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People are tired from crybullies. We need a place where freedom of speech still matters. Freedom of speech doesn't include invading someone's privacy (this is

People are tired from crybullies. We need a place where freedom of speech still matters. Freedom of speech doesn't include invading someone's privacy (this is illegal; doxxing, stalking etc. should be banned and actively fought against). But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. There's always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button.

eropple 10y ago
Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because they get brigaded? To hell with that, and with the people who think that is a social norm worth protecting. "Crybullies." And I literally thought this could not get any sillier a thing.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Without taking a stance on either side of this contentious issue, I would note that it should be technically feasible to offer an option which would auto-block any account that hasn't established a certain extent of "not a troll sockpuppet" bona fides - for example, by being more than a few weeks old, and having a certain degree of engagement with the community at large. Accounts which fail to meet these criteria, and persist in attempts to abuse someone already recognized as being targeted, might be automatically suspended or banned. I don't care for Twitter particularly, but it's a thing that exists, and it's not likely to go away any time soon. And I don't care for shitposter brigades at all. As the current brouhaha demonstrates, manual intervention in high-profile cases is no solution at all. Twitter's engineering team is easily capable of an automated solution; all they need is for their management to turn them loose on the problem. I'm not sure why that hasn't yet happened. Of course it's impossible for any automated solution to make everyone happy - but what we're looking at right now is a response that has made everyone unhappy. Twitter can do better. I hope they take this incident as sufficient reason to do so.
  - eropple 10y ago
    I hear and respect what you're saying, but I don't think you can technologically fix a social problem. Twitter needs moderation, and I don't think that's practically accomplished with a purely technological solution. Assholes simply don't have a right to be there, and Twitter has a responsibility to its userbase to not subject them to it at all, rather than merely "well, machine learning" to a merely intermittently abusive, rather than constantly abusive, state.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Of course you're absolutely right. What I'd really like to see out of Twitter is a fair, unbiased moderation team that's up to the challenge of operating at Twitter scale. But I'm not even sure that's possible, and even if it is, it'll take a long time to build - and in the meantime, a system like the one I sketched in my prior comment, augmented with an ability to communicate "hey something looks to be going on here" to human moderators when necessary, seems like a reasonable stepping stone.
    - braythwayt 10y ago
      FWIW, even attempting technological solutions sends a signal of a sort. It's probably a "Red Queen's Race" to stay ahead of determined abusers, just as it's difficult to conquer spam, but one side-effect of making a concerted effort to try is that Twitter would be sending an unambiguous message about limits on behaviour.
      - eropple 10y ago
        This is a good point. That some movement is happening is, unambiguously, a good thing. It demonstrates at least some recognition of the situation. Whether it's the right movement, or whether Twitter will consider it to be "enough" and stop, is still an open question.
- Grue3 10y ago
  There are social networks (Facebook, Tumblr) where you can turn off the ability to be messaged by people you don't friend/mutually follow. Getting attacked by trolls? Shut it down, and enjoy the silence.
  - eropple 10y ago
    As I mentioned in a sibling comment, a big part of Twitter for me is meeting new people. Not only have I had good, thought-provoking conversations on Twitter (for all the 140-characters jokes I don't find it that difficult) but I've made friends who are now RL, in-person, at-the-bar-on-Fridays friends there. That doesn't happen when you're blocking external folks in that way, and that's a bad tradeoff to make just because "well, those people are dicks, we can't control them, emojishrug!".
- ggreer 10y ago
  I agree that the person you're replying to is being cavalier, but Twitter does have tools to mass-ignore accounts you don't care about. You can change notifications to only be from people you follow. There's also a "Tailored for you" option for each notification type. I'm not sure if it's the default, but that seems to be the setting on my phone. It basically makes egg accounts invisible. It's rare that I get involved in drama on Twitter, but thanks to notification settings, I've found it pretty easy to filter out the negative people.
- atemerev 10y ago
