The problem with this argument is that it’s implicitly assuming that all curves are lines, i.e. very roughly you argue that politicians on Twitter is bad, politicians not on Twitter is good, and therefore removing one politician from Twitter is a step in the bad->good direction so it’s good. But not all curves are lines—e.g. if Twitter banned half of all politicians but chose only the conservative half, I claim that’s worse than each of the endpoints of banning nobody and banning all politicians. (Well, except for the fact that with such an outrageous show of bias they might lose some of the hold they have over the world, which would be good.) So you have to argue more specifically that removing Trump and only Trump is still good. Might be doable, but I don’t think you did it—in fact you specifically replace that narrow question with the general one (“A better question than “why are we banning Trump from Twitter?” is instead “why are we encouraging high-profile politicians to engage with potential behavioral addictions?””)
I agree with your point in general (not all curves are lines) so if the best possible state for Twitter is to have no politicians (and I would say ultimately no users, at least in its current form), then removing Trump may work like chemotherapy or something like that—you feel worse before you feel better.
A reasonable model of reality
Like a quadratic curve that drops below 0 and then rises back up as more people are removed.
I accept that as a possibility.
My intuition would be that this was not the case here. Trump’s mixed messages about the people invading the capitol building struck me as irresponsible (much worse than, say, drunk driving). Perhaps only a temporary ban was necessary there, sure. But ultimately there’s very little question in my mind that Trump is healthier off Twitter.
I’ll also say the Donald Trump that left the Reform party when it was clear that party was falling prey to entryism is not the same Donald Trump in that was in office in 2020. I would love to hear anecdotes of people who knew him personally who could be somewhat objective about it (I realize Jaron is biased there, but it’s still an important point) to see how various forms of reach-seeking (ratings, likes, retweets, etc) changed him.
One of the largest hazards influencers face is audience capture. I can only speak to what my gut says, but I think he painted himself in a corner where he had to cater to nearly mutually exclusive groups on the right.
There are two possible meanings to phrases like “banning Trump is a good thing”, and I think you are conflating the two in a motte-and-bailey. The motte is “the fact that Trump is banned is a good thing for Trump’s health”. This is likely true for the reasons you mention (Twitter is a drug etc). The bailey is “the decision process that Twitter used to ban Trump (which, as an ongoing process, has also been used to ban people in the past and will presumably be used to ban people in the future) is a good thing for the world”. But to defend this statement, all claims about whether Trump himself is healthier off Twitter are irrelevant, because Twitter is obviously not banning people for their own health (they’re the cause of the addiction!). Even if every individual person they choose to ban is personally better off banned, if the process is flawed (as our simplistic example, “only ban conservatives”) then the process can still be bad for the world at large.
So which of the two versions are you claiming (or is it some third thing I missed)? If your claim is just “the fact that Trump is banned is a good thing for Trump”, then fine, I don’t disagree with you, but I’m also not sure why you’d bother to write this article—why should we all care about Trump’s personal health? But if instead you’re arguing that Twitter’s process isn’t broken, then stop hiding in that motte.
I wrote this primarily because there is a category error in terms of how people think about Twitter, and how Twitter presents itself to the public. I didn’t spend as much time on the latter case because I don’t know that many people reading this work for Twitter.
If I had the opportunity to write an essay for Jack Dorsey I would basically say “hey, you’ve created a behavioral addiction and you need to manage it like you’re managing a behavioral addiction and not pretend it’s anything but that.”
You can say what you want about alcohol and tobacco, but at least they acknowledge they’re peddling an addictive vice. They at least encourage people to be responsible, even if it’s nearly an empty gesture. Twitter made their own addiction and they won’t cop to it. They’re making decisions in a way that attempts to shift the blame on to the people being banned and it’s sort of like Purdue Pharma telling people if they’re hooked on oxycodone, it’s entirely their own fault. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/opioid-manufacturer-purdue-pharma-pleads-guilty-fraud-and-kickback-conspiracies
Twitters decision making is flawed largely because they’re pretending they’re not a behavioral addiction that rewards antisocial behavior from their users.
I perhaps should have been harder on them here if I have an impression otherwise.
