Twitter founder: Trump presidency is product of short attention spans
Twitter founder: Trump presidency is product of short
attention spans
Evan Williams says US president’s election highlights how
social media platforms are helping to ‘dumb entire world down’
By Matthew Weaver Wednesday 13 September 2017 05.19 EDT
Last modified on Wednesday 13 September 2017 14.53 EDT
Donald Trump is a symptom of a media environment based on
short attention spans that is making the world stupider, one of the founders of
Twitter has said.
Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of the network,
said Trump’s election highlighted a wider issue about how social media
platforms were helping to “dumb the entire world down” and undermining our
sense of truth.
Earlier this year Trump said he would not be president if
it “wasn’t for Twitter”.
Williams was asked whether Trump’s prolific use of
Twitter had given him pause for thought, during an interview with BBC Radio 4’s
Today programme.
He replied: “The much bigger issue is not Donald Trump
using Twitter that got him elected, even if he says so; it is the quality of
the information we consume that is reinforcing dangerous beliefs and isolating
people and limiting people’s open-mindedness and respect for truth.”
Williams, who has previously apologised for Twitter’s
role in Trump’s election, added: “There is a media ecosystem that is supported
and thrives on attention, period. And that is what’s making us dumber and not
smarter, and Donald Trump is a symptom of that.”
He blamed advertising models that compete for the
attention of internet users. Williams told Today: “I don’t think Twitter is the
worst case of this. It is the ad-driven media that churns stuff out on a
minute-by-minute basis and their only measure is whether or not someone clicks
on it.
“Therefore quoting Trump’s tweets, or quoting the latest
stupidest thing that any political candidate or anyone else says, is an
effective way to exploit people’s basest instincts. And that is dumbing the
entire world down.”
Speaking about his post-Twitter venture Medium, a site
which hosts long-form journalism, Williams said: “What we are trying to do is
give people an alternative. There needs to be information we can trust, which
means it has to be funded not by advertising alone. Because that distorts
everything.”
He also spoke of how he had become disillusioned about
the ability of the internet to make people more intelligent. “One of my big
learnings, over the last couple of decades, is that access to information alone
doesn’t make us smarter. The fake news thing is one small part of it; another
even bigger part of it is the quality and depth of the information. Is it
actually building our understanding or deepening our understanding of the world
or is it just noise?”
And Williams conceded that internet companies could do
more to tackle online abuse. He said: “Providers of information systems and the
platforms that our media get decimated on have a big responsibility. It
includes removing stuff.
“We are evolving our understanding of what abuse is and
how protecting free speech is a lot more nuanced than it sounds. You can be an
ardent believer in free speech and also realise that someone’s speech is
limiting someone else’s willingness to speak. I’m optimistic that the systems
are going to get much better [at tackling online abuse].”
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