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The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly

The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. As I see it there is a sort of give and take relationship with inherently public social media like twitter. Your comments and thoughts are presented to a wide audience, but that inherently subjects you to possible dissenting opinions or harassment from that audience. The alternative is to, say, create a personal blog. You could write your opinions all day there and nobody will judge them or attack you for them, because without a lot of effort in SEO and marketing, nobody will ever see them. Most people oppose bullying in school because kids "have" to go to school, so in a sense they're forced into the environment and should not be subject to attacks there. But who is forcing you to be on twitter?

eropple 10y ago
> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give up and let literal white supremacists and anti-feminists and gay-bashers chase the weakest among us out of the social discourse. I'm sure that isn't a political tactic being employed intentionally against them or anything. Or, you know, we can fucking not do that. Stop normalizing evil. Doing so literally-not-figuratively arms those who would do harm to the people among us who need our support. Show them the door, not their victims.
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  These people have always existed. They will continue to exist. They will continue to find ways to harass the people they see as easy targets because they find enjoyment in it. Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-arounds. For all of human existence up until last decade, these types of people didn't have a wide social outlet for their thoughts, just like everyone else didn't. Now it's open to everyone. Yes, it's morally reprehensible. But this is not something that we or any social media company can ever solve. It will always be a cat and mouse game. But it's a game that you don't have to play. You can still be a citizen of the 21st century world and not be on social media. It does not put you at any disadvantage to not have a twitter account. If you believe that it would, reconsider your priorities in life.
  - eropple 10y ago
    This post reveals a pretty significant misunderstanding of what Twitter is for marginalized communities. And, as such, this conversation is fruitless. But one last thing: if it's as abhorrent as you seem to actually think it is, stop caping for them as being something that can't be stopped. Because you help them by doing so.
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      >This post reveals a pretty significant misunderstanding of what Twitter is for marginalized communities. And, as such, this conversation is fruitless. Okay, then please, "educate me". I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'm a middle class straight white man and I will freely admit that I don't understand the plight of many minority groups, and certainly not in the context of twitter or other social media. My beliefs are not set in stone, and I have never been dismissive of someone who has the desire to share their experience with me so I have a better understanding. Regardless of my understanding, though, I'm pretty sure I will still feel that removing oneself from a harmful environment is a pretty effective tool, regardless of the type of harm being put upon you. What I see more often than not in this situation, however, are responses that are dismissive instead of educational -- like saying the conversation is fruitless. I have seen conversations like this come up before, where the "right wing" side, being much less moderate than I am (and I consider myself to be pretty liberal for the record), opens themselves up to learn more about the situation only to be met with responses like "I don't have time for this" or "educate yourself", which is about as effective as telling someone to RTFM. Only the manual is about someone else's beliefs and feelings, and it doesn't actually exist. So please, if you have the time, tell me what I don't understand.
      - eropple 10y ago
        OK. I apologize for the tone of my comment; most of the time when somebody says what you said, they aren't looking to learn. And that's why people often respond with "educate yourself": because, in 2017, asking to be taught is often a rhetorical and political trap used against activists and marginalized people (how fucked is that?). It is a request for emotional investment that is used intentionally and maliciously by the white-supremacist types to do what I can only describe as gish-galloping at scale. Ask questions, get people who actually care about stuff to give a shit and to expend effort and emotional energy...and then burn it, "I was trolling you the whole time", that sort of thing. As you noted, these people don't have much to live for and wasting their time is okay if they waste other people's time. That's a victory to them. The common response is "well, do it anyway," but the solution isn't for marginalized communities to be saints. It's for people like you and me to educate ourselves and work on this shit. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of AlterNet-type stuff, but this one encapsulates what I'm trying to say here: http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/black_people_are_not_here_to_teach_you_what_so_many_white_americans_just_cant_grasp_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/black_people_are_not_here_to... - A good place to start with regards to why social media matters with regards to marginalized groups (and it's really the obvious one) would be something like Black Twitter; it's a strong, pretty well-defined cultural group that discusses, at a wide and large scale, topics related to being black in America. It's a hugely influential cultural phenomenon and in a lot of ways it serves as a baseline political organization tool for those communities. The idea of telling marginalized people that they should refrain from participating in what is effectively the common social discourse among young people in 2017 because of their literal enemies who troll and harass specifically to make people not participate is...it presses some big red buttons in my head, because (also as a white dude) our space for "common social discourse" is pretty much anywhere we sit down, and that's not the case for others. The Wikipedia page is surprisingly detailed and I think it's a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter
- dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
