48:40
that fresca his early producer meghan
48:42
to name is or editor charlotte silver
48:44
is our fact checker friend and macfarlane
48:46
compose the show's theme matthew
48:48
billie engineer this episode art
48:51
song as or show runner nice shot kirwan
48:53
as are executive producer computer
48:55
casket you like this episode as
48:57
always please share it and follow
49:00
the show and your podcast app to get the
49:02
next episode
49:09
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