Thread by @Shem_Infinite

Coming up at 1:30pm EST:

Twitter: Transparency and Accountability hearing with Jack.

I'll be live tweeting it. This is the censorship hearing!

10 minute warning! Just enough time to watch Mungo Jerry three times to counterbalance the intense negativity coming with this hearing lol

Mic Check! Soon

WE ARE LIVE

I dunno if I've ever heard anyone on this committee speak before so this should be fun

I've heard Scalise speak!

"In July it was reported" that twitter was shadowbanning top Conservatives and also politicians. "This was not the first time" these issues have come up. YUP

"I believe you were once temporarily suspended by twitter yourself" based on a error Walden takes it to Jack right away lol

This is the hearing we've been waiting for. He wants answers about their banning and suspension policies and their algorithms. Let's go!

A preview of the Democratic posture this hearing. Mr. Palone says that it's all a conspiracy theory pushed by Republicans and Trump that we are being censored and deplatformed lol. Lie, lie, repeat, that's the DNC way.

The real issue he says is Cyber bullying and harassment. Has he heard of #BeBest? He would love #BeBest

He called out Alex Jones/Sandy Hook. I expect that to be a line of attack by the Dems here. Why he doesn't do MORE censoring. That's what Stelter demanded to know in the Jack/CNN interview

😂😂😂 he is now reading about Trumps tweets and how they are all awful and talk badly about people and shouldn't be tolerated.

If they go hard into Trump's tweets I'm gonna have a funny time listening to their questions today after all.

Mr. Pallone says that all of twitters policies should apply to President Trump the same as a random dummy 😂

Jacks opening statement time. He has his phone in his hand I bet he is tweeting this too

Jack now saving me some typing

Jack says that they don't consider that, but they KNOW that the left are the ones mass reporting and creating mass block lists and he KNOWS his algorithm uses those metrics.

Jack IS taking responsibilities now. Says he fixed it.

They fixed it by just removing the part of the algorithm that penalizes us for who FOLLOWS US. If that's all they did that's not going to work. That'll work for most big accounts maybe.

lol then he says that they looked at Republicans and Democrats on Congress and found they were viewed similarly. What about the rest of us Jack?

They also say they aren't going to stop people that follow us from seeing us. BUT he goes on and says they don't have any responsibility to let anyone else see us. Pathetic. Their algorithm gets smarter and they get dumber.

Meadows, Jones, Gaetz were not shown in the autopolutated twitter search results. Why did this only happen to certain accounts? What did the algorithm take into account that impacted them?

"We use signals" "hundreds of signals" to decide what to filter

"We were using the signal of the behavior of the people following the accounts" to censor THEIR ACCOUNTS

"We decided to correct it" lol great job, once you got caught.

"It is important for us to, one, be able to experiment freely with these signals and to have the freedom to be able to inject them and also to remove them, cuz that's the only way we're going to learn"

Translation: "Let us tweak our censorship algorithm so it's sneakier"

Walden: Can't bad actors abuse that with mass blocking?
Jack: That's why we use hundreds of signals

This algorithm is super complex. Bigger than I thought even.

"We do have algorithms that are constantly, proactively, searching the network and specifically the behaviors on the network and filtering and downranking accordingly"

"What that means in terms of filtering, is it might filter behind an interstitial. An interstitial is a graphic or element within our app or service, that one can tap to see more tweets or show more replies" so the algorithm is proactively hiding replies. Shut it down!

Fred Upton said his initials are FU and used more than any other on twitter he bets lol.

"How do you determine if a user is tweeting to manipulate or divide the conversation"

Jack is definitely a CEO. He is repeating what he told Stelter. "We all know" what a healthy conversation is he says.

4 indicators. But they are literally nonsense. They really don't make sense so I'm not going to type them out.

"There's a lot of confusion around our rules and enforcement, and we intend to fix it"

You're doing a terrible job so far explaining yourself lol. I am learning a lot though.