  For that, there is another button: "stop receiving notifications". And another one: "don't allow anybody but the people I follow to spam me with shit". Both are easily activated on Twitter. What other button we need to invent? "Activate our hordes of ML algorithms to make sure that all replies you receive are about kittens or pink ponies"? Can be done, but we already have Facebook for that. For me, all this drama looks like an orchestrated attack on Twitter.
  - eropple 10y ago
    Do you realize that a big part of Twitter, for a lot of people, is making connections with different groups? I've made multiple friends on Twitter, people I now know and talk to through other channels (as well as Twitter). Even aside from those friends, I have had many conversations with people I don't follow and who don't follow me about issues--interesting ones that, in your weird little world, simply wouldn't happen because instead of fixing the problem of superannuated juveniles who have nothing better to do than blow up your phone with guro and death threats, you offer complete non-solutions to begin with. But, then. "Crybullies." Res ipsa loquitur.
    - atemerev 10y ago
      So, you've got death threats and guro in your inbox while seeking new friends? (Both are serious, btw, and criminally punishable — nothing to do with free speech; however, e.g. comparing somebody with certain bodily orifice _is_ free speech. Little differences.) And yes, crybullies. People like Melissa Click. I don't know why you are so enraged by this word, quite accurately describing them.
pron 10y ago
> But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. Care to explain the ethical viewpoint that's led you to this conclusion? The problem isn't "insults" and the solution isn't "handling them". The problem is social dynamics that create disrespect and dehumanization towards certain people. The dynamics and their consequences are real regardless of how the victims "handle" them.
braythwayt 10y ago
First, I don't think you speak for "People," just the kind of people who are just like you. For example, I have never used the expression "crybullies," and if I did, it would probably be to describe the kind of white male who gets on a place like HN and cries that his freedom to be a raging asshole in somebody else's privately owned medium is being trampled by moderation. But back to your point, I will argue with it in good faith. You say: > There's always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button. This sounds (superficially) fair. If I insult Milo, he can ignore me, block me, or insult me back, and I can do the same to him. If either of us rage-quits Twitter, well, sucks-to-be-us. Well here's the thing. What is it doesn't work like that in practice? What if the "block" button is not an effective mechanism for using Twitter positively? What if Milo blocks me, but thousands of my followers insult Milo, overwhelming his ability to block them all? It's more than just his feelings, if his entire experience is flooded with my army of trolls, he simply can't keep up with the tools in place. And the kicker is this: People know this, so they "game the system" by flooding your mentions with so many new and different accounts that you simply can't block them all. Overwhelmed by a DDOS, you delete your account. IF there were effective tools for ignoring insults and floods, I would agree with you that you have options, and if you delete your account that is entirely your personal choice. But in the current design, Twitter provides a grossly imbalanced power dynamic between those who wish to abuse other users, and those who wish to use the system without abusing other users. Where does this imbalance lead us? To social network where only trolls remain standing. That is not in Twitter's best interests, nor does it have long-term survivability even if they thought it was. This dynamic has been repeated many, many times, and so far it has always worked out the exact same way; When the trolls arrive, you either moderate actively, or your social network dies. Now, you say: > if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them Actually, when you run a social network, it is your job to decide how it is to be used. We're on a moderated platform right now, and it is someone's job to prevent certain types of speech from taking place. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with whether any one person or group of people can handle insults or not. Hacker News simply does not wish to cultivate an insult-heavy tone, period. So it has guidelines, and it enforces the guidelines, and people like you and I decide that the benefits of a moderated conversation outweigh the freedom to unleash our raging id. Should Twitter be less like voat and more like facebook? That is a question of opinion. But it is not necessarily true that it's not anybody's job to police the the of a social network, and it is certainly not even remotely true that there is always the block button, because the consequence of Twitter's current design choices creates an asymmetry between abusers and the abused.
MrZongle2 10y ago
"People are tired from crybullies. We need place when freedom of speech still matters." That's not going to exist in any medium that is controlled by a single organization, whether that's a government, nonprofit, or corporation. If one person (or a small group of people) can pull the plug, eventually it will get pulled.
- atemerev 10y ago
  4chan (the horror!) still seems to be alive.

