Even Twitter’s CEO admits he can’t keep track of his company’s banning policy.
Jack Dorsey made a few damning admissions and omissions during his interview with radio host Joe Rogan on February 2. While Rogan has been heavily panned by his fanbase for giving Dorsey “softball” questions, Dorsey has voiced openly contradictory positions on freedom of speech as well as his platform’s policies.
The interview rapidly became one of Rogan’s least popular videos, with only 7,700 likes, compared to 49,000 dislikes — nearly a 7-to-1 negative ratio. Many viewers commented that they have left his fanbase for good.
Dorsey made numerous statements appealing to the free market of ideas while glossing over his platform’s problematic relationship with free speech. Twitter has numerous cases of banning high profile conservative speakers for “offensive” tweets that violate their terms of service, such as those which misgender people.
On the other hand, Dorsey claimed he goes to great lengths to respect the speech rights of terrorists. When asked about how he responds to ISIS members using his platform, he responded that while he first consults with law enforcement he also seeks counsel from “a bunch of civil societies that we talk to get their take on it as well. We try to balance that across spectrums whether it be organizations that are more focused on preventing online harassment all the way to the ACLU and the FF who are protecting the First Amendment online.”
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The most openly hypocritical part of the interview was when Dorsey was asked about the banning of conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones. Dorsey first accused Jones of “[violating] our terms of service and our policy” then only shortly after that noted that he was "not sure what the actual violations were."
The Twitter CEO has had several other cases of sudden and inconsistently enforced censorship policies, and confusingly commented that he doesn't like censorship and that everyone has a right to social media platforms.
His company’s lack of response to celebrities calling for violence against the defamed Covington high school students was reported on NewsBusters in January. In the interview, Dorsey commented, “We have to pay attention to folks who are using twitter to shut down the voices of others...we also have to pay attention to where people are using it to put other folks in physical danger, that is where we need to be most severe, but otherwise everyone has a right to these technologies.”
According to YahooFinance, multiple users copy and pasted a deleted comment from free speech YouTuber Sargon of Akkad (aka Carl Benjamin) who reportedly responded to the video by saying “If we have a right to use social media, you have no justification for banning people, Jack."
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