美国国家公共电台 NPR Twitter's Dual Challenges: Taming The Trolls, Attracting More Users

Twitter's Dual 1 Challenges: Taming The Trolls, Attracting More Users 

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0004:53repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser 2 to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: 

This presidential election year has tested the limits of free speech on Twitter. It's a prime political platform for Donald Trump 3 and also for the correspondents covering both presidential candidates and for the purveyors of hate speech. Just the other day on this program, we talked with Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who has been targeted by thousands and thousands of anti-Semitic tweets. Emily Bell is here to give us rather more than 140 characters about the social media service. She is director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism 5. She's in New York. Welcome to the program.

EMILY BELL: Thank you, Steve.

INSKEEP: How bad is the quality of debate on Twitter right now?

BELL: Well, as with all of these things, that depends. If you are targeted by trolls, it's a pretty terrible and intolerable place to be. If you're involved in some of the more enlightened back and forths, it can actually be a remarkably 6 powerful and exhilarating tool. The problem Twitter has is that the former has certainly become perceived to be more prevalent than the latter.

INSKEEP: I guess we should explain for people who aren't on Twitter or aren't on it all the time. In Facebook, you can kind of create your own world and have your own friends and keep other people out of it. Twitter, you can - you can work on that, but the opening precept 7 is that it's open to everybody. Everybody sees what you write, and almost anybody can fire - fire shots at you.

BELL: That's right. It's really a broadcast platform, and it was designed as such right from the outset. The founders 8 said, we want something that connects the world. And if you look at the trajectory 9 of that versus 10 Facebook, Facebook started from a place of pretty profound control. You know, it really tightly controlled how it grew. It's very restrictive in terms of how you represent yourself on there. And I think that, you know, this idea that Twitter was a more broadcast platform, was a freer platform has ultimately caused it many more commercial problems as it's - as it's evolved.

INSKEEP: Because they have 300 million users, but they're actually having trouble making money with 300 million people. What - does something need to change about the debate on Twitter?

BELL: Well, I think that it's certainly the case that they have not properly tackled this idea of hate speech and, if you like, sort of, you know, coarsening of discourse 11, which, actually, you know, it - it can be framed as this is a free-speech problem. But the thing with all kind of - as we all know, you know, if you allow very free speech, what you end up doing is actually chilling the rights or the - or the possibility that others will join in.

And that's really what's - what's happened on Twitter. And it's also, you know, just not a great commercial environment, even when it's very powerful. You know, my belief is it is an iteration of the free press. But like previous iterations of the free press, things that make it very effective also make it, you know, slightly uncomfortable for advertisers.

INSKEEP: Although, is this - is this hard for Twitter to do here? They are a private company. They can limit speech if they want to. They have guidelines prohibiting hateful speech or harassment 12. But at the same time, who really gets to judge that?

BELL: Well, I think that this is a core problem, which is, as you say, you know, kind of that it's platform company that says, well, we don't want to edit or stop anyone. That's - that's where they started out. That's not where they are now. Tens of thousands of, for instance, ISIS-related accounts have been closed down and purged 13 off the platform. The problem is that they don't have much control about who, then, opens an account.

And we even have the phenomenon in certain parts of the world where you have these troll factories of the ultimate - the automatic creation of often fake profiles, which then sort of drown out speech that they don't like. This is a phenomenon that's been observed in Russia.

INSKEEP: Sent horrid 14 messages to people again and again and again. That's what you're saying.

BELL: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that's something that, you know, that they're working hard to stop. But when the - when the principal design of your platform is about freedom and about anybody being able - anybody - everybody being on an equal playing field, really it's - it's difficult to roll back from that.

INSKEEP: In a few seconds, is this debate, even its more horrid corners, revealing something about all of us?

BELL: I think that Twitter is an incredibly powerful cultural phenomenon, and I would hate to see it go away or be diminished, but I think that there's a difference between diminishment and really tidying it up.

INSKEEP: But are we learning something about us all from being...

BELL: Yeah, I think - you know, I think that it is a mirror, if you like, to humanity. And unfortunately - but unfortunately, it's a slightly distorted mirror where those who shout loudest often get heard most. But it's also a great purveyor 4 of humanity and jokes and wonderful kind of bits of news as well as - as well as vital and urgent stuff, as well.

INSKEEP: OK, Emily Bell of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, thanks very much.

BELL: Thank you.