5 ms·

-self-harm glorification -bad porn -signal boosting for political rants -faux moral intellectualism by social justice warriors -cyber bullying Let's not?

phyzome 8y ago
Those are all content issues, not format/platform issues. Don't like those? Don't make your social circle out of the people who do them.
- eahman02 8y ago
  There's nothing inherently wrong with the Twitter platform.
  - Scoping_dindus 8y ago
    Depends on what the goal is. 300 characters incentivizes driveby remarks rather than articulate conversations. Twitter also has really bad content enforcement. Not inherent to the format, but it's worth consideration in the interest of practicality.
    - eahman02 8y ago
      Who has time and energy for articulate conversations over the internet? What do we want, a social network for the few?
      - IGI-111 8y ago
        Usenet was fun while it lasted. But september will probably never end.
        eahman02 8y ago
        In fact, it's about to start.
  - lmm 8y ago
    There was a great article I've never been able to find again about how the UI of Twitter naturally guides users into de facto bullying, and most of the advice given by experienced Twitter users (e.g. check existing replies to a tweet before adding your own) is working around UI choices made by the system itself.
    - pferde 8y ago
      I wonder how many of those bully-inducing UI features are also present in software like Mastodon or Diaspora, and are therefore disasters-in-waiting, to be triggered once critical mass of users is reached.
    - Pete_D 8y ago
      Was it this one? https://web.archive.org/web/20180801143131/http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=41853 https://web.archive.org/web/20180801143131/http://www.shamus... (archive link because the site seems to be down at the moment)
      - lmm 8y ago
        It wasn't, but that's a good article on the same topic. The one I was thinking of was focused more on low-level details of the twitter UI.
- 1ris 8y ago
  I think the "notes" and the "reblog" function contribute to the problem. It drives engagement ^w^w makes trolling way too easy and creates a need for attention that leads to attention whoring/virtue signalling/radicalisation. I think they are pretty much platform problems.
- philwelch 8y ago
  The medium is the message. Twitter is designed like a platform for harassment, so a lot of the content on Twitter is harassing. Tumblr is designed like a platform for radicalization, so a lot of the content on Tumblr is radicalized. It turns out that your very advice ("don't make your social circle out of the people who [create weird and distateful fringe content]") is the exact same echo-chamber-and-radicalization-mechanism that filled Tumblr with this kind of crap in the first place.
  - phyzome 8y ago
    But Twitter makes it so that's all up in your face. I haven't used Tumblr hardly at all, but it seems like it's optional to participate in that, since things are a little more partitioned. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing more about the radicalization thing, which I haven't actually observed first-hand, but several people in the comments here have mentioned. What interaction elements do you think lead to it?
    - b5 8y ago
