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I don't think Twitter vs Facebook abuse is a matter of the service itself, but a matter of who you interact with on that service and who your intended audience

I don't think Twitter vs Facebook abuse is a matter of the service itself, but a matter of who you interact with on that service and who your intended audience is when you compose on it. On Facebook you're interacting mostly with people you know, at least tangentially and who are identifiable as individuals to you. On Twitter, you're interacting with the public at large. You're welcoming comments from anyone and in large part the abuse comes from arguments arising from discussions of controversial topics which are publicly discussed and are far from black or white. This breeds anger among those who do view them as black and white issues and anger breeds abuse. These tools inherently attract a different crowd. In terms of both use and abuse.

potatolicious 10y ago
Right, but all of the above are very conscious decisions on each company's part. > "On Facebook you're interacting mostly with people you know, at least tangentially and who are identifiable as individuals to you." But also importantly, Facebook gives users control over who is allowed to see your posts, message you, or reply to your posts. They started with a default-public model and have slowly contracted this to favor those you have explicitly friended over rando strangers. This is a conscious decision on their part from their learnings about abuse - it isn't accidental. > "You're welcoming comments from anyone and in large part the abuse comes from arguments arising from discussions of controversial topics" It does, and many of Twitter's mechanisms make this phenomenon worse, at no benefit to users. Someone says something controversial, and that person's followers get into an argument with them about it. And then someone retweets it and yanks in a completely different group of people, none of whom know the original poster, or in fact know anyone (even obliquely) involved in the conversation. And then someone else retweets it into another group which is now even further removed from the original conversation. At each level empathy decreases as outrage increases, and at no point was there ever a helpful discourse for anyone. Fast forward an hour or two and somebody is calling a SWAT team to somebody else's house. Twitter is fundamentally structured in a way that allows a very high branching factor to content dissemination. This was a great way to gain traction early on, but at this point IMO is more a liability than a strength. Twitter's also consistently refused to assign explicit ownership of spaces. On Facebook if I behave abusively in one of your posts, you are free to delete my post. I can also control who sees my posts and who is allowed to reply to them. No such control exists on Twitter, where anyone can butt into any conversation at will, and none of the original participants in the conversation can do anything about it - because despite being the original participants no concept of content ownership exists. > "These tools inherently attract a different crowd. In terms of both use and abuse." That's exactly my point. We tend to think of abuse mitigation as a purely reactive topic - someone is abusive, another person hits the "report" button, some system kicks in, posts get deleted, people get banned, etc etc. But that's a losing battle. You can't outpace reactive abuse patrol/flagging if the structure of your tools, like you said, inherently attracts a different crowd. The fundamental designs of our social networks (or really, all technology) needs to account for bad actors. Abuse prevention cannot successfully be implemented as a layer on top of something else. That said, I think it's also an error state that these services attract a "different crowd". Human behavior is incredibly circumstance based - people will behave as the system encourages or discourages. I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone on Twitter is also on Facebook, but they act very differently on the two services. It's too simplistic to model abusive bad actors as inherently prone to abuse.
- ultramancool 10y ago
  > This is a conscious decision on their part from their learnings about abuse - it isn't accidental. I also think it serves a very different purpose. You're seeing them as something that could be the same in order to lower abuse, but I don't think that's true. Some of the things you say are bad about Twitter are actually things which make it a great public discussion tool. They're different tools - they cater to different parts of the market. If you want to have a public discussion about something, because of Twitter's decisions here, you take it to Twitter, not Facebook. All of these decisions are things that make Facebook a better tool for interacting with people who you know and Twitter a better tool for interacting with people that you don't. They're completely different markets and both serve a purpose. > That said, I think it's also an error state that these services attract a "different crowd". Human behavior is incredibly circumstance based - people will behave as the system encourages or discourages. I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone on Twitter is also on Facebook, but they act very differently on the two services. It's too simplistic to model abusive bad actors as inherently prone to abuse. This is somewhat true, but I don't think that without Twitter there would be no popular public discussion-oriented service. I think it's a niche that needs to be filled. Despite the fact that that niche sometimes breeds hostility. I feel fairly confident saying that Twitter wouldn't exist anymore if they tried to clone Facebook's protected and personal-style rather than paving their own more public style. Things like filtering who can see your messages and who can enter a discussion are just not things people want in a service which is oriented towards the public. You'll take those things to Facebook instead and they know that. The abuse and hostility risk is simply an inherent part of being a very public-oriented service, the odds of an actual problem arising for any individual user are infinitesimally small. It's something people are willing to risk and get involved in sometimes. There may be some minor tweaks, but nothing that would inherently changed the way the platform is used as you're suggesting would allow them to continue their existence or to effectively serve the niche they're in currently.
- vox_mollis 10y ago
  If only Twitter would offer something akin to a "block" feature, then we wouldn't need to entertain the prospect of policing crimethink across hundreds of millions of accounts.

