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Twitter itself recognized there are levels of public early on. The original site was every post in one timeline. The things I say to a room or to people at a t

• heraldgeezer 2y ago
  >The things I say to a room or to people at a table are not meant for everyone at the event. Not what Twitter was or is? You have misunderstood the site like a Facebook timeline boomer poster. "uuoooh people can see this!!!" Yes. Twitter is not your own IRC server. But seeing as it started with MacBook Starbucks hipsters, I am not surprised they just made something up in their minds and rolled with it.
• bensecure 2y ago
  "Can be seen by anyone in the world except for tom because fuck tom" isn't a different "level of public", it's just caprice. As the GP mentioned, if you want to restrict who can see your tweets, set your account to private.
  • JohnMakin 2y ago
    Maybe caprice except in the exceedingly common instances where someone is the target of harassment. I mean this is the obvious example, there are others. In that case "make your profile private if you dont want to be harassed/stalked" is not really that palatable.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > except in the exceedingly common instances where someone is the target of harassment Super low-effort harassment, where the harasser can't bother creating a new Twitter account.
      • JohnMakin 2y ago
        It’s an additional barrier. It also provides the blocking user the ability to block the new account. This isn’t very difficult to think through. And if it’s so easy, why the need for this new “feature” to begin with?
        • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
          > also provides the blocking user the ability to block the new account. This isn’t very difficult to think through The harasser can view from their new accounts and respond on their main account. Unless someone is very tightly curating their follower list, at which point it doesn't make sense for them to be publicly tweeting, there would be no indication which account was responsible. The problem in harassment is the harassment. Not the harasser's access to the public domain.
          • JohnMakin 2y ago
            Again, then why the need for this feature if it is so easy to get around a block? A harasser can do many things, but removing a barrier for the person being harassed to mitigate it because… reasons feels very odd to me. Can you explain what this new feature provides legitimate users that doesn’t already exist?
            • trompetenaccoun 2y ago
              There isn't a legitimate need for this feature, that's the point.
            • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
              > Can you explain what this new feature provides legitimate users that doesn’t already exist? In America we have case law that prohibits public officials from blocking their constituents from their official accounts [1]. Not every country does. Also, that ruling doesn't cover material edge cases. Should a public figure be able to block journalists they don't like? Oil companies anyone with an environmental leaning to avoid tipping them off on something they weren't searching for? We have a media-bubble problem in America that is increasingly defined by partisan lines. From a social utility position, clarifying that public means public strikes me as more important than edge-case harassment concerns. Particularly when the stakes are so low on both sides of the scale (due to the ease with which blocks can be circumvented and the fact that we're dealing with content the speaker has explicilty chosen to make public). [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-611_ap6c.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-611_ap6c.pdf
    • bensecure 2y ago
      > In that case "make your profile private if you don't want to be harassed/stalked" is not really that palatable. If someone is harassing you on twitter, then blocking them still stops that, modulo them making a new account. Stalking, in the sense of looking at your public posts, can't be stopped, because it's trivial for them to open your posts in a private window, or create a new account just for stalking (which of course they wouldn't tell you about, hence you couldn't block it). So in fact the only option you have to avoid such stalking is to make your account private, period.
• bgirard 2y ago
  I agree if getting a seat at the table requires some vetting, but if something is being shouted publicly into a megaphone your analogy doesn't work. If something is so public that a logged out user can see it, it's weird of a logged in account to not see it.
• ChocolateGod 2y ago
  > The things I say to a room or to people at a table are not meant for everyone at the event. But that's not what Twitter/X is, it's more akin to standing in an open access field with a megaphone. You have no right to say who should be in the field or not, and if you don't want someone to hear something, the best thing to do is not say it in the field in the first place.
• Arnt 2y ago
  It's bad UX. Telling people that blocked users can't see your posts mislead them, because all that's needed for as blocked user is to open a window in incognito mode. Good user interfaces don't tell users things that are far from true. Even if we all wish the things could be true.
• nailer 2y ago
  Not being able to see someone else’s tweets until you made a different account was always security theatre.