      I used Tumblr for years. From probably 2008 until 2017. It's not entirely optional to interact with radicalised elements on Tumblr. The tagging system lets them find you, and then they can brigade you if you fall foul of whatever pet cause they have. This happened to me when I'd posted a photo of my dog. She's my pride and joy, and it was a harmless and cute photo of her jumping to catch a ball in the air. My mistake was using the caption "Good girl!" and tag #goodgirl. (I also tagged #dog, #fetch, #springerspaniel, #spaniel.) I was flooded with follows from people, mostly men but also some young-ish girls, in the "daddy dom" community (their main tag seems to be #ddlg, but #goodgirl was enough for them to find me). That was a pretty disturbing subculture with definitely uncomfortable elements of abuse built right into the foundation of it. I was also reblogged and targeted by a group of people who had decided that by "gendering" my female dog, I was a bigot. They mercilessly harrassed me. They flooded my inbox with abusive message: "dirty cis scum, kill yourself", things like that. They reblogged my photo saying some pretty vile things about me and my poor dog. In their reblogs they utterly misrepresented what I'd said, reposted it endlessly, called me transphobic, a bigot, threatened to dox me. In the end I abandoned my entire blog there and deleted it. As far as I know, there's no way to get my dog's photo removed from Tumblr or get the hateful reblogs taken down. I reported them all for abuse and harassment, but Tumblr did nothing. Tumblr's staff don't care. They would never respond on Twitter or by email or to my reports through the form on the site. Just radio silence. This is purely anecdotal, I know. I know someone else who also accidentally drew the ire of Tumblr and ended up having to delete their blog and leave the platform to escape a sustained campaign of harassment and threats from a similar group of people. Again, Tumblr-the-company did nothing to stop it.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
You can add one more thing: inane bullshit. In my field of academia, I know several people who maintain a Wordpress or similar blog for serious matters, but a parallel Tumblr blog for silly memes etc. So, there seems to be a feeling among some that Tumblr is not a credible venue.
sp332 8y ago
I don't trust Yahoo to moderate things well either. They seem to be a little too reactionary. For example they first cracked down on NSFW blogs for no particular reason and then mostly rolled back changes after protests. https://www.zdnet.com/article/after-backlash-yahoos-tumblr-quietly-restores-adult-nsfw-blogs/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/after-backlash-yahoos-tumblr-q... How do you think they're going to handle organized campaigns to remove users, or not to remove users? My guess is it will be a mess.
- mjevans 8y ago
  I can't actually recall any form of organized moderation that has been successful for WIDE audiences. It seems to work 'OK' if there's a smaller community with a group of core dedicated users (which the moderation staff has a large overlap with); however even then it works only if there is a clear and unambiguous mission statement and laser focused guidelines of 'on topic' contributions. I'm not familiar with Craigslist, and have only very limited observations of Reddit; but I think these sites are generally the closest to a sustainable model. In my experience they let 'local' moderation do it's thing, sub-communities individually have their own flavor and groups; with active and positive ones seeing the most success. Moderate ones tend to languish until they trail off. The really bad ones get globally flagged and killed. I think a logical next step might be 'supersets' where different user areas subscribe to a kind of moderation guild.
- Grue3 8y ago
  Tumblr is currently owned by Oath, not Yahoo.
lainga 8y ago
You can get all of those except the first one out of Twitter...
- foolfoolz 8y ago
  it’s there if you look for it

