Yonatan Zunger on Free Speech and other online forum policy issues

...I have had to sit and make these tradeoffs, so please don't try to bullshit me by explaining how it's more complicated than we think. It is insanely complicated, one of the hardest things I've ever worked on, and I still know when I'm being bullshitted. Twitter chose to optimize for traffic at the expense of user experience. That's why GamerGate, that's why Trump, that's why Nazis....

-- Yonatan Zunger on Twitter (Unrolled thread)

As I'm going through my #GooglePlus contacts, updating notable names lists, and generally reviewing old posts and such -- that's the hazard of packing up and moving, it's not the putting of things in and out of boxes, but processing what they are that takes so damned long, and that's why hired professionals are so much faster, they don't know and don't care -- and am thinking about what makes Good and Bad platforms, and how to specifically articulate what is wrong with some that have turned up, well, there's this.

The accompanying Google+ thread was excellent as well, catch it whilst you can. Yes, it's been archived, but the Way Back Machine only captures a few comments from G+ posts, a long-standing issue. So most of those comments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

For those not aware: Zunger was the original chief architect of Google+, and oversaw many of both its design and policy decisions. This was a massive social network -- at least by registered profiles -- of over 3.3 billion accounts. And though its activity never quite met expectations or operator's claims, it was impressive. Yonatan knows whereof he speaks. He's seen these problems. At scale. He's moved on to other things, and from Google. He's quite busy. But damned if I wouldn't love to tap into his brain and unspool some of those lessons.

And I've got all kinds of ideas on how to specifically address the questions of free speech and free-speech maximalism, which does not in fact maximise access to free speech, online or otherwise.

The #DarcyProject should take heed. @Christian Buggedei ping

#Google #GooglePlus #GplusRefugees #Plexodus #socialMedia #freeSpeech #GamerGate #Twitter #