5 ms·

> fill other internal positions first Not (necessarily) getting down on OP, but the sort of person who's attracted to anything that Twitter would call "anti-ab

> fill other internal positions first Not (necessarily) getting down on OP, but the sort of person who's attracted to anything that Twitter would call "anti-abuse" might not be the sort of person who's appropriate in any other role.

wpietri 4y ago
No, that's exactly correct. I joined Twitter to solve a problem. A problem that my boss's boss, as well as plenty of other people, did not give two shits about solving. He certainly did not want me under him, and it was far easier for him to engineer a "layoff" than try to transfer me somewhere else. And I get the Machiavellian calculus. I cared about Twitter and its users, especially the marginalized ones that were facing a lot of abuse. He cared about his own career, and wanted people who would put his advancement first. I would not have done that, so pushing out me and anybody else who really cared about the problem was the correct move in his self-centered analysis.
- mkmk 4y ago
  From a feature/capability perspective, what would be the most impactful ways for Twitter to help those users?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - orange_joe 4y ago
    Imo Ban images of tweets. It’s what allows the pile on to live forever.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Five years later, I have no idea. Answering that requires a lot of data that isn't available publicly. For me it would start with who's getting the abuse these days, and where it's coming from. But if I had to guess, top of my list would be faster, more targeted action to deplatform shitheels. For a while last year I was tracking a ring of nazi-ish jerks who managed to stay around eternally by getting new accounts. They'd either circulate the new account before the old one got banned or come back, follow a few people in the account cluster, and then say the were looking for their "frens", which would prompt a wave of retweets in the cluster so as to rebuild their follow graph. I'd also look for ways to interfere with off-Twitter organization of harassment of particular accounts, which has some characteristic signals. Interfere both by defanging the content (attenuated notifications, downranking) and faster suspension/banning for jerks that are part of the waves. I'd also love to see more support on the recipient side, but I haven't kept up with what those tools look like these days. That said, I believe they've made progress since I left; I think twitter has a notably lower proportion of shitty behavior than years ago. So kudos to whoever's been working on this problem across the reorgs that have happened since I left.
    - sanderjd 4y ago
      It would be fascinating to read a deep dive from you on your thoughts on all the thorny questions that always come up with respect to this. You seem all in on the idea that Twitter should be stamping out nasty speech, and I can certainly respect that philosophy for a private company. I certainly wouldn't want to personally work to support the aforementioned shitheels. But I'm curious what you think of the broader ethics that people often bring up in these discussions. Is it bad that the contemporary "public square" is dominated by private companies that get to determine the rules? Should there be a real digital public square that isn't dominated by private companies? Could such a thing even work? I dunno, maybe you're tired of this so uninterested in writing such a thing, but I feel like so many people act like the answers to this stuff are both obvious and easy to implement, and I know that's not true, and would be interested in the view from the front lines.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        That sounds like several books worth of writing, so I'll pass, but I'm glad to take a quick swing at the points you mentioned. There is a real digital public square: the internet. Anybody can publish anything. Anybody, private companies included, can help people publish. But all of those people have freedom of association. Nobody has to use a particular publisher, and none of those publishers have to publish anything they don't want to. Many popular platforms have started out with a "free speech wing of the free speech party" ethos. I was part of one of those, bianca.com, which won a webby in 1997 and was gone by 2000. The lesson of every one of those, ours included, is that you can't have all the kinds of speech in one place. E.g., Twitter can have black people or people who shout abuse at black people. So the question for any platform is: who are you ok excluding? This is not a new lesson: https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/1280892535024619522 https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089253502461952... I think it only feels new in the digital context because people often start from a assume-spherical-cows perspective. Which can be adequate if you're building an ecommerce system or something. But when building tools to shift society online, it's hopelessly naive. So I'd be interested to read a "real digital public square" proposal that started from actual human behaviors. Say, people who studied physical public squares, their impacts, how they're regulated, and the social, non-legal mechanisms that keep them from just being filled with nazis, spam, and porn. But the ones that come out of the same naivete that we had in the mid-1990s or that Jack and Zuck had a decade later? We know what happens, and it never works out well.
  - specialist 4y ago
    Ban algorithmic feeds and recommenders. Just show chronological order of content from people you follow. Failing that, squelch viral content (slow it down). Ban 'likes' and so forth. Treat all personal data as property of that person. Transmuting demographic data from an asset into a liability. FWIW, here's my prior answer to your question, citing the reform efforts of US Sen Warner's SAFE TECH Act and Information & Democracy's Policy Framework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152428
    - duud 4y ago
      Ban all sharp and pointy objects. Mandate that helmets and Hazmat suits be worn at all times. Personal responsibility and agency is a threat to our democracy.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
Just being in that group might actually be a scarlet letter for other Twitter hiring managers.
- astrange 4y ago
  Banning spambots is an essential part of running social media, it's not a secret team of SJWs. And they're currently in a lawsuit since Elon claims they don't actually do it and just pretend to.
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > Banning spambots OP was pretty explicit that his job was not banning spambots, but "protecting marginalized users who face a lot of abuse".
    - astrange 4y ago
      He said that's what he cared about, but the comment was about the "group" and the whole group probably does both. Also, Twitter ships anti-abuse features all the time so they seem to care about it. Although they're not especially strong, like the one that asks you to reconsider if your tweet has too many swear words.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > other Twitter hiring managers Or any other hiring managers anywhere else - I'd be really hesitant.
- wpietri 4y ago
  That is not the case. All the developers who decided to stay at Twitter happily moved to other jobs. As should have happened, as they were all, smart, competent, and dedicated people.
  - kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
    Very glad to hear that. Sounds like Twitter took better care of these employees than many other companies would have in a similar situation.