phyzome 8y ago

Those are all content issues, not format/platform issues. Don't like those? Don't make your social circle out of the people who do them.

eahman02 8y ago
There's nothing inherently wrong with the Twitter platform.
- Scoping_dindus 8y ago
  Depends on what the goal is. 300 characters incentivizes driveby remarks rather than articulate conversations. Twitter also has really bad content enforcement. Not inherent to the format, but it's worth consideration in the interest of practicality.
  - eahman02 8y ago
    Who has time and energy for articulate conversations over the internet? What do we want, a social network for the few?
    - IGI-111 8y ago
      Usenet was fun while it lasted. But september will probably never end.
      - eahman02 8y ago
        In fact, it's about to start.
- lmm 8y ago
  There was a great article I've never been able to find again about how the UI of Twitter naturally guides users into de facto bullying, and most of the advice given by experienced Twitter users (e.g. check existing replies to a tweet before adding your own) is working around UI choices made by the system itself.
  - pferde 8y ago
    I wonder how many of those bully-inducing UI features are also present in software like Mastodon or Diaspora, and are therefore disasters-in-waiting, to be triggered once critical mass of users is reached.
  - Pete_D 8y ago
    Was it this one? https://web.archive.org/web/20180801143131/http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=41853 https://web.archive.org/web/20180801143131/http://www.shamus... (archive link because the site seems to be down at the moment)
    - lmm 8y ago
      It wasn't, but that's a good article on the same topic. The one I was thinking of was focused more on low-level details of the twitter UI.
1ris 8y ago
I think the "notes" and the "reblog" function contribute to the problem. It drives engagement ^w^w makes trolling way too easy and creates a need for attention that leads to attention whoring/virtue signalling/radicalisation. I think they are pretty much platform problems.
philwelch 8y ago
The medium is the message. Twitter is designed like a platform for harassment, so a lot of the content on Twitter is harassing. Tumblr is designed like a platform for radicalization, so a lot of the content on Tumblr is radicalized. It turns out that your very advice ("don't make your social circle out of the people who [create weird and distateful fringe content]") is the exact same echo-chamber-and-radicalization-mechanism that filled Tumblr with this kind of crap in the first place.
- phyzome 8y ago
  But Twitter makes it so that's all up in your face. I haven't used Tumblr hardly at all, but it seems like it's optional to participate in that, since things are a little more partitioned. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing more about the radicalization thing, which I haven't actually observed first-hand, but several people in the comments here have mentioned. What interaction elements do you think lead to it?
  - b5 8y ago
    I used Tumblr for years. From probably 2008 until 2017. It's not entirely optional to interact with radicalised elements on Tumblr. The tagging system lets them find you, and then they can brigade you if you fall foul of whatever pet cause they have. This happened to me when I'd posted a photo of my dog. She's my pride and joy, and it was a harmless and cute photo of her jumping to catch a ball in the air. My mistake was using the caption "Good girl!" and tag #goodgirl. (I also tagged #dog, #fetch, #springerspaniel, #spaniel.) I was flooded with follows from people, mostly men but also some young-ish girls, in the "daddy dom" community (their main tag seems to be #ddlg, but #goodgirl was enough for them to find me). That was a pretty disturbing subculture with definitely uncomfortable elements of abuse built right into the foundation of it. I was also reblogged and targeted by a group of people who had decided that by "gendering" my female dog, I was a bigot. They mercilessly harrassed me. They flooded my inbox with abusive message: "dirty cis scum, kill yourself", things like that. They reblogged my photo saying some pretty vile things about me and my poor dog. In their reblogs they utterly misrepresented what I'd said, reposted it endlessly, called me transphobic, a bigot, threatened to dox me. In the end I abandoned my entire blog there and deleted it. As far as I know, there's no way to get my dog's photo removed from Tumblr or get the hateful reblogs taken down. I reported them all for abuse and harassment, but Tumblr did nothing. Tumblr's staff don't care. They would never respond on Twitter or by email or to my reports through the form on the site. Just radio silence. This is purely anecdotal, I know. I know someone else who also accidentally drew the ire of Tumblr and ended up having to delete their blog and leave the platform to escape a sustained campaign of harassment and threats from a similar group of people. Again, Tumblr-the-company did nothing to stop it.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

You can add one more thing: inane bullshit. In my field of academia, I know several people who maintain a Wordpress or similar blog for serious matters, but a parallel Tumblr blog for silly memes etc. So, there seems to be a feeling among some that Tumblr is not a credible venue.

sp332 8y ago

I don't trust Yahoo to moderate things well either. They seem to be a little too reactionary. For example they first cracked down on NSFW blogs for no particular reason and then mostly rolled back changes after protests. https://www.zdnet.com/article/after-backlash-yahoos-tumblr-quietly-restores-adult-nsfw-blogs/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/after-backlash-yahoos-tumblr-q... How do you think they're going to handle organized campaigns to remove users, or not to remove users? My guess is it will be a mess.

mjevans 8y ago
I can't actually recall any form of organized moderation that has been successful for WIDE audiences. It seems to work 'OK' if there's a smaller community with a group of core dedicated users (which the moderation staff has a large overlap with); however even then it works only if there is a clear and unambiguous mission statement and laser focused guidelines of 'on topic' contributions. I'm not familiar with Craigslist, and have only very limited observations of Reddit; but I think these sites are generally the closest to a sustainable model. In my experience they let 'local' moderation do it's thing, sub-communities individually have their own flavor and groups; with active and positive ones seeing the most success. Moderate ones tend to languish until they trail off. The really bad ones get globally flagged and killed. I think a logical next step might be 'supersets' where different user areas subscribe to a kind of moderation guild.
Grue3 8y ago
Tumblr is currently owned by Oath, not Yahoo.

lainga 8y ago

You can get all of those except the first one out of Twitter...

foolfoolz 8y ago
it’s there if you look for it