Thread by @jennifer_jj

Thread: Last night's #seatac plane hijacking was a bit of a rare, outsize reminder of why @Twitter has such an enormous responsibility to police what appears on its platform because of how it has altered entirely how people consume news & opinion.

As the #seatac hijacking unfolded, people on the ground were posting video of the plane in the air, the fighter jets chasing it, and audio of the mechanic's communication with air traffic control.

Even if the media were monitoring police/emergency comms and/or Twitter, it takes time to assign a crew, assess the situation, and get that info verified and ready for publication/broadcast. Twitter users were already on the story and reporting live, essentially.

Not a diss to the media (b/c of the aforementioned process needed), but it was close to an hour before any MSM started to report on the incidents and, in most cases, they were using content found on Twitter. By then the hijacking was over & he had crashed.

Watching the footage people were sharing as the plane did loopdy-loops (sp?) and get chased by fighter jets, you could hear genuine shock and panic in their voices as they tried to figure out WTF was happening. Was this another 9/11?

We also heard, almost in real time, the hijacker comms w/ air traffic control, so we were able to understand what was happening and could easily surmise that this was not going to end well. People's panic was real and justified.

9/11 was a horrific milestone b/c, among many other reasons, it showed that terrorists had discovered a new weapon...instead of bringing a bomb on the plane, they made the plane the bomb. For years we've heard from experts about this, so now we're programmed to fear it.

So, imagine now you're someone motivated to manipulate the truth for your own gain. You see the power of Twitter as a platform and how it bypasses traditional means of vetting the truth. In an emergency like #seatac, the media weren't even on the story before it was over.

If you want to shout "Fire!" in @Twitter's crowded theatre, it's easy to do the first time and get away with it. If you do it 100 or a 1,000 times and no-one stops you, you're pretty much able to say whatever you want and no-one holds you to account.

If someone builds up an audience who believes what they say, even when what you promote is clearly ludicrous to vast swaths of the population, you now know that you can manipulate that audience via @Twitter and get away with it.

During last night's #seatac hijacking it would have been easy to inundate @Twitter with wild conspiracy theories masked as 'news' during the incident and cause any number of outcomes for people reading those posts and, subsequently, a massive array of ripple effects.

What Alex Jones has done with InfoWars is just a slower version of the same thing. There have been very real, tragic consequences when he has yelled "Fire!" in @Twitter's theatre. But Twitter says they're not responsible b/c they're not media and they can't police in real time.

But if you keep selling a ticket to the same guy and let him into your theatre even after he has yelled "Fire!" countless times, then the blame is clearly on you. He has proven he cannot be trusted but you keep letting him thru the front door.

If enough people can get access and yell "Fire!" then it becomes incumbent on you to enact measures sufficient to dissuade or prevent them from doing so again. If you can't sustain those safety measures then your biz model is built on a platform that is dangerous to the public.

If a company's operations present a danger to the public then agencies are required to hold them to account (think building, health, governance, and employment codes). If @Twitter can't keep users safe, who holds them responsible?

While it's easy to see why @Twitter claims it cannot remove people for simply expressing an opinion that runs counter to others' beliefs, it is also clear they have a direct impact on public safety and should be held somewhat responsible for safeguarding that.

So, while @Twitter may not *be* the media, they *are* a business which can have as much or more impact on the well-being of the public. If they cannot take measures to protect society then perhaps their business model is not tenable and needs a rethink.

Media outlets are subject to any number of regulations to protect the public from them misusing their power. As businesses they also are subject to requirements mentioned above to protect stakeholders (financial, employee, physical space, etc.).

Given @Twitter's immense potential to impact the public, why are they allowed to operate with their own set of rules? /END