> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows.
No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.
The nice thing about this proposal is precisely how it replaces the problematic "apology" dynamic with a neutral retraction. Apologies may or may not be rejected as insincere, but a retraction is simply a factual statement that the user no longer stands behind what they wrote, while preserving the content itself (unlike tweet deletion, which in practice tends to escalate reposts) for the sake of transparency.
Well, if you have someone determined to go after someone else, the most nuanced approach is not going to get you much. The attacker just rephrases it as they wish.
Which is to say, when you have a medium like Twitter, where the entire world can march in and get involved with conversation X, a proposal for de-escalation seems futile and a bit absurd. Among other things, a lot of media personalities have built their engagement by not letting go of opportunities for kicking whoever when they are down - giving this up would literally cost them money.
It seems like plans for de-escalation would do much better in situations where the participants are actually building a community, a group sharing values, a part of a reasonable forum/medium, not a stand-alone thing.
Twitter isn't just one thing, it's composed of many communities of various sizes and closeness. Some communities are toxic and enjoy kicking people when they're down, others less so. We tend to recall only the extremes of these big personalities doing bad things.
People model behavior every day on Twitter. If people only see or recall others kicking people when they're down, that's what people will expect is the norm, and this will sway future behavior. If there are tools that offer alternatives, then we can alter those norms, and make change among the many people not at the extremes, swaying them toward more productive and respectful discourse.
Twitter isn't just one thing, it's composed of many communities of various sizes and closeness.
That's true tautologically in the sense that different people follow different things and interests tend to cluster. But Twitter doesn't have communities that can easily kick people out of their entire group, IE, the only enforcement comes from Twitter's own lax rules.
People model behavior every day on Twitter.
Sure, on average. But determined person, say a troll, is in no way constrained to model anyone's behavior. That's kind of general problem of bullies - most people model the average and bully does what they want, so the average moves towards the bully over time.
> But Twitter doesn't have communities that can easily kick people out of their entire group
Agree that's a problem, it puts a limit on how close a community can be if it solely relies on Twitter to operate (rather than on their own online or in-person fora). This is one rather legitimate reason for cancelling - its a way for communities to excise members they do not want in the community, using the rules of social engagement available to them on the platform. Cancelled people may still have accounts and be able to interact in other groups of people in the broader twittersphere, but largely become pariahs in the communities they are a part of on twitter. This is why cancelling on twitter is not uniformly a bad thing, it is simply a way for communities to maintain some level of cohesion and shared values within the rules available to them.
As far as trolls, yes that behavior will always exist to some extent online. Mea Culpa is just one way to improve discourse, not a complete solution. The issue in public fora like Twitter is that these types of personalities tend to have outsized impacts on the community, and that's still a problem to solve.
> Well, if you have someone determined to go after someone else, the most nuanced approach is not going to get you much. The attacker just rephrases it as they wish.
They can do this but they no longer have plausible deniability, since they're attacking something that the other user has unambiguously disclaimed. They'll just look like a loser who is obviously not acting in good faith.
Will they care? Plenty of people got "cancelled" because of something they did/said/did not/did not say years ago. Imho, the actions aren't the reason they get attacked, they are the tool for the attack, so retracting them might make the attack weaker, but it won't make the attackers back down.
It's either a tribal thing ("I can hurt the other tribe if I hurt that individual because they are part of the other tribe") or purity signalling ("Look, I am clean and virtuous, and I purge even our circle from the unclean").
The tribal thing is somewhat reasonable from a collective stand point (which is why groups tend to look at their members' differently than the actions of competing groups), the purity spiralling is counter-productive in the larger conflict, as you're hurting your own group, but individuals have individual interests as well, and to advance those, they may be happy to sacrifice allies.
I appreciate you bringing this up, it's an important subtlety I wanted to be made clear in the design. The emotional/behavioral difference between retracting a mistake and a full apology is pretty huge, despite their conceptual similarity. Some people really have trouble apologizing, and apologies are really laden with a lot of cultural baggage and potential for misunderstanding.
If you consider social interactions, they can be described as an interaction where signal is identified against noise - given a specific context. Its natural then for a context to exist such that the signal and noise are inverted, or neutrality is lost.
Not everyone can afford a mea culpa.
That said this is precisely the kind of interesting dynamic that is worth testing out to see what sort of affordance it creates, and how the medium changes to incorporate mea culpas.
