Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Let’s face it, Donald Trump is no Sir Samuel Vimes.

Donald Trump is President of the United States – like it or not.

Sir Samuel Vimes is Commander of the City Watch in Terry Pratchett’s fictional Ankh-Morpork.

Only one of these men has ever pondered the question: Who Will Guard the Guards Themselves? And when Sam Vimes answers “I do,” in Pratchett’s “Thud!” you believe him, even if he’s got the Summoning Dark driving him, he still knows the difference between good and bad.

Trump, well, Trump knows what Trump knows.

But it still begs the question: Who is watching Trump?

Jennifer Grygiel, writing at Slate.com, suggests that in the case of the president’s Twitter account, it ought to be Twitter “prevent[ing] the world from stumbling into nuclear annihilation.”

Her suggestion is several shades of dumb. Here it is in full:

A premoderation system would be strongly biased in favor of publishing tweets—in fact, if it worked right, Twitter would rarely, if ever, actually get involved. This wouldn’t be like a commenting system in which every utterance needs to be approved before being published. It would be much more passive. There would be, say, a 30-second delay on every tweet (so a bit longer than a live TV delay), during which time someone from Twitter’s team would have to look at it. This would not be a task for algorithms—we would need actual, smart humans on the job. (Twitter would have to pay these people awfully well and rotate them out frequently, of course—spending all day staring at a screen waiting for a handful of Trump’s tweets would be terrible.)

If nothing is clearly dangerous, the tweet would go live as normal. But if there were a major issue—like a threat of military action, or something suggesting that the account had been compromised—then the Twitter representative would make sure that the tweet doesn’t go live. Twitter would need a detailed social media triage and crisis communications plan, one that outlined how things should be escalated and managed.

I reiterate: Grygiel suggests Twitter be the last stand between a Trump tweet and a panicked military reaction.

This, from the company that admitted in 2015 that it “sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years.”

"It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day” the leaked memo says. “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”

These are the geniuses Grygiel wants between Trump and Armageddon.

Here’s a better suggestion: Stop assuming anything President Trump – or any bombastic figure, for that matter – says on Twitter is official policy.

I know that’s a tall order, specifically with the current President who enjoys spouting off on Twitter. And in this day and age where we have more than one reactionary president (eating steak, not grazing) in charge of countries around the world, it’s easy to imagine the scrambling of fighter jets right after a tweet from one of them. Ronald Reagan’s joke about “we begin bombing in five minutes” didn’t result in Armageddon. It did result in the Soviet Far East Army going on alert for 30 minutes, but nothing more. Because there were no follow-up actions that could be verified through standard diplomatic or military detection.

The Pentagon’s “what the what” reaction to Trump’s tweet on reinstating the ban on transgendered people joining the military should demonstrate in our government at least there are already functioning checks that disregard Trump’s tweets as policy. I expect the ban will not be reinstated, no matter the bombast displayed in tweeting it before consulting the military. Those who fear Trump seem to have forgotten that we do have checks and balances in this government.

But what about the others, you ask?

Well, they, too, should look at Trump’s past behavior on Twitter and realize it’s just his method of spreading horseshit, nothing more. Just because he’s mouthing off on Twitter doesn’t mean the chain of command in government has suddenly changed and assigned Trump dictatorial, tweet-fueled power. Twitter simply amps up the noise factor while the signal remains constant.

And if Twitter wants to do this kind of vetting, you can bet there would be strong interest in seeing Twitter become, shall we say, a tad bit more regulated by the government than it is now. Does Twitter really want to shoulder the responsibility of putting a non-governmental entity in charge of vetting government tweets? (I know this goes contrary to my argument that the tweets are nothing but bombast, but you have to consider this argument would come up forcefully if Twitter did get into the vetting business.)

With Twitter watching the guards, who would we watching Twitter? Sam Vimes can say he is the one guarding the guards, and at the same time guarding himself. Because he’s a fictional character. Twitter may publish President Trump’s fiction, but it is in no place whatsoever to guard the guards.

Buh-Bye, Twitter

When my wife received an email from Twitter suggesting she follow some of the people I follow, including someone who bragged about “spanking” someone recently, I decided it was time to pull the plug on Twitter. 

No hanky-panky on my part, mind you. I have a brother in prison due to hanky-panky, and I'm not heading down that road. But I should have been more judicious in choosing whom to follow and deleting those who brought up questionable topics. That’s what I used to do – but my Twitter account has become a ghetto of neglect and sadness. I rarely visit Twitter. If I send a tweet, it’s in the form of a link to my blog, a link to something I’ve done on GoodReads, or some other link. Rarely anything purely Twitter any more. So the benefits were far outweighed by the risk, particularly the risk to reputation, which my wife pointed out to me.

So it’s time to pull the plug.

I won’t miss it. Blogging, writing novels and keeping up with my Facebook friends – who are real friends, not the random hangers-on and strangers at Twitter – will keep me active enough. And out of trouble with my wife. 

I’m not ragging on Twitter. I’m just finally coming to the realization that it’s not for me. There’s a lot of good going on there – I will miss tweeting around LDS Conference time – but then again, will I? I don’t remember tweeting anything from the last conference in October. And I certainly won't miss its more cesspool-like elements. Which you find on the Internet everywhere. But at least by killing Twitter, I stop it from coming to me or others I know in my name, for reputation is coin of the realm. And cesspools are icky. And my brother just isn't having fun at all.