This Rep is saying Twitter is a hive of sexual harassment now lol. Jack is unprepared for this. This is supposed to be about Trump and censorship.

lol I think this is what she is asking him, actually

"we don't feel that it's fair for the victims of abuse and harassment to have to report it" 😂 that is what she was asking him

"While listening to users is important, how can anyone be sure that standards about what, quote unquote, distracts or distorts, are being handled fairly and consistently?" "Doesn't this give power to the loudest mob?" YEP

"This goes back to the framework, what I talked about health"

Jack loves this word HEALTH and he KNOWS what it means too. We all know he says, what a healthy conversation looks like.

"What about if users band together, would that be something you would consider manipulation"

"the same, and that's why this makes the issue complicated. Sometimes we see bots and sometimes we see human coordination"

lol human coordination? Like followers, likes, retweets?

"We always want to side with more automated technology that recognize behavior and patterns, instead of going down to the surface area of names or profile images or whatnot. So we're looking for behaviors and the intention of the action"

That's literally impossible to do @jack

I fast forwarded this last guy cuz he was talking about Meghan McCains husband complaining about a twitter image lol

Mr. Doyle is reading questions and asking Jack if he is censoring people.

Jack, under oath, says he isn't lol.

He also says that it's not true that Twitter shadowbanned prominent conservatives.

@jack lied under oath

Mr. Doyle just used the words shadowban a million times. "You were an equal opportunity shadowbanner right?" 😂

Jack says that's correct.

Jack just said he didn't shadowban people 😂

Mr. Doyle says that twitter is censoring people based on who they followed and stopped it so it's ok now. The conservatives that are being censored are out of order he says lol.

Now Doyle wants to talk about sexual threats on twitter, the real issue he says!

This is a curveball from the Dems. I think Jack was expecting allies to pander to and help him here but the left are after him too 😂

"I don't know what a CEO of twitter should look like but you don't look like a CEO"

"My mom would agree with you"

lol awww, some levity

"Can you personally vouch that that statement is a true statement, that there are Democrat politicians that were auto searched that didn't show up"

"yes, there were 600,000 accounts"

"how many Democrat politicians?"

Jack won't give the numbers, says he will follow up.

"We agree that the result was not impartial"
"so you agree that there were more republicans than democrats"
"I didn't say that"
"well you can't have it both ways"

"We can't always tell who is a Republican or Democrat"

"We run as Republican or Democrat"

"I'll be happy to follow up"

LOL disaster

"We wouldn't be having this discussion if there wasn't a general agreement that your company has discriminated against conservatives most of whom happen to be Republicans"

"I believe we have found impartial outcomes"

Translation: The algorithm DID censor conservatives

A freaking American hero right here! Mentioning how the Arab Spring took off because of companies like twitter. So @jack stop silencing and censoring @HeshmatAlavi already!

Picture says a thousand words

"why was she banned for stating a fact?"

Jack: "This was a mistake, and we do apologize"

Congressman Scalise wants to know that there will be accountability for people WORKING for twitter that have discriminatory viewpoints against people.

"I would want to know that" if there were people biased
"I assure you the algorithm was not written with that intention"

I repeat. Twitter doesn't have enough staff to handle the complaints, so they created an algorithm that has hundreds of signals that just happen to target us

Russia, Iran and Mueller lol

Anyone that needs a bathroom break grab it now

I repeat that's what Jack says lol. Not enough characters. He knows the outcome, he is apologizing, but he is still relying on the algorithm and just making it sneakier. This is NOT ok.

Jack is deflecting all blame to the algorithm while promising to fix the algorithm and keep using it to censor people.

@jack this is not the answer. Hire more staff

Twitter doesn't get third party information about twitter users but they do use data when they see it, for instance, twitter embeds on other sites.

Twitter will give Congress the report on the number of Democratic and Republican Congressman that were caught up in the algorithm and also mentions again that Twitter wants to release a big "transparency report" this year. Can't wait to read that lol

Are you feeling that this is a manipulation campaign using you to further Trump and the GOP agenda? Asks a complete moron.

Jack isn't that stupid, he says there are real concerns lol

Jack again mentions that you can't identify all bots on the site, people run scripts to mask login times etc. But Jacks answer to solving that is the wrong answer. His answer is to focus the algorithm on behavior alone. My account and a lot of others post exactly the same way

What is a political bot? How does it differ than literally every single political analysis on twitter? Behavioral algorithms will always catch people up, especially on twitter. You get likes and retweets for tweeting the same general reaction to any topic that everyone has

"MEGHAN MCCAIN TWEET FAKE NEWS TWEET WASN'T REMOVED FAST ENOUGH"

Week 2 of the McCain funeral. Supplies are running low. Send help.