eropple 10y ago

Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because they get brigaded? To hell with that, and with the people who think that is a social norm worth protecting. "Crybullies." And I literally thought this could not get any sillier a thing.

throwanem 10y ago
Without taking a stance on either side of this contentious issue, I would note that it should be technically feasible to offer an option which would auto-block any account that hasn't established a certain extent of "not a troll sockpuppet" bona fides - for example, by being more than a few weeks old, and having a certain degree of engagement with the community at large. Accounts which fail to meet these criteria, and persist in attempts to abuse someone already recognized as being targeted, might be automatically suspended or banned. I don't care for Twitter particularly, but it's a thing that exists, and it's not likely to go away any time soon. And I don't care for shitposter brigades at all. As the current brouhaha demonstrates, manual intervention in high-profile cases is no solution at all. Twitter's engineering team is easily capable of an automated solution; all they need is for their management to turn them loose on the problem. I'm not sure why that hasn't yet happened. Of course it's impossible for any automated solution to make everyone happy - but what we're looking at right now is a response that has made everyone unhappy. Twitter can do better. I hope they take this incident as sufficient reason to do so.
- eropple 10y ago
  I hear and respect what you're saying, but I don't think you can technologically fix a social problem. Twitter needs moderation, and I don't think that's practically accomplished with a purely technological solution. Assholes simply don't have a right to be there, and Twitter has a responsibility to its userbase to not subject them to it at all, rather than merely "well, machine learning" to a merely intermittently abusive, rather than constantly abusive, state.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Of course you're absolutely right. What I'd really like to see out of Twitter is a fair, unbiased moderation team that's up to the challenge of operating at Twitter scale. But I'm not even sure that's possible, and even if it is, it'll take a long time to build - and in the meantime, a system like the one I sketched in my prior comment, augmented with an ability to communicate "hey something looks to be going on here" to human moderators when necessary, seems like a reasonable stepping stone.
  - braythwayt 10y ago
    FWIW, even attempting technological solutions sends a signal of a sort. It's probably a "Red Queen's Race" to stay ahead of determined abusers, just as it's difficult to conquer spam, but one side-effect of making a concerted effort to try is that Twitter would be sending an unambiguous message about limits on behaviour.
    - eropple 10y ago
      This is a good point. That some movement is happening is, unambiguously, a good thing. It demonstrates at least some recognition of the situation. Whether it's the right movement, or whether Twitter will consider it to be "enough" and stop, is still an open question.
Grue3 10y ago
There are social networks (Facebook, Tumblr) where you can turn off the ability to be messaged by people you don't friend/mutually follow. Getting attacked by trolls? Shut it down, and enjoy the silence.
- eropple 10y ago
  As I mentioned in a sibling comment, a big part of Twitter for me is meeting new people. Not only have I had good, thought-provoking conversations on Twitter (for all the 140-characters jokes I don't find it that difficult) but I've made friends who are now RL, in-person, at-the-bar-on-Fridays friends there. That doesn't happen when you're blocking external folks in that way, and that's a bad tradeoff to make just because "well, those people are dicks, we can't control them, emojishrug!".
ggreer 10y ago
I agree that the person you're replying to is being cavalier, but Twitter does have tools to mass-ignore accounts you don't care about. You can change notifications to only be from people you follow. There's also a "Tailored for you" option for each notification type. I'm not sure if it's the default, but that seems to be the setting on my phone. It basically makes egg accounts invisible. It's rare that I get involved in drama on Twitter, but thanks to notification settings, I've found it pretty easy to filter out the negative people.
atemerev 10y ago
For that, there is another button: "stop receiving notifications". And another one: "don't allow anybody but the people I follow to spam me with shit". Both are easily activated on Twitter. What other button we need to invent? "Activate our hordes of ML algorithms to make sure that all replies you receive are about kittens or pink ponies"? Can be done, but we already have Facebook for that. For me, all this drama looks like an orchestrated attack on Twitter.
- eropple 10y ago
  Do you realize that a big part of Twitter, for a lot of people, is making connections with different groups? I've made multiple friends on Twitter, people I now know and talk to through other channels (as well as Twitter). Even aside from those friends, I have had many conversations with people I don't follow and who don't follow me about issues--interesting ones that, in your weird little world, simply wouldn't happen because instead of fixing the problem of superannuated juveniles who have nothing better to do than blow up your phone with guro and death threats, you offer complete non-solutions to begin with. But, then. "Crybullies." Res ipsa loquitur.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    So, you've got death threats and guro in your inbox while seeking new friends? (Both are serious, btw, and criminally punishable — nothing to do with free speech; however, e.g. comparing somebody with certain bodily orifice _is_ free speech. Little differences.) And yes, crybullies. People like Melissa Click. I don't know why you are so enraged by this word, quite accurately describing them.