It certainly won't work for all cases of conflict, but don't you think it would work for some? The goal was not a complete solution but a step towards changing community norms.
Apology can go a long way, but in my experience (USA) all the successful ones that I have seen were done from a position of strength. That is, the person apologizing felt that after apology his opinions would still be respected and listened to, not dismissed as "another stupidity from that fool". In this case, it could be very powerful. It is also seen as voluntary.
On the flip side, I have never, ever seen an impactful apology that was extracted by demands. Such demanded apology is usually a punishment. Call it by what it is -- flogging (that strong inflict on the week). My 2c.
To be fair, in the language section I point out this is explicitly not using the language of apology (for some of the reasons you bring up), but is instead a more neutral admission of mistake.
You are 100% correct. It seems like a majority of the twitter crowds scream for the destruction of a person's reputation, livelihood, and family ties because of stuff that got said 15 years ago. It's pretty sad and why I don't bother at all. It's total swamp in my opinion, beyond salvation.
An apology, to the cancel crowd, is merely an admission of guilt. There is no such thing as redemption. By the time someone apologizes, the mob has moved on to a fresh outrage. In their wake are ruined reputation and careers.
Depending on how severe the mistake is, part of apologizing may be removing onesself from places of power where they made the error. For example, a hiring manager who is found to discriminate against gay people should no longer get to hire anyone and may no longer get to manage people for a period of time. The internet has a relatively short memory, so I expect once an apology and suitable make-up-fors have been doled out the amount of anger is much less.
Remember that conversations are being read by people beyond those replying. They're less likely to be so invested as to smell blood from an admission of wrong.
And if there is no audience beyond a person you think is fighting instead of debating, then why reply?
I think we can distinguish apologies into two top-level categories: meaningful and meaningless. Meaningless apologies can be further subdivided ("I'm sorry you were offended", or "It's just my culture to be a jerk"), but I'm not interested in that - they're all meaningless.
Meaningful apologies can be easily found via the search engine of your choice, "How to apologize" brings up lots of hits. The thing they all have in common though is an acknowledgement (in one form or another) that the person apologizing was legitimately in the wrong, and that they will endeavor to not do that again.
It's that last bit that is important. It's not sufficient for a company to apologize for dumping oil in the ocean or a person apologize for using a racist term. A real apology acknowledges harm caused, and shows how the entity apologizing will rectify past harm and prevent future harm.
This is why, in my opinion, at least, so few apologies legitimately improve anyone's standing. It's not that "cancel culture needs heads", it's just that people expect to say, "I'm sowwy", rub their toes in the dirt, and be let off the hook without doing anything to really undo the harm caused. People rarely even acknowledge the harm they cause, let alone do anything about it, in these so-called apologies.
So no: people who demand apologies don't just reject them after they're given. It's just that most of the time, the apology is meaningless.
One of the explicit design choices in this was to limit people's tendency to screw up apologies in the heated moments when they haven't yet internalized the outside world's perspective of their message. I'm glad you brought up the searching of how to apologize - it's one of those super important life skills that we haven't done a good job of teaching people about. We have to design with this constraint in mind.
One of the things I think about most in design, especially in design of social products, is limiting self-sabotage. This is because there's really significant emotional risk in social systems of feelings like being exposed, misunderstood, etc.
This is why I favored the approach of not including a Follow-up or further explanations. It makes the choice Mea Culpa very simple, favoring cooling off of conflict over continued debate. Basically people can go back in their corners and think about things, and figure out how to approach things again later if they choose. It is an intentional choice to favor respectful debate over maximal information exchange, acknowledging the medium's tendency to escalate conflict and the presence of many bad faith actors.
Also note this feature does not take the place of the apologies you're talking about, it just offers an acknowledgment of mistake and an opportunity to forgive.
The awareness of the user's emotional state leading to the possibility of self-sabotage is a brilliant aspect of this design. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that line of thinking in this context. It's lovely to see consideration of the user's emotions modelled as a practice that should be more common, as, after all, social media is a form of computer-mediated human interaction and all human interaction leads to emotions.
Yes, I agree with your overall thesis. A feature like this can help normalize people publicly admitting that they made a mistake, and walking back that original Bad Tweet (or whatever).