"the number of abuse reports we get is a number that we would like to see go down, not only because there's less abuse of the platform but because our algorithms are recognizing these things before someone has to report them"

Translation: THE ALGORITHM WILL SOLVE ALL

"Trumped up" claims of Conservative bias

Jack can take a breather, no sexual harassment questions from this dummy lol

This man has a secret cover up spreadsheet of all the investigations that should be happening right now lol. Said it's been passed around by the Republicans of what to stop an investigation on.

Trumps tax returns was first 😂

LOL no questions for Jack, just talk of a secret spreadsheet.

"Algorithms are only as good as the people that create them, edit them, guide them, and algorithms have to be trained which means, you know, feeding them a lot of data."

This guy is giving a clinic on algoirthms

"I want to understand the oversight that twitter does of it's own algorithms"

"Bias in algorithms is a rather new field of research within broader artificial intelligence"

Yeah, you are the freaking test subject. Patient zero here @jack

Signals is the big word here. Twitter is apparently CONSTANTLY tweaking their algorithm, even daily, based on hundreds of signals and people giving them feedback.

Another PSA. Repeatedly and politely ask twitter support for help if you are caught up in the algorithm. Only way

"The way we judge ourselves ultimately is, are the algorithms making objective decisions"

TRUST THE COMPUTER BANNER lol this is wild stuff here.

"Who defines fairness?"

"This goes back to those health indicators"

freaking ridiculous lol. The algorithm is fed by people that KNOW what a healthy conversation is they say.

"There's only 435 members of the house" so he wants Jack to tell him, that's a small number, what's the number of Democrats effected?

Jack says he'll share it later lol, not now. Not in front of the public

FIVE MINUTE RECESS

This is an awesome hearing. Jack is apologizing for censoring but his next steps are to tweak the insane algorithm (TRUST IT) on a daily basis to make it sneakier.

Also, these guys grandstand WAY less than any other committee I've seen. Mungo break:

lol I missed this, how

Thanks @ScottS92461709!!

OMG is that @LauraLoomer

I fast forwarded at the worst freaking time 😂😂😂

I like Laura Loomer and her work but that's hilarious. Everyone should be auctioneered out of Congress if they protest. 😂

And we're back!

"About the Meghan McCain matter"

lol nevermind, 5 more minutes everyone

Five hours is too long for that tweet to stay up he says lol. Intollerable

I have seen tweets threatening the life of President Trump stay up for MONTHS. After people like @SebGorka highlighted them and I know twitter saw my report.

Meghan McCain can shut up lol

TRUST THE ALGORITHM replies Jack

Congressman Lance (a republican I guess lol) threatens Jack with regulation, vaguely.

All this talk about protecting people from "speech" really creeps me out. "How do you protect them from hate speech?" what is hate speech?

Jack talks about health again. Health. Whatever HR/PR/Marketing dummy fed you that nonsense @jack it's time to disregard it completely. Bin it. The healthiest conversations I have are the most heated and passionate. You want monotone civil discussion at all times? impossible

This man just talked about dial up telephones. I assume he means ancient laws now governing the internet but no one has seen a dial up phone in 25 years.

A lot of really really good questions today about the GOP members of this committee I wasn't expecting. One of the biggest problems with the algorithm, @jack, is that people that actually need your service (in war zones, in natural disaster areas, arab spring, etc) are hit by it

This guy said the mass bot ban cost Obama 2.5 million followers and President Trump 300,000. Says that's proof there isn't bias lol.

What that proves is that Obama had a ton of fake, purchased followers by the insane left and Share Blue 😂

He is now reading a news article into record. Tons of people, both Republicans and Democrats, cite freaking news articles and put them into congressional records.

News articles are in the Carter Page FISA warrant.

Our government is a joke lol

Dude got fired up, I missed it but he called out Equifax. I agree. Screw Equifax! moving on.

This guy is talking about drug dealers on twitter!