pron 10y ago

> But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. Care to explain the ethical viewpoint that's led you to this conclusion? The problem isn't "insults" and the solution isn't "handling them". The problem is social dynamics that create disrespect and dehumanization towards certain people. The dynamics and their consequences are real regardless of how the victims "handle" them.

braythwayt 10y ago

First, I don't think you speak for "People," just the kind of people who are just like you. For example, I have never used the expression "crybullies," and if I did, it would probably be to describe the kind of white male who gets on a place like HN and cries that his freedom to be a raging asshole in somebody else's privately owned medium is being trampled by moderation. But back to your point, I will argue with it in good faith. You say: > There's always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button. This sounds (superficially) fair. If I insult Milo, he can ignore me, block me, or insult me back, and I can do the same to him. If either of us rage-quits Twitter, well, sucks-to-be-us. Well here's the thing. What is it doesn't work like that in practice? What if the "block" button is not an effective mechanism for using Twitter positively? What if Milo blocks me, but thousands of my followers insult Milo, overwhelming his ability to block them all? It's more than just his feelings, if his entire experience is flooded with my army of trolls, he simply can't keep up with the tools in place. And the kicker is this: People know this, so they "game the system" by flooding your mentions with so many new and different accounts that you simply can't block them all. Overwhelmed by a DDOS, you delete your account. IF there were effective tools for ignoring insults and floods, I would agree with you that you have options, and if you delete your account that is entirely your personal choice. But in the current design, Twitter provides a grossly imbalanced power dynamic between those who wish to abuse other users, and those who wish to use the system without abusing other users. Where does this imbalance lead us? To social network where only trolls remain standing. That is not in Twitter's best interests, nor does it have long-term survivability even if they thought it was. This dynamic has been repeated many, many times, and so far it has always worked out the exact same way; When the trolls arrive, you either moderate actively, or your social network dies. Now, you say: > if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them Actually, when you run a social network, it is your job to decide how it is to be used. We're on a moderated platform right now, and it is someone's job to prevent certain types of speech from taking place. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with whether any one person or group of people can handle insults or not. Hacker News simply does not wish to cultivate an insult-heavy tone, period. So it has guidelines, and it enforces the guidelines, and people like you and I decide that the benefits of a moderated conversation outweigh the freedom to unleash our raging id. Should Twitter be less like voat and more like facebook? That is a question of opinion. But it is not necessarily true that it's not anybody's job to police the the of a social network, and it is certainly not even remotely true that there is always the block button, because the consequence of Twitter's current design choices creates an asymmetry between abusers and the abused.

MrZongle2 10y ago

"People are tired from crybullies. We need place when freedom of speech still matters." That's not going to exist in any medium that is controlled by a single organization, whether that's a government, nonprofit, or corporation. If one person (or a small group of people) can pull the plug, eventually it will get pulled.

atemerev 10y ago
4chan (the horror!) still seems to be alive.