I have been blogging very little, as I have been swamped with a big and exciting work project. As the peak effort on that is now past, I look forward to writing more on Continuations again, as well as taking another turn revising my book The World After Capital. In the meantime, here are some observations on the most recent iteration of the debate around regulating large tech companies generally, the role of Section 230 specifically and how these relate to speech on the Internet. Topics that ...

I have been blogging very little, as I have been swamped with a big and exciting work project. As the peak effort on that is now past, I look forward to writing more on Continuations again, as well as taking another turn revising my book The World After Capital. In the meantime, here are some observations on the most recent iteration of the debate around regulating large tech companies generally, the role of Section 230 specifically and how these relate to speech on the Internet. Topics that ...

Elon Musk has successfully acquired Twitter. Many people seem convinced he will ruin it in short order. And while that’s of course conceivable, it is also possible that he will fix some long running problems. It’ s not like Twitter had been a well-run company. So now seems like a good time to resurface what I had tweeted in April.Restoring full API access would dramatically shift power back to endusers. We could run apps other than the official Twitter client for interacting with Twitter, whi...

Elon Musk has successfully acquired Twitter. Many people seem convinced he will ruin it in short order. And while that’s of course conceivable, it is also possible that he will fix some long running problems. It’ s not like Twitter had been a well-run company. So now seems like a good time to resurface what I had tweeted in April.Restoring full API access would dramatically shift power back to endusers. We could run apps other than the official Twitter client for interacting with Twitter, whi...

Here we are again in 2019 debating speech online and specifically the case of Facebook. Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown trying to invoke the civil rights movement and to draw a sharp distinction to China. Warren quickly fires back on Twitter. Pundits everywhere weigh in. And yet hardly anyone gets to the heart of the matter: power. And those who are mostly stuck in industrial age thinking recommending a traditional antitrust approach to limiting power. Here are the two big traps people appear...

Here we are again in 2019 debating speech online and specifically the case of Facebook. Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown trying to invoke the civil rights movement and to draw a sharp distinction to China. Warren quickly fires back on Twitter. Pundits everywhere weigh in. And yet hardly anyone gets to the heart of the matter: power. And those who are mostly stuck in industrial age thinking recommending a traditional antitrust approach to limiting power. Here are the two big traps people appear...

Twitter is banning political ads. This is Jack sticking it to Mark while the latter is on the ropes in a one-two punch including a jab against Libra. This mast feel like sweet revenge for the many ways Facebook has messed with Twitter over the years including snatching Instagram. But is it the right thing to do? Not running paid political adds is a self-imposed behavioral remedy, the way traditional antitrust regulators would impose on monopolies. A behavioral remedy requires or forbids some ...

Twitter is banning political ads. This is Jack sticking it to Mark while the latter is on the ropes in a one-two punch including a jab against Libra. This mast feel like sweet revenge for the many ways Facebook has messed with Twitter over the years including snatching Instagram. But is it the right thing to do? Not running paid political adds is a self-imposed behavioral remedy, the way traditional antitrust regulators would impose on monopolies. A behavioral remedy requires or forbids some ...

At the end of last week Facebook announced that it would stop having humans write summaries of trending news stories. This follows previous allegations that the selection of trending stories had been changed to remove conservative ones. This is a good time to revisit some foundational questions about the spread of information in a digital world. First, it is too easy for information cascades to occur. It takes much less effort to like, share, retweet than it does to read, think and possibly e...

At the end of last week Facebook announced that it would stop having humans write summaries of trending news stories. This follows previous allegations that the selection of trending stories had been changed to remove conservative ones. This is a good time to revisit some foundational questions about the spread of information in a digital world. First, it is too easy for information cascades to occur. It takes much less effort to like, share, retweet than it does to read, think and possibly e...

Twitter is going public today. This is something many startups aspire to yet very few succeed in doing. My congratulations to everyone who has contributed to Twitter’s growth over the years. There are many people whose names will not be in the news today who at varying moments made this possible. It is also a good point to remind oneself just why these successes are so improbable: because every startup goes on an Odyssean journey in which failure is generally closer than success. I often talk...

Twitter is going public today. This is something many startups aspire to yet very few succeed in doing. My congratulations to everyone who has contributed to Twitter’s growth over the years. There are many people whose names will not be in the news today who at varying moments made this possible. It is also a good point to remind oneself just why these successes are so improbable: because every startup goes on an Odyssean journey in which failure is generally closer than success. I often talk...

One of the problems with a relatively open platform such as Twitter is impersonation. I can claim to be somebody else, upload their picture to my profile and tweet away. This is particularly problematic for public figures and businesses but anyone can be subject to impersonation. Years ago, Twitter decided that it would “verify” some accounts. While a good idea in principle, Twitter’s implementation, sowed the seeds of the current mess. First, Twitter chose to go with a heavily designed check...

One of the problems with a relatively open platform such as Twitter is impersonation. I can claim to be somebody else, upload their picture to my profile and tweet away. This is particularly problematic for public figures and businesses but anyone can be subject to impersonation. Years ago, Twitter decided that it would “verify” some accounts. While a good idea in principle, Twitter’s implementation, sowed the seeds of the current mess. First, Twitter chose to go with a heavily designed check...

At MIT one of my statistics classes was taught by Prof. Jerry Hausman (of the Hausman test). In every class Prof. Hausman would at some point reach a result and then exclaim “and this proves that life is unfair” (usually it was that your statistical test had less power than you would have hoped for). Reading Nick Bilton’s Twitter story in the NY Times Sunday magazine reminded of that. I read it not because I expected to find something new but because it is always fun to see an event described...

At MIT one of my statistics classes was taught by Prof. Jerry Hausman (of the Hausman test). In every class Prof. Hausman would at some point reach a result and then exclaim “and this proves that life is unfair” (usually it was that your statistical test had less power than you would have hoped for). Reading Nick Bilton’s Twitter story in the NY Times Sunday magazine reminded of that. I read it not because I expected to find something new but because it is always fun to see an event described...

If you have looked for your car recently in a big parking lot and had trouble finding it you can be forgiven. All modern cars look alike. In fact, if you photoshop the grille of one maker onto the car of another and it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference as this work by Jalopnik demonstrates Yup. That’s a Kia with a BMW grille. So why do I bring this up? Because yesterday Twitter announced that it was replacing the star icon with a heart for favoriting. This too seems to me driven by a...

If you have looked for your car recently in a big parking lot and had trouble finding it you can be forgiven. All modern cars look alike. In fact, if you photoshop the grille of one maker onto the car of another and it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference as this work by Jalopnik demonstrates Yup. That’s a Kia with a BMW grille. So why do I bring this up? Because yesterday Twitter announced that it was replacing the star icon with a heart for favoriting. This too seems to me driven by a...

We have entered a new phase of the discussion on what to do about speech on platforms such as Twitter. On the plus side many more people are engaged. On the minus side the calls to treat Twitter as a traditional publisher are growing (incidentally based on a misunderstanding of what being a publisher implies). Let me start by repeating something I have written before: many of Twitter’s problems are self inflicted. In particular, Twitter has messed up its checkmark system and Twitter has been ...

We have entered a new phase of the discussion on what to do about speech on platforms such as Twitter. On the plus side many more people are engaged. On the minus side the calls to treat Twitter as a traditional publisher are growing (incidentally based on a misunderstanding of what being a publisher implies). Let me start by repeating something I have written before: many of Twitter’s problems are self inflicted. In particular, Twitter has messed up its checkmark system and Twitter has been ...