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News flash: being a public figure attracts attention and some of that attention is negative. I just don't see what the problem is. If you don't want negative a

News flash: being a public figure attracts attention and some of that attention is negative. I just don't see what the problem is. If you don't want negative attention, don't be a public figure. I can say random stuff on Twitter because I have ~300 followers—even if every single one of them tweeted at me, it wouldn't matter. Obviously the reason that Mallory got a bunch of repetitive responses to her tweet is because she has 64k followers. People in the public eye have been dealing with attention for decades. If you don't want attention, get out of the public eye—being a part of the Twitter universe is not a requirement of being alive.

pimterry 11y ago
Sure, given twitter's design it makes perfect sense. That doesn't make it a good or unavoidable problem though; you can imagine easy changes to twitter that would make handling this stuff much easier. Detecting that you're sending a very similar response to a message to other previous responses and warning you, for example, in the same way stackoverflow does to catch duplicate questions, would solve this exact problem almost totally. More widely, better handling of abusive content generally would help. Automatic trolling and abuse detection has actually had quite a lot of research done (e.g. http://sentic.net/do-not-feel-the-trolls.pdf http://sentic.net/do-not-feel-the-trolls.pdf), and while it's not perfect you can definitely imagine an approach where you start to reduce notification spam from tweets likely to be needlessly offensive, or generally unlikely to be adding much to the conversation. Obvious repeatedly detected offenders, or people who almost always get their messages flagged, could result in notifications for the target only occasionally (instant notifications for interesting responses, daily/hourly batched notifications for less-interesting responses), or no notifications at all (but potentially still visible if you actively go look at the conversation). Twitter et al could drastically improve this issue. While being a public figure is difficult, this kind of thing isn't an inevitable aspect of it: there's clear concrete things you could do that would substantially lessen it.
- morgante 11y ago
  > Twitter et al could drastically improve this issue. While being a public figure is difficult, this kind of thing isn't an inevitable aspect of it: there's clear concrete things you could do that would substantially lessen it. Sure, but it doesn't make sense to invest engineering time on problems which only affect a tiny subset of users. Nobody blames the USPS for not investing more in solutions to help celebrities deal with fan mail. I fail to see why Twitter should spend any effort optimizing for the experience of a privileged <1%.
  - dagw 11y ago
    I fail to see why Twitter should spend any effort optimizing for the experience of a privileged <1%. I wonder what % of Twitter traffic is, directly or indirectly, generated due to that 1% of very popular users, and what will happen to twitter if the all go away. And for what it's worth postal services do spend a lot of effort optimizing for people who send and receive a ton of mail.
snowwolf 11y ago
> I can say random stuff on Twitter because I have ~300 followers—even if every single one of them tweeted at me, it wouldn't matter. Until someone with 100K followers retweets one of your tweets that is maybe contentious. And then it gets retweeted 5000 more times. The network effects become exponential. Relevant: https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d84f https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d...
- morgante 11y ago
  > Relevant: https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d.. https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d.... I don't see how that's relevant. The author of that article has nearly 10,000 of her own Twitter followers. She's a public figure and, unfortunately, that comes with negative reactions. In the piece, she mentions that "if I wanted to avoid them I had to just log off Twitter all together" as though that's some terrible sacrifice. If you don't want to be famous, just stop being famous (unless your narcism depends on having thousands of people listen to your every word).
  - snowwolf 11y ago
    From the article: "Somewhere along the way an account with a large and conservative following retweeted it, an action that flooded my notifications page" The point being that even if you are trying to use twitter as a social network to connect with friends and only have 300 followers (or 10000) it only takes one account with a vocal following to take your innocent tweet (that they could of found through twitter search) and put a negative spin on it through a retweet. Which then unleashes the masses on you.
    - morgante 11y ago
      Yes, I did in fact read the article. But if you're trying to use Twitter as a social network to connect with friends, you don't have 10,000 followers. The author is clearly a public figure: she's a comic and writer, not someone just networking with friends. If she didn't have thousands of followers, the likelihood of the conservative finding her tweet would have been exponentially lower.

pimterry 11y ago

Sure, given twitter's design it makes perfect sense. That doesn't make it a good or unavoidable problem though; you can imagine easy changes to twitter that would make handling this stuff much easier. Detecting that you're sending a very similar response to a message to other previous responses and warning you, for example, in the same way stackoverflow does to catch duplicate questions, would solve this exact problem almost totally. More widely, better handling of abusive content generally would help. Automatic trolling and abuse detection has actually had quite a lot of research done (e.g. http://sentic.net/do-not-feel-the-trolls.pdf http://sentic.net/do-not-feel-the-trolls.pdf), and while it's not perfect you can definitely imagine an approach where you start to reduce notification spam from tweets likely to be needlessly offensive, or generally unlikely to be adding much to the conversation. Obvious repeatedly detected offenders, or people who almost always get their messages flagged, could result in notifications for the target only occasionally (instant notifications for interesting responses, daily/hourly batched notifications for less-interesting responses), or no notifications at all (but potentially still visible if you actively go look at the conversation). Twitter et al could drastically improve this issue. While being a public figure is difficult, this kind of thing isn't an inevitable aspect of it: there's clear concrete things you could do that would substantially lessen it.

morgante 11y ago
> Twitter et al could drastically improve this issue. While being a public figure is difficult, this kind of thing isn't an inevitable aspect of it: there's clear concrete things you could do that would substantially lessen it. Sure, but it doesn't make sense to invest engineering time on problems which only affect a tiny subset of users. Nobody blames the USPS for not investing more in solutions to help celebrities deal with fan mail. I fail to see why Twitter should spend any effort optimizing for the experience of a privileged <1%.
- dagw 11y ago
  I fail to see why Twitter should spend any effort optimizing for the experience of a privileged <1%. I wonder what % of Twitter traffic is, directly or indirectly, generated due to that 1% of very popular users, and what will happen to twitter if the all go away. And for what it's worth postal services do spend a lot of effort optimizing for people who send and receive a ton of mail.

snowwolf 11y ago

> I can say random stuff on Twitter because I have ~300 followers—even if every single one of them tweeted at me, it wouldn't matter. Until someone with 100K followers retweets one of your tweets that is maybe contentious. And then it gets retweeted 5000 more times. The network effects become exponential. Relevant: https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d84f https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d...

morgante 11y ago
> Relevant: https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d.. https://medium.com/the-lighthouse/is-that-a-threat-1f073e51d.... I don't see how that's relevant. The author of that article has nearly 10,000 of her own Twitter followers. She's a public figure and, unfortunately, that comes with negative reactions. In the piece, she mentions that "if I wanted to avoid them I had to just log off Twitter all together" as though that's some terrible sacrifice. If you don't want to be famous, just stop being famous (unless your narcism depends on having thousands of people listen to your every word).
- snowwolf 11y ago
  From the article: "Somewhere along the way an account with a large and conservative following retweeted it, an action that flooded my notifications page" The point being that even if you are trying to use twitter as a social network to connect with friends and only have 300 followers (or 10000) it only takes one account with a vocal following to take your innocent tweet (that they could of found through twitter search) and put a negative spin on it through a retweet. Which then unleashes the masses on you.
  - morgante 11y ago
    Yes, I did in fact read the article. But if you're trying to use Twitter as a social network to connect with friends, you don't have 10,000 followers. The author is clearly a public figure: she's a comic and writer, not someone just networking with friends. If she didn't have thousands of followers, the likelihood of the conservative finding her tweet would have been exponentially lower.