Jess Miers 🦝

Alan Bleiweiss @alanbleiweiss.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:26 UTC

Content moderation. It's extremely difficult. Governments on "both sides" of the political spectrum are outright ignorant bullies with their ego-driven agendas.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:27 UTC

I'm excited for academia. I'm looking forward to shaping the next generation of folks that not only care about but love technology and online expression just as much as I do. They're the future and that's where I prefer to focus my attention.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:27 UTC

Truthfully, I'm burnt out on it. I spent the majority of my 20s passionately fighting for something I believe deeply in, but between governments, the growing opposition towards tech, and the industry caving to it all, it wears on you.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:26 UTC

I'm leaving the industry for several reasons. First, I've always wanted to be a law professor and the opportunity presented itself earlier than I expected. But I was ready to head out earlier this year. It's because I see the writing on the wall and so do my peers.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:26 UTC

20. We're headed down a disappointing path when it comes to tech regulation. We'll look like the EU soon. That's a shame because their Internet sucks. I hope we don't do the same thing to AI. But we probably will because we can't help ourselves.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:26 UTC

19. Tech policy folks are some of the kindest and most dedicated people I've worked with in this space. These are people who couldn't care less about the paycheck and just love the Internet. Nobody wants to kill kids or cause harm to other people.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:25 UTC

18. The government's attempt to ban TikTok for unspecified national security reasons should deeply concern y'all. BTW: government actors forced a trade association to drop TikTok as a member. Other similarly positioned folks representing them are rumored to have received threats too.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:25 UTC

17. The companies could do better but no one really knows what "better" looks like and the goal posts always move regardless of the steps taken by the companies. As long as there's speech to censor and money to be made in techlash, the cycle will continue.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:24 UTC

15. I was never paid to spew company talking points while at Chamber of Progress. I never received company talking points and wouldn't have used them if I did. The organization is true to its principles and I would've left earlier if it wasn't. I care way too much.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:24 UTC

14. Lawmakers have no idea how tech works. But they're hellbent on regulating it. I've sat in some brutal meetings. One bill in California this year would've put Zuckerberg in jail every time someone used Facebook to sell drugs off the platform. Your tax dollars at work.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:23 UTC

With that, it will not surprise me in the slightest if the next few years have less legal challenges to deeply unconstitutional laws and simply more compliance strategies. It's not worth the investment to challenge and not worth the PR risk. So, great job government. 👍

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:23 UTC

13. The industry is moving to a compliance based strategy. Lawmakers have flooded the zone and any time a tech company decides to fight unconstitutional laws, the government and other organizations spin up their PR machines to frame the fight as the industry killing kids.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:23 UTC

I have many horror stories from California. It's so bad that other trade associations and lobbyists out here will ostracize you if the legislature doesn't like you. It's just as bad to be associated with the opposition in California. We tiptoe around our electeds here.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:23 UTC

12. The California Legislature is the most toxic group of policymakers I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with in my role. Absolute bullies. They'll threaten to blackball your organization if you don't play by their rules or if they simply don't like your opposition.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:22 UTC

11. There are organizations that prey on high school kids and their parents to get them to advocate for laws that are only in the best interest of industry competitors, age authentication vendors, and the government. All age verification vendors are grifts.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:22 UTC

10. Policymakers routinely use kids as props to achieve their separate policy goals. When you really get into it with a policymaker about specifics that the industry can do to protect kids, they don't have answers. Again, it's about censorship. It always was and always is.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:22 UTC

9. There's many mouthpieces on here that are literally paid to just spout techlash. That's it. Those folks aren't substantive, they have no principles, and have no real interest in making the Internet better. They're paid to harass and yap. Many admit to it behind closed doors.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:21 UTC

8. Speaking of government, they hate a lot of stuff on the Internet (both the right and the left). As a result, their goals for policymaking typically have nothing to do with protecting people but achieving a broader censorship agenda. CA, NY, TX, and FL are all the same.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:21 UTC

7. Re: jawboning, most of the companies I've worked with have an internal culture that leans towards pushing back on government pressure. This is a good thing. The companies make their own decisions about content moderation, despite government yapping.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:21 UTC

6. Jawboning definitely happens but it's more overblown than folks think. Threats to gut Section 230 have little to no impact on the bigger tech players. They operate all over the globe without 230. It's the little guys that are the most concerned about operating without 230.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:21 UTC

5. Everyone has political biases but most companies actually do a pretty good job of checking themselves. At Google, I sat in many meetings with both progressives and conservatives and made many tough decisions that required us to oftentimes reach across the aisle.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:20 UTC

4. There is no money in making the Internet terrible for us users and kids especially. Content moderation has become proprietary because of advertisers. There's no money in having a hateful / harmful website. Just look at what happened to X. Companies compete to be better.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:20 UTC

(That's also why content moderation is so hard. No one can agree on what the Internet should look like).

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:20 UTC

3. Folks also hate the Internet because it's a mirror on society. People hate how the world works and how our society can sometimes really suck and that's reflected by our online environments. Policymakers think the tech companies should solve this human dilemma. That is silly.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:20 UTC

2. The biggest reason folks hate tech and the industry broadly is partly because of a deep lack of understanding of how content moderation works but also because 'techlash' is trendy. There's an entire, extremely lucrative, grift built on generating hate towards tech.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:19 UTC

1. The outside world hasn't a single clue about how content moderation actually works. That's the fault of the folks covering this space, various lobbyists and external groups, and the companies themselves. It's not that deep. Content moderation is extremely challenging.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:19 UTC

I worked for Twitter, Google (trust and safety and then public policy), and a trade association that worked with most of the tech industry players in Silicon Valley. Nobody is paying me to write this thread. And I have every incentive to be candid.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 01:19 UTC

Things about the tech industry and tech policy as a former insider who now has the freedom to talk openly about it 🧵

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 17:40 UTC

tell me you just left industry without telling me you just left industry 😌

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 17:54 UTC

Thank you!! And hell YES. I'm going to reach out to Zahr. I will take an open casebook any day.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 17:09 UTC

It was a rollercoaster indeed 🥲 but yes thank you!!!

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 17:06 UTC

Please feel free to reach me at my personal email at miersjessica@gmail.com (or anywhere else on the Internet I guess :) )

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 17:06 UTC

And yes, the hiring freeze was lifted the day after my announcement to social media because that's just how these things work

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