7 ms·

Twitter CEO: 'We suck at dealing with abuse'

45 points by ssclafani 12y ago

A_COMPUTER 12y ago
Twitter is built for harassing. The medium makes it inevitable. you make a tweet and you shoot it out into the ether. It ends up on a couple million twitter feeds whether they asked for it or not. It angers some of those people, and they retweet it to show their followers how stupid you are. Now all their like-minded friends see that tweet in their feeds. A bunch of them are now aware of your existence and are mad and tweet back at you. This is far worse when you participate in a contentious issue on a hashtag. This is before you even get into hate-following and active-deliberate harassers. Then there is scale. There are a couple hundred million people on Twitter. If even .01% of them are sociopaths, that is a near-unmanageable problem. Finally, a significant portion of Twitter is quite literally trolls trolling trolls. They both can dish it out and take it and don't see the problem. Good for them, but it's not compatible with everybody else.
- zaius 12y ago
  I think Reddit is really interesting in this respect - you have pro skub and anti skub subreddits sitting side by side. Yes, they get caught up in downvote brigading and whatnot, but battles aren't the status quo like on twitter. On reddit, the subreddits you subscribe to are your choice, but if the groups of users on twitter are homogenous enough then I wonder if you could automate siloing of users. People with correlated behavior get moved into their own silos and then if you or other users in your silo block a person, they don't show up in your feed.
nailer 12y ago
Who defines harassment? I've seen someone be banned from Twitter for criticising someone they've never even contacted. The Verge, in one article, along with actual threats, said a person who did not threaten but simply insulted another person was a harasser. People in arguments publish other people's phone numbers to a few thousand followers, they'll drop off and then come online again. AFAICT the argument goes that if you insult someone, it's 'calling them out' but if someone insults you it's 'harassment'.
- AndrewDucker 12y ago
  This is: http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/110134860037/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/110134860037/one-week-of-h...
  - pgeorgi 12y ago
    Including "Fuck off."? That's not exactly a literary marvel, and far from civilized discourse. But harassment?
    - hedwall 12y ago
      You read all that harassment and the only thing you can comment on is the one "Fuck Off" included there?
      - pgeorgi 12y ago
        I _can_ comment on all the other statements cited on that page. But others already did, so why should I repeat more of the same? "This is [harassment]" meant all of it, incl. the one I referred to (and a bunch of others that may be angry disagreement, but are not violent, and not necessarily harassment). Comes to show that the definition of harassment isn't as easy as "here's a list". Since you asked so nicely, to give you a comment on all those other posts, let me stick to those who are unquestionably harassment - those containing threats of violence and death (I just don't feel like arguing about a more precise definition with a random internet stranger right now): It's kind of amazing how limited the vocabulary and breadth is in those statements. It's essentially the same 4 or 5 insults and threats reiterated again and again and again, with the most variability in the order of words - any resemblance of grammar is obviously optional in the first place. So when I first saw that collection (a couple of days ago, so I'm not rage-struck anymore - maybe that explains why I'm not joining the chorus), I was considering if some trolls created tons of throwaway accounts and dug deeper - those are accounts that are primarily used for other purposes, with a wide range of profiles: old accounts, new accounts, students, adults across all professions (as per their bio). All of them with "normal" posts before the one listed there, and after. So trolls creating throw away accounts are out. Since the accounts are still in regular use, it also doesn't look like a massive take over. So there are really two options: 1. these accounts are taken over in some non-intrusive way by aggressors (eg. cross site scripting, reuse of simple to guess password) 2. people across the board (all ages, all professions, all sexes and genders) share such an annoying conduct[0], and it's likely that in your/my/anyone's neighbourhood there are a couple of such people otherwise living normal lives. So, people are monsters, and there's no clear marker to pinpoint them except their conduct. What else is new? [0] I do assume that except two or three deranged people, they leave it at verbal threats like these - which doesn't mean that this is okay, individually or collectively. Besides showing some crass personal flaws, it's just as frightening for the target since they can't know what's real and what's "for show". There's also a real risk that the truly deranged feel encouraged by so many people who seem to be alike on the surface.
josephlord 12y ago
I think anonymous accounts should be expensive (in terms of time) to set up. Anonymity and pseudonyms are important for those who need to whistleblow or are from oppressed groups so the possibility absolutely needs to be preserved. But what isn't needed is cheap throwaway accounts that can be used for abuse and then discarded as soon as they are banned. If to sign up anonymously you had to do something, a quiz or play through a game that took about 30 minutes then that would reduce the rate of account creation for abuse. If you were prepared to give a real phone number (and use it for verification) then you could bypass the task and get an instant account but obviously any ban would apply to the phone number not just that particular account.
- tomp 12y ago
  Like the governments that promoting security and safety at the expense of privacy and freedom, Twitter has a too bad a record of dealing with internal abuse to be trusted. For example, there were stories about them stealing usernames from people (because a celebrity showed up). Similarly, any kind of process they set up for dealing with external abuse can be abused; people will be flagging accounts they disagree with, hoping they would be banned, and other people would DDOS the system by flagging too many accounts, making it impossible for Twitter to keep up with it. The solution is simple: set up a new service, see if users use it.
- newhouseb 12y ago
  Exactly this, and what's so mind boggling is that this is not a new problem by any means. I'm sure that among twitter's worries is how to effectively scale an abuse prevention operation, but there are some pretty easy automatic filters that would go a long way. A few that come to mind (provided accounts are tied to phone numbers): 1) A block that prevents the harasser from even @mentioning the harassee in any way. 2) Automatic disabling of accounts that are blocked by more than two users whom the harasser explicitly @mentioned 3) A "dog house" mode which automatically disables distribution of a user's tweets who have been reported as harassment without explicitly telling them, leaving them to harass nothingness until they get bored and leave.
  - josephlord 12y ago
pluma 12y ago
Of course they had to bring Sarkeesian into it, again. This person gets way more exposure than she deserves.
- josephlord 12y ago
  She is clearly receiving harassment and is prepared to publish it, why the hell wouldn't they bring her into it? And if you think she gets too much exposure why did you mention her? I'm only aware of her because of the harassment her and others have received. The people trying to silence her with abuse are amplifying their opponents and discrediting themselves and proving the need for change in these areas. There are clearly some people going out of their way to try to bully vocal women into silence and I'm glad it isn't working.
jbob2000 12y ago
Twitter isn't alone in this. Facebook and Snapchat both have issues with harassment. YikYak had a bad case of it too. I think that if these companies really care about curbing harassment, they would approach each other and tackle the issue together. If someone is trolling on facebook, they probably do it on twitter too. Riot Games (League of Legends) has The Tribunal, where players who harass get judgements handed down from other players. Perhaps social media needs a tribunal of sorts, with participation from Twitter et al to enact "sentences".
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

