Survey: Strong Majority of Tech Workers Want Twitter to Ban Alex Jones -- But Most Tech Workers AT Twitter Don't

Interesting results to a new survey just conducted on Blind, the popular anonymous online community for tech workers, over the still-contentious question of whether violence-provoking conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should be banned from Twitter (the one social platform which still hasn't banned him, despite public pressure to do so.) With 5,137 users taking the survey between August 18 and August 24, a supermajority (over 60%) supported banning him. Notably, however, only 21% of Twitter employees supported a ban -- meaning an even larger supermajority of Twitter staff support CEO Jack Dorsey's insistence that Jones shouldn't be banned from their platform.

Important caveat -- while there are 950 Twitter employees on Blind (company spokesman Kyle McCarthy tells me), only 56 took the Alex Jones survey. So this small data sample may not be as representative as we'd like. Still, the fact that such a large percent support Jones' non-banning suggests that's probably the general consensus among Twitter staff.

McCarthy showed me how the survey numbers broke down by company affiliation, which reveal some fascinating trends in Valley opinion:

By a wide degree, Apple employees supported banning Jones most. (Perhaps partly due to Jones' rampant homophobia, and Apple CEO Tim Cook being among the few out gay executives in the Valley?) Jones was recently banned from Facebook, so it's also notable that Facebook employee opinion on banning him from Twitter was closely split (only 53% for a ban).  Same goes for employees from Google, which also banned Jones from its YouTube platform (but only 54% support a Twitter ban).

Overall, though, the most marked contrast is between what tech workers in general wanted Twitter to do, and what tech workers at Twitter supported:

"For each survey we have run this year about a specific company's practices, the employees at that specific company have responded in the opposite way as the rest of tech employees," Kyle tells me. "Two other examples of this are our survey asking if Microsoft should end their contracts with ICE, and a more recent survey asking if Google should provide a censored Internet search in China."

 

So you could read this as company groupthink around its internal policies, or employees knowing more about these policies than the critical public does. (Or perhaps more likely, a combination of both.)

 

Again, this is a small survey sample of Twitter employees, but one of them di post a passionate defense on Blind's company blog:

 

The debate here is only happening because Jones has unquestionably initiated a massive campaign of harassment and intimidation which has even spread offline and resulted in legal actions, etc. The intimidation of the Sandy Hook families is the most obvious example. The one thing that we all agree with Jack on is that the policies should be based on behavior and consequences, not just speech itself... Either you are speaking without being aware of any of the readily available facts, or you know the facts and you’re intentionally trying to pollute and degrade the conversation, in which case it’s a good thing you don’t work at a conversation-oriented company!

 

More here.

Comments

[Nalates Urriah]

Hummm... no coverage of the ideals and principals that make up the American ideas of freedom...

[Clara Seller]

This made me think of that famous Apple " think different" commercial. How ironic that the Apple Corp. is now right there leading the charge into 1984.

This concentrated paranoia coming from the tech industry is much more concerning than anything that might spill out of Alex Jones mouth. He's just one man and he does come with an off switch.

We aren't putting the massive dissemination of information in the hands of Alex Jones. We're putting it in the hands of an industry that seems to be proud of their fear of alternate thinking and their shared Schizophrenic tendency.

The tech industry is either showing signs of mental illness, or they're just a bunch of pansies.

I never listened to Alex Jones. Thank God I knew I had a choice.

[Hamlet Au]

Apple's "Think Different" ad campaign featured Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Joan Baez, the Dalai Lama, Jackie Robinson, Cesar Chavez, and Charlie Chaplin.

[Clara Seller]

Apple's "Think Different" ad campaign did feature all of those people, which makes it ironic. All of those people challenged the status quo. Now Apple is the status quo.

That hammer that Apple and the tech industry is using isn't really meant for Alex Jones. He's just an easy target that gets us to clap for it like penguins

The real target is the next generation of all of those "Think Different" people who will be compared to Alex Jones and silenced, just as "Right Thinking" people were clapping for the silence of all that list in their day.

[sirhc deSantis]

More interested that an 'anon' site boasts how many members it has from each company. Fascinating. Also, only know about the 'trucker speed salesblob' from Wonk so go figure.