  The harassment from Twitter is everywhere on both sides of the political spectrum though. You're painting a very one sided picture. I'm not attacking you here I'm just saying there is a narrative about the "alt-right" harassing the innocent leftists and it's not the whole picture. I'm a (democrat) mixed race woman, and I get more harassment and vitriol from "tolerant liberals" when I post anything remotely in support of the president than I ever do from "white supremacists or anti feminists". I have noticed if I don't go right down the party line on an issue, I'm attacked violently. The "N" word I get called frequently is Nazi, not the other. I'm not trying to say your experiences are invalid, I believe you're experiencing it, but I think assigning it to one political party or movement is inaccurate. It's really just the culture of Twitter, and maybe society in general.
  - eropple 10y ago
    If Twitter wants to show the alt-left tools the door too, I'm certainly not gonna cape up for them. But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here, and it's not towards the burned Bernie bros. That alt-left doesn't have members of state-blessed media outlets (well, until recently, when cheering on pedophilia became a little too much for them) on campus tours where he'd out trans people with a pack of jackals ready to pounce. There's a difference of kind here.
    - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
      You're kidding right? The right says a lot of stupid things...ok TONS of stupid things, but "left leaning media" isn't one of them. These media outlets may not be state blessed, but we have the media on our side, and we have our Jackals for sure. 99% of the media is leaning hard to the left on everything. The Milo incident is a fine example. While was repugnant and deserved it, that was an absolute media witch hunt, and he was targeted and destroyed by the jackals of the left. Bill Maher was the arguable catalyst of it, and he said the exact same thing Milo did, and WORSE things in support of pedophilia and we didn't call him out for it. No media blitz, not cancelled events/shows/etc. Nope, Maher is a hero! All that does is show the "values" we exited Milo with were not true because we don't apply those values to our own people.
- dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
  >Stop normalizing evil. Doing so literally-not-figuratively arms those who would do harm to the people among us who need our support. Show them the door, not their victims. To be completely fair, they will remove people for blatantly racist/sexist/homophobic tweets, and often do, where "f* white males" talk is completely allowed there.
  - nyargh 10y ago
    Won't someone think of the white males?
    - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
      fighting racism and sexism with more racism and sexism should work out just fine.
- DaUR 10y ago
  > I'm sure that isn't a political tactic being employed intentionally against them or anything. > Or, you know, we can fucking not do that. > Stop normalizing evil. Your rhetoric is very emotional, and you want to use "abuse" a s an excuse to ban people who simply disagree with you ("anti-feminists", really?). I don't think people who share your views should be given the power to control discourse[0]. It's funny that you insult the "alt-left" ("bernie bros") when many would define the alt-left as the regressive left, in other words those who want to ban people simply because they disagree, like you're trying to do. [0]: especially since you could argue that Twitter is the #1 platform for political discourse in the US, and is therefore vital for free speech (not as a legal obligation, but moral principle).
- tinus_hn 10y ago
  Your list of groups you consider evil makes you look like a social justice warrior and derails the discussion while it is not relevant to your point.
mikeash 10y ago
The fact that you're not forced to be on Twitter means that victims can leave, but it also means that bullies can be banned. Why prefer the first option?
- mason240 10y ago
  Great, but then I get to decide who is in the second group.
  - tinus_hn 10y ago
    Indeed you do because you can set the rules for people trying to communicate with you yourself.
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  I'm not preferring either option. Of course they can be banned. But they will come back. They always do. Why subject yourself to that continuous cycle of stress?
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Because it's vastly preferable to driving away all the nice people and having your entire userbase be nothing but shitheads.
  - nikdaheratik 10y ago
    The real question to ask is: why are some of these political nuts working so hard to push people off of Twitter? The answer, in my opinion, is because it allows people they don't approve of the same public voice as themselves, for the first time ever in many cases.
smacktoward 10y ago
If you were Twitter, why on Earth would you want the accepted answer to anybody's problems to be "don't use Twitter"? Your entire business model is built around getting people to use your service.
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem, at least not while still remaining an open platform. As long as anyone can sign up, "undesirables" will be among them. The end user has precisely two options -- use twitter or don't. If using it causes you too much mental anguish, and twitter is incapable of making the experience better for you, then don't use it.
  - smacktoward 10y ago
    > And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem So your advice for Twitter is to throw up their hands and close down their business? I mean, it's easy for those of us outside the company to say "your product is fundamentally unfixable." But if you're inside the company, and the product as-is has giant problems that are keeping potential new users out and driving existing ones away, you have to try something. Your job literally depends on it. Maybe the things they're trying now will work, maybe they won't. But as long as Twitter has employees and enough cash on hand to pay them, "just tell people to not use Twitter" is not advice anybody there is going to consider useful.
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      >So your advice for Twitter is to throw up their hands and close down their business? When did I start giving twitter advice? Nothing I've said in any of my responses in this thread was a suggestion of how twitter should operate their business. I hope they can get rid of all of the objectionable content and that everyone can be happy. I just don't think it's possible, and that the benefits of using twitter don't outweigh the abuse some people take, so it's not worth using.
jsemrau 10y ago
>The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I would think it became a replacement for an RSS feed (with pictures and drama)

eropple 10y ago

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give up and let literal white supremacists and anti-feminists and gay-bashers chase the weakest among us out of the social discourse. I'm sure that isn't a political tactic being employed intentionally against them or anything. Or, you know, we can fucking not do that. Stop normalizing evil. Doing so literally-not-figuratively arms those who would do harm to the people among us who need our support. Show them the door, not their victims.

