If anyone knows how important Twitter is to Donald Trump, it's the president.
“Without the tweets, I wouldn't be here,” he told the Financial Times last month.
To which Twitter's co-founder says: Sorry about that, world.
Evan Williams, who still sits on the company's board of directors, recently told The New York Times that he wants to repair the damage he thinks Twitter and the broader Internet have wrought on society in the form of trolls, cyberbullies, live-streamed violence, fake news and — yes — Trump.
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.”
“If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry,” he said.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:40PM (5 children)
What makes this guy's speech meaningful at all is the implicit idea that electors are idiotic sheep. True or false, does not matter. Obviously being surrounded by propaganda since you are born affects you.
The solution is not to make sheep great again (nobody wants that among the non sheep, obviously), but to further control the propaganda fed to them.
This guy's speech is no less dangerous than any dictator's ever.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:06PM (3 children)
I am pretty sure the belief that the public are sheep is a bipartisan idea
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @12:31AM (2 children)
Folks in Rust Belt states really REALLY hated Hillary.
The other thing that they saw on TeeVee was Trump.
...so they voted for Trump (who offered zero specifics, just empty slogans).
Clearly, hose folks didn't look to see who else was on the ballot.
...so they overlooked a candidate who has a program [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [ontheissues.org] that is similar to one which had worked before when the nation/world was in a GIANT slump.
I think that "sheep" pretty well covers it.
bipartisan
Thinking that your choices are binary is another form of sheep-like behavior.
Congratulations for proving the point.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:49AM (1 child)
Bwahaha! Folks over here in flyover country (yeah, I called the place I live "flyover country," alt-snowflakes!) voting for a.) a woman and b.) a leftist "elitist" from the eco hippy "feel bad because you're white" party? You tell some pretty good jokes!
...
Yes, they are all sheep, baa go the sheep, you sexist dumbfuck sheep :(
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:01PM
That's not the rust belt. Rust belt is Chicago->Baltimore. With the exception of WV and more recently Ohio, traditionally Democrat territory. The Democrats had to know they couldn't shove Clinton down their throats, but tried it anyhow. They figured PA and Michigan would roll over for them as usual.
Do I think this will change anything? Not a bit. They are still pointing fingers instead of pointing the fingers at themselves.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:40PM
Sounds like they're taking a page from Reddit's playbook and deciding that free speech is a problem. To which I say, they can go fuck themselves.
The answer to fake news is not to prevent it being published (which will rapidly snowball into censoring political viewpoints in general you don't like), it's to exercise your brain and not believe every goddamn thing you read!
Doxxing and SWATing are problems that can already be legally handled, but otherwise people are a bunch of whiners quick to label anyone they don't like "trolls."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"