Sometimes you get "sorry I got caught" non-apologies, other times people are dog-piling and Twitter doesn't show new arrivals the entire apology discussion if it were a sincere apology.
It always emboldens the mob. They aren't after an apology, they're pursuing harm against the target and typically won't stop until they get it - unless you can show strength to the bully behavior and can stand-off against them (which not everyone can do). If you can, they'll give up and pursue another easier target. The mobs have weaponized job firings, which puts most people in a position of immediate weakness where they're afraid to stand their ground.
Apologising to people who would consider it an acceptable political outcome if you lost your job and killed yourself tends to embolden those partifluar people.
Appeasing bullies doesn't work. They want to see you squirm and beg, because it's fun make someone grovel before you. The object-level discussion is secondary.
Some people call this dichotomy good and bad faith, right?
I think at the same time there are circumstances in which the acceptable outcome is indeed a loss of job. (And to some moral codes, a loss of life- see advocates for the death penalty.)
EG. A Manager who pressured people into sexual favors for promotions should lose the job of being a manager.
Sure, but the point is that if people who want you to lose your job are screaming about you on twitter, it's bad advice to apologise in an attempt to appease them- because the twitter mob won't be happy till you're in the ground. Whether you would be in the mob if the circumstances were turned around is a striking, but secondary, question.
Yes, my preferences may include that some people should lose their jobs. But in my case, I think it should only be when that manager is convicted in court, not when someone or some mob) accuses them on twitter. And, actually, if they really did something bad- then let the legal system punish and rehabilitate them!
And then don't try and stop them from ever having a job again. Aren't we liberal? Aren't we meant to be for rehabilitation rather than emotion-based punishment? Restorative justice? Or does all that go out the window if you're not politically useful?
"Sure, but the point is that if people who want you to lose your job are screaming about you on twitter, it's bad advice to apologise in an attempt to appease them- because the twitter mob won't be happy till you're in the ground."
I haven't personally observed this nor have I witnessed studies about it. Could you link to me anything like that? I've seen people who have credibly discussed their abuses on twitter and people apologize. Criticism of the apologies are often 1) it is incomplete, 2) it is a non-apology, 3) it has not be followed up with action.
I haven't myself seen criticism outside of these things, which are valid critiques and not the sort of overdramatic spectacle you're describing. But I think it's valid that I just am in different circles than you, so I'm curious if you could educate me about this.
(Additionally, the legal system is inadequate to address nuanced power structures. Rape, sexual assault, and being a creep are extremely hard to gain redress for, and often make victims blacklisted from the industry. Why are we concerned about the careers of people who do bad things, and not concerns about the careers of people who are their victims? The victims often struggle to find work or are completely blacklisted from their industry.)
Why are we concerned about the careers of people who do bad things
It turns out that Twitter mobs sometimes do not have the most discerning standards of evidence.
Also, I'm pretty sure you'd have a very different reaction to someone arguing against criminal justice reform on the grounds of "why are we concerned with the welfare of people who do bad things?"
I've heard this argument made (I believe I've even made it myself at some point), but in practice, it turns out to be less effective than people think. "Be silent and it'll just blow over" is increasingly ineffective as a strategy because the Internet has a longer memory; as one looks up information on a person, allegations will jump to the surface. And increasingly, people seem to assume that absence of a counterpoint is implicit admission of possible truth (there's the perpetual "when will you stop beating your wife" argument, but a lot of other allegations are in far more plausible categories, where silence can imply a lack of ability to defend one's reputation).
I agree with what you're saying there, but instead of responding by apologizing people are often still better off by going on the attack, calling the allegations baseless nonsense, or personally attacking the people spreading them.
Usually I don't actually see this, but I do seem to see a pile of "You shouldn't have apologized! They'll make you apologize for everything else once they know you're weak!" comments (which certainly don't help anything).
I think there is a disconnect between people in different communities because reasonable people naturally avoid the places where extremists congregate, so you only encounter them if you either venture into their den (which reasonable people rarely have any incentive to do) or you become one of their targets. If neither of those describes you, you may scarcely be aware of their existence.
This also explains why both sides commonly feel victimized. Each only sees reasonable people on their side and not vicious extremists because they don't hang out with the vicious extremists and the extremists on their side are out victimizing the other side and not them. But they can see the extremists on the other side when they come to attack.
No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.