Have you ever noticed how when Donald Trump is on camera talking, a whole lot of words are coming out of his mouth, but none of them are really making sense?
Even when people ask him very direct, sometimes close-ended questions, he seems unable to answer them in a way that indicates there is any amount of intelligence in him. He engages in a lot of double-talk, makes a lot of faces and hand gestures that would lead you to believe he is actually going to say something noteworthy—but then it all falls apart at the end, and the question has to be repeated because he never answered it in the first place.
Huffington Post’s Ashley Feinberg recently interviewed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and her descriptions of his conversation and mannerisms sound so much like the dotard in chief, I am wondering if maybe they are actually the same person.
Like maybe Jack Dorsey really is just Donald Trump in disguise.
Hear me out on this.
Both Dorsey and Trump seem to subscribe to the “gotta hear both sides” manner of dealing with racists, Nazis and white nationalists. Rather than call it what it is, they can come up with 100 excuses as to why what the racists are doing is not exactly bad per se, it just looks that way.
Neither Trump nor Dorsey seem to have the ability to answer a straight question. No matter how simply you ask the question, their answer makes it seem like you asked them to spell out antidisestablishmentarianism in Braille using only tongue clicks and sign language.
And when they do “answer” a question, what comes out of their mouths is a bunch of nonsensical babbling that does nothing to move the conversation forward and leaves you with even more questions than you had when the discussion began.
When asked about Twitter’s pervasive and persistent harassment problem that they seem either unwilling or unable to do something about, Dorsey told Feinberg that the platform is working on an automated system that would be able to spot harassment even before it is reported by the target/victim. Oh, really? Cool. So Feinberg asked him what Twitter is doing in the meantime until that system is in place.
Dorsey’s response:
Most of our priority right now in terms of health, which is the No. 1 priority of the company, is around being proactive. How do we remove the burden from the victims or bystanders from reporting in the first place? It’s way too mechanical. It’s way too much work. ... But ultimately, we want to make sure that the number of reports that we receive is trending downward. And that will be because of two reasons. One, people are seeing far less abuse or harassment or other things that are against the terms of service. Or that we’re being more proactive about it. So we want to do both. So a lot of our work is that, and then better prioritization in the meantime. A lot more transparency, clearer actions within the product.
What in the word salad hell? He totally did not answer her question. Thank you, Mr. Trump. I mean Dorsey.
So when Feinberg pressed him and asked him what he meant by “clearer actions within the product,” he told her that they are going to start by eventually making the “report” button bigger and more obvious.
Sounds like a gigantic “wall” of bullshit if you ask me. Making the report button bigger isn’t going to help anything, especially when as people do report, they are constantly told that the action they are reporting “doesn’t violate Twitter’s policy.”
Feinberg pointed that out when asking about people getting doxed on the platform.
Jack’s response:
It should. But again, we’re not in a great state right now with our systems because they rely upon reporting. So we’re not going to take any action unless it’s reported. And then we take action, and we have a whole queue that we have to get through. We’re moving to a world that’s a lot more proactive by utilizing machine learning. But that will have errors and mistakes. So we don’t feel good about anyone being doxed, certainly. We want to catch everything as much as we can, but there are limitations to how much we can do.
Huh? She just told him that when people report being doxed, they get a response back saying that their personal information being posted does not violate Twitter rules. His question doesn’t address her concern at all, nor does it provide any type of clarity. Moving on…
Feinberg asked Dorsey if there is anything Donald Trump could do to get kicked off the platform.
People have been raising concerns over Trump’s tweets since he ascended to the presidency. He frequently tweets attacks against his opponents and has on occasion sent tweets that people consider to be provoking other world leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
Dorsey and Twitter claim they allow Trump to stay on the platform despite his questionable tweets because “We believe it’s important that the world sees how global leaders think and how they act. And we think the conversation that ensues around that is critical.”
It’s another non-answer, and we have come to expect that from Dorsey and everyone else at Twitter.
Feinberg got more specific and asked “OK, but if Trump tweeted out asking each of his followers to murder one journalist, would you remove him?”
What do you think his response was? Don’t bother guessing. I’ll share it with you.
“That would be a violent threat. We’d definitely ... You know we’re in constant communication with all governments around the world. So we’d certainly talk about it,” Dorsey responded in another non-answer.
“OK, but if he did that, would that be grounds to—,” Feinberg pressed.
“I’m not going to talk about particulars. We’ve established protocol, it’s transparent. It’s out there for everyone to read. We have, independent of the U.S. president, we have conversations with all governments. It’s not just limited to this one,” Dorsey said.
So no, there is nothing Donald Trump could do to get kicked off Twitter.
And if that is not proof enough that Jack Dorsey really is just Donald Trump in a bearded hipster disguise, I don’t know what is.