iamatworknow 10y ago
These people have always existed. They will continue to exist. They will continue to find ways to harass the people they see as easy targets because they find enjoyment in it. Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-arounds. For all of human existence up until last decade, these types of people didn't have a wide social outlet for their thoughts, just like everyone else didn't. Now it's open to everyone. Yes, it's morally reprehensible. But this is not something that we or any social media company can ever solve. It will always be a cat and mouse game. But it's a game that you don't have to play. You can still be a citizen of the 21st century world and not be on social media. It does not put you at any disadvantage to not have a twitter account. If you believe that it would, reconsider your priorities in life.
- eropple 10y ago
  This post reveals a pretty significant misunderstanding of what Twitter is for marginalized communities. And, as such, this conversation is fruitless. But one last thing: if it's as abhorrent as you seem to actually think it is, stop caping for them as being something that can't be stopped. Because you help them by doing so.
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    >This post reveals a pretty significant misunderstanding of what Twitter is for marginalized communities. And, as such, this conversation is fruitless. Okay, then please, "educate me". I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'm a middle class straight white man and I will freely admit that I don't understand the plight of many minority groups, and certainly not in the context of twitter or other social media. My beliefs are not set in stone, and I have never been dismissive of someone who has the desire to share their experience with me so I have a better understanding. Regardless of my understanding, though, I'm pretty sure I will still feel that removing oneself from a harmful environment is a pretty effective tool, regardless of the type of harm being put upon you. What I see more often than not in this situation, however, are responses that are dismissive instead of educational -- like saying the conversation is fruitless. I have seen conversations like this come up before, where the "right wing" side, being much less moderate than I am (and I consider myself to be pretty liberal for the record), opens themselves up to learn more about the situation only to be met with responses like "I don't have time for this" or "educate yourself", which is about as effective as telling someone to RTFM. Only the manual is about someone else's beliefs and feelings, and it doesn't actually exist. So please, if you have the time, tell me what I don't understand.
    - eropple 10y ago
      OK. I apologize for the tone of my comment; most of the time when somebody says what you said, they aren't looking to learn. And that's why people often respond with "educate yourself": because, in 2017, asking to be taught is often a rhetorical and political trap used against activists and marginalized people (how fucked is that?). It is a request for emotional investment that is used intentionally and maliciously by the white-supremacist types to do what I can only describe as gish-galloping at scale. Ask questions, get people who actually care about stuff to give a shit and to expend effort and emotional energy...and then burn it, "I was trolling you the whole time", that sort of thing. As you noted, these people don't have much to live for and wasting their time is okay if they waste other people's time. That's a victory to them. The common response is "well, do it anyway," but the solution isn't for marginalized communities to be saints. It's for people like you and me to educate ourselves and work on this shit. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of AlterNet-type stuff, but this one encapsulates what I'm trying to say here: http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/black_people_are_not_here_to_teach_you_what_so_many_white_americans_just_cant_grasp_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/black_people_are_not_here_to... - A good place to start with regards to why social media matters with regards to marginalized groups (and it's really the obvious one) would be something like Black Twitter; it's a strong, pretty well-defined cultural group that discusses, at a wide and large scale, topics related to being black in America. It's a hugely influential cultural phenomenon and in a lot of ways it serves as a baseline political organization tool for those communities. The idea of telling marginalized people that they should refrain from participating in what is effectively the common social discourse among young people in 2017 because of their literal enemies who troll and harass specifically to make people not participate is...it presses some big red buttons in my head, because (also as a white dude) our space for "common social discourse" is pretty much anywhere we sit down, and that's not the case for others. The Wikipedia page is surprisingly detailed and I think it's a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter
dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
The harassment from Twitter is everywhere on both sides of the political spectrum though. You're painting a very one sided picture. I'm not attacking you here I'm just saying there is a narrative about the "alt-right" harassing the innocent leftists and it's not the whole picture. I'm a (democrat) mixed race woman, and I get more harassment and vitriol from "tolerant liberals" when I post anything remotely in support of the president than I ever do from "white supremacists or anti feminists". I have noticed if I don't go right down the party line on an issue, I'm attacked violently. The "N" word I get called frequently is Nazi, not the other. I'm not trying to say your experiences are invalid, I believe you're experiencing it, but I think assigning it to one political party or movement is inaccurate. It's really just the culture of Twitter, and maybe society in general.
- eropple 10y ago
  If Twitter wants to show the alt-left tools the door too, I'm certainly not gonna cape up for them. But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here, and it's not towards the burned Bernie bros. That alt-left doesn't have members of state-blessed media outlets (well, until recently, when cheering on pedophilia became a little too much for them) on campus tours where he'd out trans people with a pack of jackals ready to pounce. There's a difference of kind here.
  - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
    You're kidding right? The right says a lot of stupid things...ok TONS of stupid things, but "left leaning media" isn't one of them. These media outlets may not be state blessed, but we have the media on our side, and we have our Jackals for sure. 99% of the media is leaning hard to the left on everything. The Milo incident is a fine example. While was repugnant and deserved it, that was an absolute media witch hunt, and he was targeted and destroyed by the jackals of the left. Bill Maher was the arguable catalyst of it, and he said the exact same thing Milo did, and WORSE things in support of pedophilia and we didn't call him out for it. No media blitz, not cancelled events/shows/etc. Nope, Maher is a hero! All that does is show the "values" we exited Milo with were not true because we don't apply those values to our own people.
dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
>Stop normalizing evil. Doing so literally-not-figuratively arms those who would do harm to the people among us who need our support. Show them the door, not their victims. To be completely fair, they will remove people for blatantly racist/sexist/homophobic tweets, and often do, where "f* white males" talk is completely allowed there.
- nyargh 10y ago
  Won't someone think of the white males?
  - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
    fighting racism and sexism with more racism and sexism should work out just fine.
DaUR 10y ago
> I'm sure that isn't a political tactic being employed intentionally against them or anything. > Or, you know, we can fucking not do that. > Stop normalizing evil. Your rhetoric is very emotional, and you want to use "abuse" a s an excuse to ban people who simply disagree with you ("anti-feminists", really?). I don't think people who share your views should be given the power to control discourse[0]. It's funny that you insult the "alt-left" ("bernie bros") when many would define the alt-left as the regressive left, in other words those who want to ban people simply because they disagree, like you're trying to do. [0]: especially since you could argue that Twitter is the #1 platform for political discourse in the US, and is therefore vital for free speech (not as a legal obligation, but moral principle).
tinus_hn 10y ago
Your list of groups you consider evil makes you look like a social justice warrior and derails the discussion while it is not relevant to your point.

