At Twitter, one thing that drives us is our desire to make a lasting impact as a company. Being a force for good is at the heart of that mission. Looking outside the walls of Twitter HQ we see lots of good stuff happening all the time, which invokes an incredible sense of hope that keeps us going.

The open exchange of information is just beginning to become an everyday part of how the world communicates. As folks like you spread positive knowledge through the platform, we'll be collecting it and highlighting good social movements that you might want to get involved in. So drop in every once in a while to see what's happening.

Can a tweet really make a difference? Are people really creating good social movements on Twitter? Does tweeting about things really make any difference? Does it make a positive difference? I'm not sure it does.

I remember going to one of the first charity: water events in San Francisco. I was completely appalled. Here they were trying to raise money to build water wells in Africa, while dozens of sponsors were there selling cheap shit made by slave labor in China and India. Is that really a win? "Buy our t-shirts made in poor countries so that we can donate the profits to poorer countries. Also, think of our awesome our brand is for sponsoring this." Meh. 

I don' t know. Maybe I'm just being cynical because it's 1000° C outside right now.

Seriously cool piece of artwork. I had no idea that we'd tested that many nuclear bombs.

Kind of makes you never want to drive through Nevada and New Mexico again though.

"Starting on Thursday, Google is going to increase the salaries of gay and lesbian employees whose partners receive domestic partner health benefits, largely to compensate them for an extra tax they must pay that heterosexual married couples do not. Google is not the first company to make up for the extra tax. At least a few large employers already do. But benefits experts say Google's move could inspire its Silicon Valley competitors to follow suit, because they compete for the same talent."

Good on Google for helping to put an end to what I've been calling, "The gayest tax ever levied."

Honestly, I've always had the feeling that the only reason that conservatives object to same-sex marriage is because they like knowing that they are taxing others—a great irony for a party that often runs on a platform of tax cuts. It's not about the sanctity of marriage. It never has been. It's about money. It's always about money.

The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.

Good to know the US is still #1 at something, right? China and India got nothing on us.

The real mark of a developed nation is how many minorities you keep in your prisons... right?

Patrick McGeehan at the New York Times recently wrote about a New York Fed study finding that studying economics makes you a Republican. The headline conclusion is that the more economics classes you take, the more likely you are to be a Republican. Majoring in economics or business is also more likely to make you a Republican. (See Table 2 in the original paper.) The study is based on thousands of observations of undergraduates at four large universities over three decades, so it is focused on undergraduate-level economics.

How peculiar. If anything, economics has made me more liberal. It gave me a perspective I didn't really have before. I'd never really sat down and thought about things like income inequality before. 

Economics also taught me that free market theory and reality are completely different. It seems to me like most Republicans like to talk about economic solutions based on theory, despite the fact that most of the implicit assumptions that make that theory valid have been violated.

Great work by Mike Mitchell. More of his awesome stuff here: http://sirmikeofmitchell.com

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed.

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants — David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes — for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all.

First China, now Italy. I love the way Google talks to nations. I also fear what will happen when Brin and Page walk away from the company. Somehow I don't think Google's "Don't be evil" motto is going to last forever.

Google is completely right in this case though. Can you imagine what would happen if those who own the servers were responsible for everything that passed through them? The Internet, as we know it, would cease to exist. Cases like this are also a detriment to social media adoption by large brands; already afraid of the legal ramifications of playing with user generated content. They don't want to engage in anything that carries even a small chance of a lawsuit.

In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation. These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

Oh, if only more people understood this. You can read the article over at Slate, and I suggest that you do, but if you just want to get the gist of it, well, George Carlin pretty much sums it up best,

Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: "The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope."

Anyone who actually understands this, understands that voting has become completely pointless. You might as well not vote. We elect politicians based on the same criteria we declare a winner on American Idol—not based on policy implications. Policy isn't even part of the public discourse anymore. Even if your party "wins" it doesn't matter, because politicians don't know why they won. They only have some vague idea of what kinds of policies their constituency even supports, and their constituency doesn't even know what's in their own best interest because they've never stopped to think about it.

Sociologists have noted that race and gender have been more politicized in the U.S. than class. In contrast, class is highly politicized in Europe, leading to a much stronger labor movement. The weak labor movement in the U.S. is partly to blame for the stingy federal policies around vacation and holidays. The U.S. federal government dictates that employees are given exactly zero paid holiday and vacation days a year (that means, if you get such things, it is because your employer is being generous/in a benefits arms race with other employers). 

This is one of the reasons why I'm torn about whether or not I really want a "full-time" job. Working freelance can be stressful when you are between work, and health care is completely unaffordable, but at least you don't get stuck with a 72-hour work week and no vacation time. I think a lot of other people are starting to feel the same way. What good is a pile of money if you can't spend it? Would you rather make $100,000/yr with limited vacation and 72-hour weeks or $50,000/yr, 40-hour weeks, and full month off? Maybe full-time work is overrated. Maybe it's not even something one should aspire to have. Maybe the current model for full-time employment is creating poor results in our largely service-based economy.

The model we currently have pushes people to constantly make more money and work longer hours so they can buy more "stuff" and live in more expensive places. No matter how much money you make it will never be enough. But you could have a different model. You could have a model where people accurately value their own time. You could have a model where you get an extra month of vacation instead of a bonus.

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Wow.

It's going to be incredibly interesting to see how this pans out. In a lot of ways, Google has the same kind of political power as a world superpower. In some ways, Google may end up having more political power than the whole of the United States. There's really no other company that I can think of that has ever had the ability to negotiate with a country the size of China. What would the Cold War have been like if Google was around? Or would the Cold War have ever existed at all...

And what's going to happen when the whole of China finds the Tienanmen Square Wiki page as a trending topic?