Meant to by whom? I was very serious about it. So was my boss and most of the people on my team. Beyond that, I don't have direct data.
My guess is that execs would have been very happy if we could have quickly solved the problem in a way where revenue and growth were not harmed and nobody important had to go out of their way.
But online abuse isn't like that. It's a hard problem. So I think execs were satisfied to say they were making a big effort, celebrate some modest gains, and then stop thinking about the problem once it wasn't a giant PR/regulatory issue for them.
So it's more like how a lot of people mean to get fit or lose weight. If it's New Year's Day or their doctor scares them enough, they'll get real serious for a while. They probably do mean it, but they mean a lot of other things too, and those win out.
I think you're exactly describing a "Potemkin village in case anyone accuses the execs of not caring." The people in power weren't serious about solving the problem (because the only things they'd accept were rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or an easy magic solution that could never actually exist), and the main benefit your team provided was PR/regulatory cover for the organization.
I would posit that no company "actually" cares. The premise of twitter isn't "the social platform that has no abuse". If that were the main goal, i'd imagined they'd be another nothing startup that ran out of money and died years ago. So then if only companies that don't have social good as their primary goals are the ones that would ever exist in the first place, then it feels that trying to judge companies for doing so seems not particularly useful.
> So then if only companies that don't have social good as their primary goals are the ones that would ever exist in the first place
Or alternatively, we could try to view this as the root problem and try to fix it.
Edit: Note there is also a difference between "not having social good as their primary goal" and working effectively against the social good, whether intentional or not.
no, a Potemkin village is never meant to be real, the parent commenter suggested it was like New Year's resolutions that are meant to be real but in the end people fail because they like their New York cheesecake too much to change.
Then the doctor tells them again you need to go on a diet or you will have a heart attack, and they go on the diet for a couple months.
having a heart attack may solve the issue.
Of course there are clear eyed people who see the situation for what it is, those that stay on don't care and consider the efforts to fight abuse as a Potemkin village.
Exactly. To me a Potemkin village is one or two steps further away from reality. The Potemkin village is unoccupied and has no potential for occupation. All involved in its construction know it's fake.
My team was sincere, worked hard, and definitely got some good stuff done. Just not nearly as much as we wanted.
Same thing then. In the metaphor, the buildings' only purpose and only outcome is to fool. One of our purposes was to get things done. And we definitely had some impact. If the public/regulatory pressure stayed constant, we would have gotten some more done. We would also have gotten more done if executives had taken it more seriously, of course.
So here's a much more general statement: your identity and your sense of self, your consciousness, your "choices" that build your life's narrative, are all actually a "Potemkin village in case anyone accuses the execs of not caring". The "anyone" in this scenario being other social agents you interact with (see [1] for further thoughts on this).
> the main benefit your team provided was PR/regulatory cover for the organization
This sort of reasoning seems to be applicable on many levels of social organization, from brains to countries. Most of the stuff your brain does is for show / self-delusion, most of the stuff any community or global organization does is also for show / self-delusion. It's "Potemkin villages" all the way down.
My guess is that execs would have been very happy if we could have quickly solved the problem in a way where revenue and growth were not harmed and nobody important had to go out of their way.
But online abuse isn't like that. It's a hard problem. So I think execs were satisfied to say they were making a big effort, celebrate some modest gains, and then stop thinking about the problem once it wasn't a giant PR/regulatory issue for them.
So it's more like how a lot of people mean to get fit or lose weight. If it's New Year's Day or their doctor scares them enough, they'll get real serious for a while. They probably do mean it, but they mean a lot of other things too, and those win out.