wpietri 4y ago

No, that's exactly correct. I joined Twitter to solve a problem. A problem that my boss's boss, as well as plenty of other people, did not give two shits about solving. He certainly did not want me under him, and it was far easier for him to engineer a "layoff" than try to transfer me somewhere else. And I get the Machiavellian calculus. I cared about Twitter and its users, especially the marginalized ones that were facing a lot of abuse. He cared about his own career, and wanted people who would put his advancement first. I would not have done that, so pushing out me and anybody else who really cared about the problem was the correct move in his self-centered analysis.

mkmk 4y ago
From a feature/capability perspective, what would be the most impactful ways for Twitter to help those users?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- orange_joe 4y ago
  Imo Ban images of tweets. It’s what allows the pile on to live forever.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Five years later, I have no idea. Answering that requires a lot of data that isn't available publicly. For me it would start with who's getting the abuse these days, and where it's coming from. But if I had to guess, top of my list would be faster, more targeted action to deplatform shitheels. For a while last year I was tracking a ring of nazi-ish jerks who managed to stay around eternally by getting new accounts. They'd either circulate the new account before the old one got banned or come back, follow a few people in the account cluster, and then say the were looking for their "frens", which would prompt a wave of retweets in the cluster so as to rebuild their follow graph. I'd also look for ways to interfere with off-Twitter organization of harassment of particular accounts, which has some characteristic signals. Interfere both by defanging the content (attenuated notifications, downranking) and faster suspension/banning for jerks that are part of the waves. I'd also love to see more support on the recipient side, but I haven't kept up with what those tools look like these days. That said, I believe they've made progress since I left; I think twitter has a notably lower proportion of shitty behavior than years ago. So kudos to whoever's been working on this problem across the reorgs that have happened since I left.
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    It would be fascinating to read a deep dive from you on your thoughts on all the thorny questions that always come up with respect to this. You seem all in on the idea that Twitter should be stamping out nasty speech, and I can certainly respect that philosophy for a private company. I certainly wouldn't want to personally work to support the aforementioned shitheels. But I'm curious what you think of the broader ethics that people often bring up in these discussions. Is it bad that the contemporary "public square" is dominated by private companies that get to determine the rules? Should there be a real digital public square that isn't dominated by private companies? Could such a thing even work? I dunno, maybe you're tired of this so uninterested in writing such a thing, but I feel like so many people act like the answers to this stuff are both obvious and easy to implement, and I know that's not true, and would be interested in the view from the front lines.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      That sounds like several books worth of writing, so I'll pass, but I'm glad to take a quick swing at the points you mentioned. There is a real digital public square: the internet. Anybody can publish anything. Anybody, private companies included, can help people publish. But all of those people have freedom of association. Nobody has to use a particular publisher, and none of those publishers have to publish anything they don't want to. Many popular platforms have started out with a "free speech wing of the free speech party" ethos. I was part of one of those, bianca.com, which won a webby in 1997 and was gone by 2000. The lesson of every one of those, ours included, is that you can't have all the kinds of speech in one place. E.g., Twitter can have black people or people who shout abuse at black people. So the question for any platform is: who are you ok excluding? This is not a new lesson: https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/1280892535024619522 https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089253502461952... I think it only feels new in the digital context because people often start from a assume-spherical-cows perspective. Which can be adequate if you're building an ecommerce system or something. But when building tools to shift society online, it's hopelessly naive. So I'd be interested to read a "real digital public square" proposal that started from actual human behaviors. Say, people who studied physical public squares, their impacts, how they're regulated, and the social, non-legal mechanisms that keep them from just being filled with nazis, spam, and porn. But the ones that come out of the same naivete that we had in the mid-1990s or that Jack and Zuck had a decade later? We know what happens, and it never works out well.
- specialist 4y ago
  Ban algorithmic feeds and recommenders. Just show chronological order of content from people you follow. Failing that, squelch viral content (slow it down). Ban 'likes' and so forth. Treat all personal data as property of that person. Transmuting demographic data from an asset into a liability. FWIW, here's my prior answer to your question, citing the reform efforts of US Sen Warner's SAFE TECH Act and Information & Democracy's Policy Framework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152428
  - duud 4y ago
    Ban all sharp and pointy objects. Mandate that helmets and Hazmat suits be worn at all times. Personal responsibility and agency is a threat to our democracy.

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago

Just being in that group might actually be a scarlet letter for other Twitter hiring managers.

astrange 4y ago
Banning spambots is an essential part of running social media, it's not a secret team of SJWs. And they're currently in a lawsuit since Elon claims they don't actually do it and just pretend to.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > Banning spambots OP was pretty explicit that his job was not banning spambots, but "protecting marginalized users who face a lot of abuse".
  - astrange 4y ago
    He said that's what he cared about, but the comment was about the "group" and the whole group probably does both. Also, Twitter ships anti-abuse features all the time so they seem to care about it. Although they're not especially strong, like the one that asks you to reconsider if your tweet has too many swear words.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> other Twitter hiring managers Or any other hiring managers anywhere else - I'd be really hesitant.
wpietri 4y ago
That is not the case. All the developers who decided to stay at Twitter happily moved to other jobs. As should have happened, as they were all, smart, competent, and dedicated people.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  Very glad to hear that. Sounds like Twitter took better care of these employees than many other companies would have in a similar situation.