The problem with this argument is that it’s implicitly assuming that all curves are lines, i.e. very roughly you argue that politicians on Twitter is bad, politicians not on Twitter is good, and therefore removing one politician from Twitter is a step in the bad->good direction so it’s good. But not all curves are lines—e.g. if Twitter banned half of all politicians but chose only the conservative half, I claim that’s worse than each of the endpoints of banning nobody and banning all politicians. (Well, except for the fact that with such an outrageous show of bias they might lose some of the hold they have over the world, which would be good.) So you have to argue more specifically that removing Trump and only Trump is still good. Might be doable, but I don’t think you did it—in fact you specifically replace that narrow question with the general one (“A better question than “why are we banning Trump from Twitter?” is instead “why are we encouraging high-profile politicians to engage with potential behavioral addictions?””)
That’s likely to be good for Trump. As you observed, there’s much more work to do.
I agree with your point in general (not all curves are lines) so if the best possible state for Twitter is to have no politicians (and I would say ultimately no users, at least in its current form), then removing Trump may work like chemotherapy or something like that—you feel worse before you feel better.
Like a quadratic curve that drops below 0 and then rises back up as more people are removed.
I accept that as a possibility.
My intuition would be that this was not the case here. Trump’s mixed messages about the people invading the capitol building struck me as irresponsible (much worse than, say, drunk driving). Perhaps only a temporary ban was necessary there, sure. But ultimately there’s very little question in my mind that Trump is healthier off Twitter.
I’ll also say the Donald Trump that left the Reform party when it was clear that party was falling prey to entryism is not the same Donald Trump in that was in office in 2020. I would love to hear anecdotes of people who knew him personally who could be somewhat objective about it (I realize Jaron is biased there, but it’s still an important point) to see how various forms of reach-seeking (ratings, likes, retweets, etc) changed him.
One of the largest hazards influencers face is audience capture. I can only speak to what my gut says, but I think he painted himself in a corner where he had to cater to nearly mutually exclusive groups on the right.
There are two possible meanings to phrases like “banning Trump is a good thing”, and I think you are conflating the two in a motte-and-bailey. The motte is “the fact that Trump is banned is a good thing for Trump’s health”. This is likely true for the reasons you mention (Twitter is a drug etc). The bailey is “the decision process that Twitter used to ban Trump (which, as an ongoing process, has also been used to ban people in the past and will presumably be used to ban people in the future) is a good thing for the world”. But to defend this statement, all claims about whether Trump himself is healthier off Twitter are irrelevant, because Twitter is obviously not banning people for their own health (they’re the cause of the addiction!). Even if every individual person they choose to ban is personally better off banned, if the process is flawed (as our simplistic example, “only ban conservatives”) then the process can still be bad for the world at large.
So which of the two versions are you claiming (or is it some third thing I missed)? If your claim is just “the fact that Trump is banned is a good thing for Trump”, then fine, I don’t disagree with you, but I’m also not sure why you’d bother to write this article—why should we all care about Trump’s personal health? But if instead you’re arguing that Twitter’s process isn’t broken, then stop hiding in that motte.
I wrote this primarily because there is a category error in terms of how people think about Twitter, and how Twitter presents itself to the public. I didn’t spend as much time on the latter case because I don’t know that many people reading this work for Twitter.
If I had the opportunity to write an essay for Jack Dorsey I would basically say “hey, you’ve created a behavioral addiction and you need to manage it like you’re managing a behavioral addiction and not pretend it’s anything but that.”
You can say what you want about alcohol and tobacco, but at least they acknowledge they’re peddling an addictive vice. They at least encourage people to be responsible, even if it’s nearly an empty gesture. Twitter made their own addiction and they won’t cop to it. They’re making decisions in a way that attempts to shift the blame on to the people being banned and it’s sort of like Purdue Pharma telling people if they’re hooked on oxycodone, it’s entirely their own fault. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/opioid-manufacturer-purdue-pharma-pleads-guilty-fraud-and-kickback-conspiracies
Twitters decision making is flawed largely because they’re pretending they’re not a behavioral addiction that rewards antisocial behavior from their users.
I perhaps should have been harder on them here if I have an impression otherwise.