mikeash 10y ago

The fact that you're not forced to be on Twitter means that victims can leave, but it also means that bullies can be banned. Why prefer the first option?

mason240 10y ago
Great, but then I get to decide who is in the second group.
- tinus_hn 10y ago
  Indeed you do because you can set the rules for people trying to communicate with you yourself.
iamatworknow 10y ago
I'm not preferring either option. Of course they can be banned. But they will come back. They always do. Why subject yourself to that continuous cycle of stress?
- mikeash 10y ago
  Because it's vastly preferable to driving away all the nice people and having your entire userbase be nothing but shitheads.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  The real question to ask is: why are some of these political nuts working so hard to push people off of Twitter? The answer, in my opinion, is because it allows people they don't approve of the same public voice as themselves, for the first time ever in many cases.

smacktoward 10y ago

If you were Twitter, why on Earth would you want the accepted answer to anybody's problems to be "don't use Twitter"? Your entire business model is built around getting people to use your service.

iamatworknow 10y ago
And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem, at least not while still remaining an open platform. As long as anyone can sign up, "undesirables" will be among them. The end user has precisely two options -- use twitter or don't. If using it causes you too much mental anguish, and twitter is incapable of making the experience better for you, then don't use it.
- smacktoward 10y ago
  > And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem So your advice for Twitter is to throw up their hands and close down their business? I mean, it's easy for those of us outside the company to say "your product is fundamentally unfixable." But if you're inside the company, and the product as-is has giant problems that are keeping potential new users out and driving existing ones away, you have to try something. Your job literally depends on it. Maybe the things they're trying now will work, maybe they won't. But as long as Twitter has employees and enough cash on hand to pay them, "just tell people to not use Twitter" is not advice anybody there is going to consider useful.
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    >So your advice for Twitter is to throw up their hands and close down their business? When did I start giving twitter advice? Nothing I've said in any of my responses in this thread was a suggestion of how twitter should operate their business. I hope they can get rid of all of the objectionable content and that everyone can be happy. I just don't think it's possible, and that the benefits of using twitter don't outweigh the abuse some people take, so it's not worth using.

jsemrau 10y ago

>The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I would think it became a replacement for an RSS feed (with pictures and drama)