45 points by ssclafani 12y ago

Twitter is built for harassing. The medium makes it inevitable. you make a tweet and you shoot it out into the ether. It ends up on a couple million twitter feeds whether they asked for it or not. It angers some of those people, and they retweet it to show their followers how stupid you are. Now all their like-minded friends see that tweet in their feeds. A bunch of them are now aware of your existence and are mad and tweet back at you. This is far worse when you participate in a contentious issue on a hashtag. This is before you even get into hate-following and active-deliberate harassers. Then there is scale. There are a couple hundred million people on Twitter. If even .01% of them are sociopaths, that is a near-unmanageable problem. Finally, a significant portion of Twitter is quite literally trolls trolling trolls. They both can dish it out and take it and don't see the problem. Good for them, but it's not compatible with everybody else.

zaius 12y ago
I think Reddit is really interesting in this respect - you have pro skub and anti skub subreddits sitting side by side. Yes, they get caught up in downvote brigading and whatnot, but battles aren't the status quo like on twitter. On reddit, the subreddits you subscribe to are your choice, but if the groups of users on twitter are homogenous enough then I wonder if you could automate siloing of users. People with correlated behavior get moved into their own silos and then if you or other users in your silo block a person, they don't show up in your feed.

nailer 12y ago

Who defines harassment? I've seen someone be banned from Twitter for criticising someone they've never even contacted. The Verge, in one article, along with actual threats, said a person who did not threaten but simply insulted another person was a harasser. People in arguments publish other people's phone numbers to a few thousand followers, they'll drop off and then come online again. AFAICT the argument goes that if you insult someone, it's 'calling them out' but if someone insults you it's 'harassment'.