Another curveball!

I know this is true because I posted about weed one time and people sent me DMs about selling me the worst looking fake weed I've ever seen. Nice try government, weed is legal in Colorado.

"Mr. Dorsey, within the last hour, here is an ad for cocaine on twitter! And it's still up!"

LOL Cocaine Mitch BTFO

I can't find that cocaine tweet lol. He demands Jack take it down.

"I agree with it that it's unacceptable, and we will act" Jack replies 😂

This is really funny but he is right, he is telling Jack HIRE MORE STAFF

Mr. Loebsack aint even rocking a jacket. He is from Iowa. They don't wear suit jackets in Iowa. I like it.

He is just gonna talk about harassment and bullying. He should hear about #BeBest. He would like #BeBest.

Rep Guthrie has been running back and forth around capitol hill all day so he apologizes if his questions have been answered already lol. That never stopped any other Congressman I've ever seen from asking the same question for the 30th time so well done.

He just asked Jack what line he crosses to become a publisher. BOOM. Great question.

Jack responds with the speech about "health" again lol. He really loves that word

Jack does say that he wants to see a variety of views on his platform.

But what does the algorithm say @jack? Does it say not to? How do you counterbalance that?

Congressman Kennedy, Democrat hero, is drinking a DIET COKE right now!!!

@CNN BREAKING NEWS

I missed this entire section about who actually works on his "Trust and Safety" team and I will go back to it later, sometime. Great stuff about who actually helps him and which ones are conservatives.

"There are multiple swords to free speech"

Mentions that it's important for people in Syria to get their message out. And they know it quickly because their government run media outlets suppress it.

How many lives will be lost in sacrifice to your algorithm, @jack?

What information does Twitter share with foreign governments?

LOL get him!

He just asked him if he is complying with Russian law regarding social media practices. Jack says he doesn't know.

"You have a bunch of people back there you can ask"

"We don't have servers in Russia"

😂😂😂 this hearing just got LIT

He asked him who is responsible for the content on twitter. Is twitter responsible? are people?

Jack says people are responsible for their content. Bet that's a trap question lol

No follow up lol. But that was a trap.

"Bullying on twitter"

Have you guys heard about #BeBest or what?

Woah he has heard of it, he just mocked our First Lady. "She is pushing the campaign, oddly enough"

Literally no questions for Jack there too lol

This guy just mentioned a bunch of twitter teenager celebrities "taking a break from twitter" and that's the creepiest thing I've heard all day

He mentioned them by name like 3 or 4 lol wtf

"How many people attacked on twitter are aged 18 or under?"

Jack: "We don't have that data" lol why would they?

Jack is against illegal drugs being sold on twitter lol, by the way. This guy asked him about it.

Jack says "we have prioritized on the election, 2016, 2017"

"I've had people that contacted me with kids that died"

This hearing took a dark turn. The algorithm has no answer

This guy, with a suit not fit for even a fancy dress party in the UK, is saying it's ridiculous for President Trump to complain that conservatives are being censored on twitter.

OMG THAT CREEP. I KNEW IT LOL. He was super freaking weird

lol wtf

Mr. Griffith is calling out Twitter for featuring "Twitter moments" more often features a "specific point of view, and a narrative"

he means the lefts narrative. And he is right. Twitter didn't allow Bruce Ohr to trend for over a week. Even after Trump tweeted about him.

fast forward

"Meghan McCain"

"Do your engineers have an ability to see and understand why an algorithm made certain decisions?"

This is actually an awesome hearing about AI

"That is a great question because it goes into another field of research in AI which is called explainability, which is encouraging engineers to write a function that enables the algorithm to describe how it made the decision and why it made the decision"

This is verbatim 😂😂

"and I think that is a critical question to ask and one to focus on because we are offloading more of our decisions to these technologies"

I'm not convinced The Algorithm doesn't live in a server room in Jacks basement.

"Even personally, I'm wearing an Apple Watch right now and it tells me when to stand"

That's also verbatim 😂

I'm now not convinced The Algorithm doesn't live inside of Jack himself, operating him with controls.

Jack doesn't get excited about much, but when she was asking him how they know The Algorithm works and to explain in detail to her he got giddy. He is in love with it.

