"If you run one of these private companies, you have to ask yourself, 'Am I OK being complicit in an insurrection of the United States government?' The answer to that question has to be no. There is no concept of owning a platform and being able to stay neutral about something like that."
That’s one of the perspectives shared by Mike Davidson, the Seattle tech veteran who was Twitter’s vice president of design from 2012 to 2016, on a new episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Our conversation about Twitter's permanent ban of @realDonaldTrump continues the theme from last week’s show with University of Washington historian Margaret O’Mara.
In addition to discussing the problems inherent to ad-based social media, we talked about potential solutions — including Davidson’s impromptu idea for an app that could help people find common ground. Inspired by his experience bonding with a fellow Seahawks fan with opposing political views, this hypothetical app would pair people with different ideologies and backgrounds, challenging them to make statements that the other person agrees with.
My colleague, GeekWire co-founder John Cook, suggested the name “Pen Pal” for this, but I prefer “Words With Enemies,” and took it upon myself to register the domain wordswithenemi.es before the show ended, just for fun … probably.
Funny story: John and I first met Mike Davidson years ago when he was running the startup
Newsvine out of a suite on the first floor of the Seattle P-I building, where John and I were reporters at the time. Davidson wanted to keep the startup under the radar, a plan that was foiled when John, ever the curious reporter, knocked on the door. As John mentions on the show, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to base a stealthy startup in a newspaper building.
Davidson is now vice president at InVision, the digital product design software company. He worked as a vice president at NBCNews.com after its acquisition Newsvine. That role and his tenure at Twitter gave him first-hand experience with the challenges of user-generated content.
Finally, on the topic of personalized news feeds, Davidson offers a book recommendation for anyone who hasn’t read it: Neil Postman’s
Amusing Ourselves To Death, a prophetic book first published in 1985. It “very accurately describes the moment that we’re in,” Davidson says.
🎧 Read more and listen to the full episode here, or subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen. Who would you like to hear discussing the week’s tech news as a guest commentator on future shows? Send suggestions to tips@geekwire.com.
GeekWire will be recognizing the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, and we won’t be sending our regular weekday newsletter Monday unless warranted by breaking news. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday. Have a restful weekend, everyone. —
GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, editor@geekwire.com.
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