Twitter Inc. is stepping into the delicate problem of what to do about white nationalism on its site.

The problem is, do you ban a white supremacist who can manipulate a sentence in ways that don’t really make him look hateful of others. Do some of them have good points regarding certain topics, and should those points, if addressed intelligently, be discussed with others? Could some of them be educated if left to discuss their ideals with more open-minded folks? Or should Twitter just ban them all?

We all know by now that if you outright ban people, not only do they and their fans feel deliriously vindicated, they also blame big tech for being part of some Orwellian gang that is set to duct-tape the mouths of mankind and turn us all into blithering idiots. At the same time, the purported transgressors are merely moved to another place where they become more resilient, more focused and perhaps more bitter, which is possibly a good reason to allow them to air their views on leading platforms.

Twitter is thinking the same thing, according to a story in Motherboard Wednesday. “Is it the right approach to deplatform these individuals?” asked Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, legal and public policy. “Is the right approach to try and engage with these individuals? How should we be thinking about this? What actually works?”

Thoughtful censorship rather than the under-pressure knee-jerk kind so often seen in Silicon Valley is a breath of fresh air, but Twitter has always seemed more open to nuance than, say, its social media neighbor, Facebook Inc.

As we saw the on the Joe Rogan interview, Gadde and her boss, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, admit there is no easy answer as to how a platform should be run and moderated. It’s a work in progress, but the pair seem to be taking the work seriously.

Dorsey famously met with President Trump this year to chat about the “health of the public conversation” and Gadde now says Twitter is working with various academics to understand better whom to ban and whom not to ban. She is well-aware that mass banning is called oppression, the thing of tyrants. You need dissenting voices, or things get strange quickly.

“We’re working with them specifically on white nationalism and white supremacy and radicalization online and understanding the drivers of those things; what role can a platform like Twitter play in either making that worse or making that better?” said Gadde.

Twitter is being too idealistic, say some critics, or too lenient, say others, by hoping that the human race can sort things out by talking openly about issues and embracing a dialectic. Those same critics say people won’t be turned by “counter-speech” and if any whiff of white nationalism is allowed on Twitter, then the world will be sucked in under its influence.

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