(image H/T: Powerline)
And let me throw this headline out there from the founder of Twitter (emphasis mine):
Jack Dorsey: Conservatives At Twitter ‘Don’t Feel Safe To Express Their Opinions’
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave an interview to NYU professor Jay Rosen and a transcript of the interview was published at Recode. It’s an interesting interview but one highlight is when Rosen asks about what Dorsey has been hearing from conservatives on his “listening tour.” In the midst of answering that question, Dorsey admits that conservatives don’t feel free to speak up at Twitter, and that bothers him a bit.
I do wonder if “a bit” is just to be interpreted as literally “a bit” or more in the line of the literary “a bit”; one meaning just that (a very small concern) or “yeah, it’s a disconcerning problem that has to be addressed”? So a couple of snippets that gives me to rise to the “really only a very small concern” side:
Point One:
I personally have not tended to have conversations with many people in a more conservative end of the spectrum or right end of the spectrum, so goal number one was to say that we’re here, be present, and see the folks who I personally haven’t talked to, and as an organization, we tend not to naturally lean towards, and I don’t know if there are any fundamentally different learnings that are different from the conversations that we have with folks who are more on the left end of the spectrum, more of the liberal end of the spectrum or libertarian end of the spectrum, wherever that lies.
Translation: no, I don’t talk with “those” people and I don’t think I’d get much out of it even if I did. “We’re here” – deal with it.
Point Two:
I mean, we have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company.
Translation: seriously? You’re in San Francisco for criminy’s sake, the base for Nancy Pelosi, and you think you have “a lot” of conservatives working for you? And you acknowledge, in the parlance of the Left, that Twitter isn’t one of those vaunted “safe spaces” for them? No, no sense of urgency of providing them with that like colleges provide their Left leaning students the same – it only works in one direction. Oppression is fine, I guess, when it ain’t you getting oppressed (/sarc)
In other words, my take away is that half of his potential universe of customers (keeping in mind the meme “if the service is free, YOU are the product” and with Twitter, we certainly are the products that is sold to others) can go pound sand.
(H/T: Hot Air)
