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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 e

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
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      Thanks for the links.
dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
I agree with this 100%. These types of people have been around for centuries, the only difference is now they have a mouthpiece and encouragement. Use your block button, it's free.
- epistasis 10y ago
  One quibble: the block button is not free, it takes time, and we have limited time. Say, 60 presses/minute? When you have 3000 harassers, including many bots, is it worth spending nearly an hour blocking them? There are third party tools that make the block button cost less, but it would be even better if they were built in to Twitter, and even better yet if the bot networks were not allowed.
  - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
    Good point, I've never been harassed at that level before.
    - mikeyouse 10y ago
      Not OP, but I definitely have -- it's unbelievably annoying to deal with. I had tweeted something pretty innocuous to a journalist after the election. I wasn't screaming about an illegitimate president or anything of the sort, it was something like, "Maybe we should look at adding more members of congress, it would smooth out the electoral college and make for better representation." Several months later, some random right-wing asshole with 50,000+ followers retweeted my comment and said something like "Hillary supporters just won't get over losing!" Within minutes I was absolutely inundated with his moron followers / bots. Literally hundreds of responses calling me a butthurt Liberal and going through my old comments so that I couldn't just block that one. Twitter was basically unusable for a week afterwards. Can you imagine that shit all the time? None of those people followed me, they knew nothing of me or my politics, they just blindly chase whatever signal their 'leaders' choose to amplify.
      - iamatworknow 10y ago
Analemma_ 10y ago
> 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. This is analogous to all those arguments that "If you have nothing to hide, you have ", or, "If you want privacy, you always have the option to become a hermit and live completely off the grid with no contact with friends or family" What if I want privacy and to participate in modern society? Why should I have to choose? It's the same here: Twitter, for all its faults, is very useful. Why should I have to choose between not using it and enduring a bunch of abuse on it, if Twitter can fix that? To protect the "right" of some anonymous shitheads to have victims be forced to listen to their harassment? Please. You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward from there. I reject that axiom. > 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. First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough" moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a tolerable level. But even if it were true, it would not be a reason for Twitter not to attempt anything. Again, you're starting from entirely the wrong premises here.
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  >You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward from there. I reject that axiom. Show me an example of where I said this. What I've been saying is that attempts to programmatically weed out this type of behavior and the accounts that people create to perpetuate it will ultimately be ineffective. What's the difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and just 1, because the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable level of harassment? >First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough" moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a tolerable level. Do you have an example?
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Metafilter? > What's the difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and just 1, because the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable level of harassment? "We can do something, but it won't be completely effective, so we shouldn't do anything." What's the use in vaccination? After all, it doesn't completely eliminate disease. Unless used very consistently for a lifetime.

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
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    Thanks for the links.

dotnetisnotdead 10y ago

I agree with this 100%. These types of people have been around for centuries, the only difference is now they have a mouthpiece and encouragement. Use your block button, it's free.

epistasis 10y ago
One quibble: the block button is not free, it takes time, and we have limited time. Say, 60 presses/minute? When you have 3000 harassers, including many bots, is it worth spending nearly an hour blocking them? There are third party tools that make the block button cost less, but it would be even better if they were built in to Twitter, and even better yet if the bot networks were not allowed.
- dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
  Good point, I've never been harassed at that level before.
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    Not OP, but I definitely have -- it's unbelievably annoying to deal with. I had tweeted something pretty innocuous to a journalist after the election. I wasn't screaming about an illegitimate president or anything of the sort, it was something like, "Maybe we should look at adding more members of congress, it would smooth out the electoral college and make for better representation." Several months later, some random right-wing asshole with 50,000+ followers retweeted my comment and said something like "Hillary supporters just won't get over losing!" Within minutes I was absolutely inundated with his moron followers / bots. Literally hundreds of responses calling me a butthurt Liberal and going through my old comments so that I couldn't just block that one. Twitter was basically unusable for a week afterwards. Can you imagine that shit all the time? None of those people followed me, they knew nothing of me or my politics, they just blindly chase whatever signal their 'leaders' choose to amplify.
    - iamatworknow 10y ago

Analemma_ 10y ago

> 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. This is analogous to all those arguments that "If you have nothing to hide, you have ", or, "If you want privacy, you always have the option to become a hermit and live completely off the grid with no contact with friends or family" What if I want privacy and to participate in modern society? Why should I have to choose? It's the same here: Twitter, for all its faults, is very useful. Why should I have to choose between not using it and enduring a bunch of abuse on it, if Twitter can fix that? To protect the "right" of some anonymous shitheads to have victims be forced to listen to their harassment? Please. You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward from there. I reject that axiom. > 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. First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough" moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a tolerable level. But even if it were true, it would not be a reason for Twitter not to attempt anything. Again, you're starting from entirely the wrong premises here.

iamatworknow 10y ago
>You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward from there. I reject that axiom. Show me an example of where I said this. What I've been saying is that attempts to programmatically weed out this type of behavior and the accounts that people create to perpetuate it will ultimately be ineffective. What's the difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and just 1, because the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable level of harassment? >First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough" moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a tolerable level. Do you have an example?
- pjc50 10y ago
  Metafilter? > What's the difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and just 1, because the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable level of harassment? "We can do something, but it won't be completely effective, so we shouldn't do anything." What's the use in vaccination? After all, it doesn't completely eliminate disease. Unless used very consistently for a lifetime.