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A TED Talk hosted on Tuesday that featured Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey opened questions to the platform’s users, who then acted accordingly.
The conversation, which centered around the “concerns and opportunities for Twitter’s future,” according to Mashable, invited those on the social media site who were following along to tweet questions using the hashtag #AskJackAtTED, and promised to project some of them onto a giant screen behind Dorsey during the event.
#TED2019, were you overwhelmed or distracted by the questions on the screen? Take a look at what everyone asked on #AskJackAtTED.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our conversation with @jack. The video of the interview will be available on https://t.co/YLcO5Ju923 soon. pic.twitter.com/PYqX2l5vfR
— TED Talks (@TEDTalks) April 16, 2019
The Twitter trolls took full advantage.
“Now that your platform has played a significant role in the end of humankind, what’s your next step?…” read one cutting question.
“You just said your metrics create toxicity,” pointed out another Tweet displayed behind Dorsey. “So… you’re CEO. Why not change them right now?”
“How do you feel about giving a platform to literal Nazis,” asked another.
The Ted moderators eventually ended the live feed; and while many speculated that it was cut because of the vitriol spewed at Dorsey, TED claimed otherwise.
“The #askjackatted screen was planned to be up for a portion of the session for Chris and me to pull questions from, and was not intended to stay up the entire interview,” wrote Whitney Pennington Rodgers, the TED Talks current affairs curator.
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