So again, it’s time to pull the plug.

The Perfect Tweet

Yeah, 3,000-some-odd tweets later, this pretty much still sums up how I feel about Twitter.

Happy Birthday All You Twits

So, Twitter is five years old.

I’m probably doing it wrong, but since I’ve been on twitter for about half that time, I’ve got to wonder: What’s the big deal?

I mean, aside from all the MLM folks, the people who want to teach me social networking and how to make money and a few similarly random wannabe writers, what has my presence on Twitter gained me? Oh. Can’t forget the occasional horrible chick who thinks it’s professional to use some kind of PG-rated bum shot for her profile photo.

My most favorite tweet ever delivered by me? Came during a screening of “The Love Bug,” during which I gave a running commentary on the show:

Second to that comes the string of tweets I delivered during scripture study of all things. The tweets themselves aren’t all that memorable, but the fallout – a friend commented he thought they were funny and I got in trouble with my wife for tweeting during scriptures – was much more notable.

Now, I’m not saying Twitter isn’t a wonderful thing. Apparently, it had a role in the Egyptian uprising of a few months ago, has helped reunite family members, cured cancer, brought peace and stability to marriages and such. But it’s also been a platform for an awful lot of idiots, such as myself, so you have to take the good with the bad.

Side note: It took me almost a half hour, manually scrolling through my more than 3,000 tweets, to find these. Twitter's search function leaves much to be desired. It could find me keywords in a very narrow time line (like, right now, within a day or so) but nothing, repeat, NOTHING beyond that.

The Hazards of 140 Characters

Taken from Basic Instructions. Go there now. Enjoy.

Mr. Meyer, thanks for being a Twitter geek. And a sci-fi nerd at the same time.

Makes me think back to the dark, dreary times in which we were forbidden to take our children into any public restroom without first vetting the toilets to make sure they weren't scary. And by "scary" I mean not encrusted in filth starting from the 1950s, swarming with Marlboro butts or locked behind a door for which the sole key you must approach the Scary Tattooed and Surly Gas Station Attendant of Doom, but those toilets that flushed automatically when the sensor was activated. My kids HATED those toilets. How many times did I have to cup my hands over those stupid censors, leaning over my boys like some kind of demented pervert -- Don't worry folks, or call the cops, I'm just engaged in parenting there -- and then not giving a damn if the kid washed his hands or not, just worrying that I got my hands washed.

Those toilets aren't magical. They're diabolical. And my rant about them DEFINITELY won't fit into a mere 140 characters.

One Tweet Away

They say in space that nobody can hear you scream.

But on Twitter, even though you’re pretty much shouting into the darkness, the darkness is full of lots and lots and lots and lots of people who don’t really care what you tweet until you tweet against their sensibilities.

That’s what retailer Kenneth Cole may learn this week.

Funny thing, I’ve never heard of Kenneth Cole until the story of the inappropriate tweets broke.

Now I know about them, but – alas for them – in an unfavorable light.

This won’t turn into a Cooks Source debacle, but still you’d think that the president of a company would know a little better than to tweet about a massive demonstration like what they’re seeing in Cairo this week and turn it into a sales opportunity.

Then again, given the amount of snark and sarcasm and other silliness on the Internet, you’d think this would be one tweet lost in the forest. But it struck a nerve, and the company will have to do some damage control to fix things.

Just more evidence that you need to think before you tweet. Or comment. Or post. Or open that big fat yap of yours. I’m learning that, too.

Twitterlebrities!

Pining for 'The Old Days' of Twitter

Twitter -- aside from all the MLM and "do what I do on Twitter and you'll be rolling in the dough like Chief Joseph in Maverick" twits -- is kind of a fun place to be. But once and a while something comes along that just makes me laugh out loud.

There's this phenomenon of retweeting, or shouting out into the darkness yet again with some nugget of Twitter wisdom sent to you from someone else. I do it occasionally, but don't really fret if the stuff I say doesn't get re-tweeted because mostly i use Twitter for nonsense.

Then there are the people obsessed with getting their fifteen secoonds of fame, and badger people all over the palce for retweets. That gets me to today's funny. In a blog post complaining about being badgered for retweets, this was said:

In the old days, each tweet had to stand on its own two feet; the composer of that tweet had to put time and effort into a compelling title and good content. Now it seems so many of us have just gotten lazy, and we figure we’ll send out a bunch of DMs requesting an RT, and maybe someone will actually do it. This whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

In the old days. Wow. She's gonna ask us to get off her lawn next. Twitter is, what, maybe three years old, even younger in the mainstream? And already we've got folks sitting on their porches in their rocking chairs pining for the good ol' days. That's funny. Maybe the internet is aging us all prematurely -- although it's hard to talk about maturity and most of the Internet in the same sentence.

This blog thought does point out something interesting about the Internet, however. Clay Shirky and others like to talk about how liberating it all is, eliminating the middleman between author and publisher. The author can now publish, and that's great in a way. But Shirky and others also point out that means there's an awful lot of crap out there that must be sorted through in order to find the good stuff. That's when you discover that eliminating the middleman (agents, editors, et cetera) has a downside, because for the most part they're able to filter out the crap and see that only the good stuff (and that opens up another can of worms entirely, because not everything that's published the old-fashioned way is good).

But that doesn't mean we need to pander to the attention-getters. No, wait, it does, because with Twitter, that's the principal purpose, right?