What is with this algorithm!??!

Dude is a software engineer by trade, he's written thousands and thousands of algorithms. Uh Oh Jack!

"There's as much art that goes into writing an algorithm, as there is science. Would you agree with that?"

Jack: "I agree with that"

"So essentially there's a part of the heart of the algorithm writer that's writing that algorithm, correct?"

lol drag him

"How do you go about weeding out that innate bias? Do you do any peer reviews of your algorithms before you send them to production?"

"We do, do those internally"

"Can't you modify your algorithms, especially in this age of artificial intelligence, to be more intelligent in identifying and alerting on specific things?"

dang it he wanted to rail him about focusing on drugs lol

missed opportunity.

"What are" trending tweets "based on?

Jack said it's based on what's relevant to you.

I tweeted about Bruce Ohr hundreds of times as did tons of people and it never treneded until he was about to testify in Congress.

Jack lied to Congress again lol.

Ok now I'm caught up. I may have missed something that last 15 minutes.

"Should twitter be considered a trusted advisor in the emergency alerting system?"

lol get em

This guy just is railing off a list of questions that Jack can get to the committee later. "Twitters definition of low quality tweets" lol yes I want to hear that answer too!

This gentleman talking gibberish. I can't understand what he is saying at all. #TermLimits

Jack tells us we get a Health and Safety transparency report soon lol. As soon as they are done. That one's going to be a laugh riot.

"THE ALGORITHM IS GOOD. TRUST THE ALGORITHM."

Jack just talked about twitter moments, and looking at "events arranged by humans" in a way that does not convince me The Algorithm is inside of his body, working him with controls.

Jack is a registered voter. Independent. That lines up. He does seem conflicted about what the algorithm is doing, but it lives inside him so what can he really do about it?

LOL this dude is reading at Jack all the racist tweets from @sarahjeong about white people at Jack now.

He mentions that Candace owens tweeted the same thing out and replaced white with jewish and she was suspended but NYT wasn't.

Jack: "We made a mistake"

"I hear you saying that over and over" this is bigger than a mistake. "There seems to be a pattern here"

Jack replies that he is sorry and blames The Algorithm again for making the mistake 😂

Ok I've had enough of Jacks excuses. Time for Congress to regulate twitter. This man is clearly controlled by an A.I. living inside of his body

This man is mad that a conservative member of his staff started a twitter account and she was suggested to follow (lists a ton of left wing political types). "She's a twenty something female staffer, she didn't even get Taylor Swift?" as a suggestion. ALL Democrats. Boom

"Why does she only get the liberal suggestions?"

"We simply don't have enough information in that case, the 202 number is all we have"

100 percent of the suggested followers were biased.

Where was Kim Kardashian? Where was Taylor Swift? Where was Ariana Grande?

Jack says it was the 202, DC area code that suggested those, based on people that follow them in that area

He asks Jack "Where are the sports teams? Where are the singers and celebrities for the area?" list all the sports teams, baseball, football, etc

"We do have some work to do"

"Obviously you are pointing out some of the weaknesses in the signals that we use"

LOL that's a literally garbage answer from a computer

"Mr. Dorsey, congratulations I'm the last one"

It's almost over!

He says a young man, teenager in his area, has over 40k followers but can't get verified. His friends, less followers, can get verified lol

"We need a complete reboot of our verification system"

VERIFY SHEM @JACK

Jacks gonna get his handle and that kid is probably gonna get verified. Good job kid! Way to tweet bud!

"I don't want to regulate you guys, I think it will stifle innovation, but why should I believe you?"

He is talking about opioids but all of these Congressmen, on both sides, are telling Jack the same thing. We will regulate you if you don't get your act together.

Ok the hearing is over, update. That one guy tweeting he was selling cocaine has been taken down 😂

We did it folks! We accomplished something here today! Great hearing. A lot of talk about AI and algorithms and really nuts stuff. I loved it.

Turn off the algorithm @jack /end

Final thoughts. That was a good hearing. Wild stuff. I don't think Jack lied at all but the things he said were insane. He really trusts the algorithm over everything else. It's all in service of the algorithm. He is willing to tweak it but not remove it. He is The Algorithm