Week in Review - Everybody hates Twitter

Saturday, May 30, 2020 • By Lucas Matney

Hey everybody, welcome back to Week in Review. Last week, I wrote about how new streaming networks were failing to differentiate their offerings, this week I’m taking about Jack.

If you're reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here.

The big story

Over the years, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has seemed to go out of his way to take tough positions on Twitter’s myriad of platform problems, yet in the past several months and several days, Dorsey and his company have become an unceasing obsession of the sitting U.S. President.

This week, Twitter actually made good on years of seemingly empty threats, hiding a tweet from President Trump on the basis that it violated a rule for “glorifying violence.” Trump, already enraged by a pair of fact checks from the company earlier this week, exploded. A good number of experts seem to agree that his recent executive order filed this week sits on shaky ground, and yet a determined and obsessive President Trump (teamed up with a legion of lackeys looking for brownie points) is an enemy Twitter doesn’t need.

Trump has a personal vendetta against the company at this point, but Democrats have also been fixing a closer eye on the carte blanche protections of Section 230 for social media companies. With Twitter potentially at risk of getting caught in Democrats regulatory maneuverings against Facebook, and Republicans ongoing outrage surrounding perceived censorship on social media platforms, can Twitter survive with business as usual?

More importantly, should Twitter survive in its current form?

As misinformation and abuse flow through platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which allow anyone in the world to post something to everyone in the world, it’s probably worth ruminating on whether these earth shattering platforms need to exist in the same way moving forward. Do we need completely frictionless social platforms where the platforms operate with autonomy, taking responsibility for their body of content when legally required to or when a piece of content falls outside haphazardly enforced terms of service?

Platforms have a responsibility to users and to truth. Twitter is drawing attention and ire from Trump and his supporters now because the company has built up a reputation over a decade+ of passivity and indifference. Twitter has built an entertainment platform with hundreds of million of contributors and it’s supposedly responsible for none of the resulting ills.

Trump’s critiques of Twitter are self-serving nonsense and yet the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. The world is on fire and I’m not convinced Twitter is anything more than an accelerant.

What VCs can do to make the most of Q2

Trends of the week

HBO Max launches
HBO rolled out its brand new streaming service this week with a more comprehensive back library of movies and TV shows. The service has had some issues juggling its HBO Now and HBO Go brands, adding HBO Max seems poised to create an awful lot of confusion with consumers. Read more here.

Niantic eyes 3D data
The game maker behind Pokémon GO is sizing up its ambitions as it looks to extract more complex data from gamers. The studio announced this week that it would begin collecting 3D visual data from users on an opt-in basis inside Pokémon GO. Read more about it here.

Sony set to debut PS5 games next week
As gaming sees a major pandemic boost, the next generation of game consoles are close to arriving. Next week, Sony will debut some of the launch titles for the highly anticipated PlayStation 5. Read more here.

Image Credits: WarnerMedia

COVID-19 advances

Google expands tools to help businesses impacted by COVID-19

AI can battle coronavirus, but privacy shouldn't be a casualty

Eli Lilly's COVID-19 therapy development partner AbCellera raises $105 million

5G, AI, cybersecurity and renewable energy set for investment boost under EU coronavirus recovery plan

Image Credits: Pedro Vilela / Getty Images

Extra Crunch

Investors and entrepreneurs are shifting their chats to Zoom, so we're taking note and hosting live Q&A discussions for our Extra Crunch subscribers with some of tech's most visible figures. We'll be hosting these Extra Crunch live chats over the next several weeks.

Announcing the Extra Crunch Live event series

This upcoming week, we'll be talking with Alexis Ohanian and Garry Tan of Initialized
Tuesday, June 2 at 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET

Alexis Ohanian, founder and former CEO of Reddit, is an investor with a portfolio that includes Flexport, Cloud9, and Impossible Foods. His Initialized partner, Garry Tan, has an equally impressive portfolio and a background in entrepreneurship (founded Posterous and Posthaven) and spent four years as a partner at Y Combinator. We'll chat about how they're advising portfolio companies, what the next 12-24 months look like for early stage startups, and which sectors are piquing their interest right now.