potatolicious 10y ago

Right, but all of the above are very conscious decisions on each company's part. > "On Facebook you're interacting mostly with people you know, at least tangentially and who are identifiable as individuals to you." But also importantly, Facebook gives users control over who is allowed to see your posts, message you, or reply to your posts. They started with a default-public model and have slowly contracted this to favor those you have explicitly friended over rando strangers. This is a conscious decision on their part from their learnings about abuse - it isn't accidental. > "You're welcoming comments from anyone and in large part the abuse comes from arguments arising from discussions of controversial topics" It does, and many of Twitter's mechanisms make this phenomenon worse, at no benefit to users. Someone says something controversial, and that person's followers get into an argument with them about it. And then someone retweets it and yanks in a completely different group of people, none of whom know the original poster, or in fact know anyone (even obliquely) involved in the conversation. And then someone else retweets it into another group which is now even further removed from the original conversation. At each level empathy decreases as outrage increases, and at no point was there ever a helpful discourse for anyone. Fast forward an hour or two and somebody is calling a SWAT team to somebody else's house. Twitter is fundamentally structured in a way that allows a very high branching factor to content dissemination. This was a great way to gain traction early on, but at this point IMO is more a liability than a strength. Twitter's also consistently refused to assign explicit ownership of spaces. On Facebook if I behave abusively in one of your posts, you are free to delete my post. I can also control who sees my posts and who is allowed to reply to them. No such control exists on Twitter, where anyone can butt into any conversation at will, and none of the original participants in the conversation can do anything about it - because despite being the original participants no concept of content ownership exists. > "These tools inherently attract a different crowd. In terms of both use and abuse." That's exactly my point. We tend to think of abuse mitigation as a purely reactive topic - someone is abusive, another person hits the "report" button, some system kicks in, posts get deleted, people get banned, etc etc. But that's a losing battle. You can't outpace reactive abuse patrol/flagging if the structure of your tools, like you said, inherently attracts a different crowd. The fundamental designs of our social networks (or really, all technology) needs to account for bad actors. Abuse prevention cannot successfully be implemented as a layer on top of something else. That said, I think it's also an error state that these services attract a "different crowd". Human behavior is incredibly circumstance based - people will behave as the system encourages or discourages. I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone on Twitter is also on Facebook, but they act very differently on the two services. It's too simplistic to model abusive bad actors as inherently prone to abuse.

ultramancool 10y ago
> This is a conscious decision on their part from their learnings about abuse - it isn't accidental. I also think it serves a very different purpose. You're seeing them as something that could be the same in order to lower abuse, but I don't think that's true. Some of the things you say are bad about Twitter are actually things which make it a great public discussion tool. They're different tools - they cater to different parts of the market. If you want to have a public discussion about something, because of Twitter's decisions here, you take it to Twitter, not Facebook. All of these decisions are things that make Facebook a better tool for interacting with people who you know and Twitter a better tool for interacting with people that you don't. They're completely different markets and both serve a purpose. > That said, I think it's also an error state that these services attract a "different crowd". Human behavior is incredibly circumstance based - people will behave as the system encourages or discourages. I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone on Twitter is also on Facebook, but they act very differently on the two services. It's too simplistic to model abusive bad actors as inherently prone to abuse. This is somewhat true, but I don't think that without Twitter there would be no popular public discussion-oriented service. I think it's a niche that needs to be filled. Despite the fact that that niche sometimes breeds hostility. I feel fairly confident saying that Twitter wouldn't exist anymore if they tried to clone Facebook's protected and personal-style rather than paving their own more public style. Things like filtering who can see your messages and who can enter a discussion are just not things people want in a service which is oriented towards the public. You'll take those things to Facebook instead and they know that. The abuse and hostility risk is simply an inherent part of being a very public-oriented service, the odds of an actual problem arising for any individual user are infinitesimally small. It's something people are willing to risk and get involved in sometimes. There may be some minor tweaks, but nothing that would inherently changed the way the platform is used as you're suggesting would allow them to continue their existence or to effectively serve the niche they're in currently.
vox_mollis 10y ago
If only Twitter would offer something akin to a "block" feature, then we wouldn't need to entertain the prospect of policing crimethink across hundreds of millions of accounts.