Twitter CEO Memo: We Suck At Dealing With Trolls

[DrOswald]

If he was that ashamed of it then you'd think he'd do something about it.

There's been a hundred solutions proposed for this problem, by far the easiest of which would be allowing people to automatically block accounts by account age.

90% of all twitter harassment and nearly 100% of all serious harassment (Death threats and the like) is done using 0-day burner accounts.

And nearly all new legitimate twitter accounts begin when someone wants to make a quick comment on a twitter. By essentially introducing a waiting period to twitter (because everyone will activate it) you will kill the vast majority of its growth. And as people are constantly leaving social media hubs such as twitter introducing significant barriers to entry will mean that people leave faster than they enter, essentially destroying the service in a very short amount of time.

Your solution is equivalent to burning down a building to stop the graffiti.

 

[WarpedMind]

(because everyone will activate it)

Conjectural hogwash.

Twitter is full of people who don't notice or don't care when people say mean things about them, in fact I'd argue that they compose the vast majority of Twitter users.

Adding in this protection for those that do care isn't gonna kill Twitter, and even if it WAS there's no reason to not roll out the feature on a trial basis and see what effect it has on Twitter's growth.

 

[DrOswald]

(because everyone will activate it)

Conjectural hogwash.

Twitter is full of people who don't notice or don't care when people say mean things about them, in fact I'd argue that they compose the vast majority of Twitter users.

Adding in this protection for those that do care isn't gonna kill Twitter, and even if it WAS there's no reason to not roll out the feature on a trial basis and see what effect it has on Twitter's growth.

Your assertions are just as based on conjecture as my assertions. What you purpose is a massive gamble that could sink the entire company. Now, I might be wrong. It is possible. In fact, lets say there is only a 25% chance I am right. In that case, your program would have a 25% chance of sinking the entire company.

It is really, really easy to gamble when it isn't your money, when it isn't your company. It is really easy to say "risk it all!" when you wont have to deal with the fact that your recklessness put dozens of people out of work.

And how in the world would you roll out a trial program for something like this and get any useful data at all? Do you put it on one or two big channels and see what happens? How in the world could you ever collect useful data?

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Maybe, as a first step, don't make me jump through 20 hoops when I try to report a troll on twitter?
I know the report system can be abused, but making it inaccessible by requiring so many details about the reported tweet is just turning people away from reporting.

Really? I've always found it really easy...

>Block
-- Would you like to report account
>Click
-- Reason
Click one of 4 options

Done//

 

[Norithics]

What you purpose is a massive gamble that could sink the entire company.

I... but how? Like, this is an option that somebody clicks on their profile, I thought. In that scenario most people will still see the stuff but just people who know they're gonna get targeted will have an option.

I really don't see the doom angle in this.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

source: The Guardian

so the memo is fake then?

Or supplied to them by the czar of slime Julian Assange...

 

[Jark212]

Whats this? A CEO taking personal responsibility for something? Mad respect to Mr Costolo, mad respect.

 

[renegade7]

What about IP blocking or banning?

It easily solves the problem of endless burner accounts by cutting it off at the source.

The first thing you might say is "But what if it's on an IP address that other people use, like most home networks?" That's half the point, actually. If your 15-year-old self (I feel it's not an unreasonable guess that most of the trolls are teenagers) decides to get all angsty and start slinging BS left and right on Twitter because someone said something that rustled your jimmies, now if your parents want to use Twitter you're going to need to explain to them why you felt it necessary to create a dozen accounts to swear at someone. And if you're an adult who behaves that way, you should know better and have no excuse anyway. Of course, taking it just a step further and using MAC-address blocking (yes, possible) will eliminate this issue.

And the next thing you might say is "What if they just use anonymizers like TOR or go to use public wifi networks?" Sure, if you're especially dedicated to the Fine Art of Internet Fuckwaddery, this won't provide a problem. But I argue it will make an appreciable dent by making trolling require a small investment of effort. You either have to take the time to configure a VPN, or drive to a coffee shop or library. Make trolling not worth the effort.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

youdontsay.gif

I got openly and blatantly slandered by some fuckwit I knew once (for backstabbing me, in short) and my report was dismissed as "no harassment going on here, move along now".

 

[Scars Unseen]

Joining the Not On Twitter program is easy. All it takes is a one time donation of ten minutes, provided that you use those ten minutes to delete you Twitter account.

 

[StatusNil]

Well, duh. That's what Twitter is good for. That, and advertising.

As for WAM, they were fairly pathetic from what I've observed. Nowhere nearly as good as the GamerGate Harassment Patrol in weeding out harassment, great at being politically weaponized though.

The sooner people realize the flaw is a feature of the model, the better.

*sigh* Here we go.

Article simply says "trolls", some idiot decides to drag it back to GG. As if they invented trolling and are the only people to ever troll in the history of the internet. Let it go.

Uh, article says "WAM", an entity that tried to police harassment. GG Harassment Patrol did this too. Seems like a pertinent comparison to me, one anti-harassment org active on Twitter vs. another. I don't think I suggested GG "invented trolling", or even trolled at all.

Thanks for diagnosing my idiocy though. Now it all makes sense, I know why thinking is so hard for me!

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Er... how did they slander you? If they just insulted you and said mean things about you that weren't true, I wouldn't exactly call that harassment. Twitter only seems to act against threats, posting of IRL info, and spam (as they should) so if it didn't fall under any of those three categories there's not much you can do really.

Character assassination. You know, the very definition of slander.