AndrewDucker 12y ago
This is: http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/110134860037/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/110134860037/one-week-of-h...
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  Including "Fuck off."? That's not exactly a literary marvel, and far from civilized discourse. But harassment?
  - hedwall 12y ago
    You read all that harassment and the only thing you can comment on is the one "Fuck Off" included there?
    - pgeorgi 12y ago
      I _can_ comment on all the other statements cited on that page. But others already did, so why should I repeat more of the same? "This is [harassment]" meant all of it, incl. the one I referred to (and a bunch of others that may be angry disagreement, but are not violent, and not necessarily harassment). Comes to show that the definition of harassment isn't as easy as "here's a list". Since you asked so nicely, to give you a comment on all those other posts, let me stick to those who are unquestionably harassment - those containing threats of violence and death (I just don't feel like arguing about a more precise definition with a random internet stranger right now): It's kind of amazing how limited the vocabulary and breadth is in those statements. It's essentially the same 4 or 5 insults and threats reiterated again and again and again, with the most variability in the order of words - any resemblance of grammar is obviously optional in the first place. So when I first saw that collection (a couple of days ago, so I'm not rage-struck anymore - maybe that explains why I'm not joining the chorus), I was considering if some trolls created tons of throwaway accounts and dug deeper - those are accounts that are primarily used for other purposes, with a wide range of profiles: old accounts, new accounts, students, adults across all professions (as per their bio). All of them with "normal" posts before the one listed there, and after. So trolls creating throw away accounts are out. Since the accounts are still in regular use, it also doesn't look like a massive take over. So there are really two options: 1. these accounts are taken over in some non-intrusive way by aggressors (eg. cross site scripting, reuse of simple to guess password) 2. people across the board (all ages, all professions, all sexes and genders) share such an annoying conduct[0], and it's likely that in your/my/anyone's neighbourhood there are a couple of such people otherwise living normal lives. So, people are monsters, and there's no clear marker to pinpoint them except their conduct. What else is new? [0] I do assume that except two or three deranged people, they leave it at verbal threats like these - which doesn't mean that this is okay, individually or collectively. Besides showing some crass personal flaws, it's just as frightening for the target since they can't know what's real and what's "for show". There's also a real risk that the truly deranged feel encouraged by so many people who seem to be alike on the surface.

josephlord 12y ago

I think anonymous accounts should be expensive (in terms of time) to set up. Anonymity and pseudonyms are important for those who need to whistleblow or are from oppressed groups so the possibility absolutely needs to be preserved. But what isn't needed is cheap throwaway accounts that can be used for abuse and then discarded as soon as they are banned. If to sign up anonymously you had to do something, a quiz or play through a game that took about 30 minutes then that would reduce the rate of account creation for abuse. If you were prepared to give a real phone number (and use it for verification) then you could bypass the task and get an instant account but obviously any ban would apply to the phone number not just that particular account.

tomp 12y ago
Like the governments that promoting security and safety at the expense of privacy and freedom, Twitter has a too bad a record of dealing with internal abuse to be trusted. For example, there were stories about them stealing usernames from people (because a celebrity showed up). Similarly, any kind of process they set up for dealing with external abuse can be abused; people will be flagging accounts they disagree with, hoping they would be banned, and other people would DDOS the system by flagging too many accounts, making it impossible for Twitter to keep up with it. The solution is simple: set up a new service, see if users use it.
newhouseb 12y ago
Exactly this, and what's so mind boggling is that this is not a new problem by any means. I'm sure that among twitter's worries is how to effectively scale an abuse prevention operation, but there are some pretty easy automatic filters that would go a long way. A few that come to mind (provided accounts are tied to phone numbers): 1) A block that prevents the harasser from even @mentioning the harassee in any way. 2) Automatic disabling of accounts that are blocked by more than two users whom the harasser explicitly @mentioned 3) A "dog house" mode which automatically disables distribution of a user's tweets who have been reported as harassment without explicitly telling them, leaving them to harass nothingness until they get bored and leave.
- josephlord 12y ago

pluma 12y ago

Of course they had to bring Sarkeesian into it, again. This person gets way more exposure than she deserves.

josephlord 12y ago
She is clearly receiving harassment and is prepared to publish it, why the hell wouldn't they bring her into it? And if you think she gets too much exposure why did you mention her? I'm only aware of her because of the harassment her and others have received. The people trying to silence her with abuse are amplifying their opponents and discrediting themselves and proving the need for change in these areas. There are clearly some people going out of their way to try to bully vocal women into silence and I'm glad it isn't working.

jbob2000 12y ago

Twitter isn't alone in this. Facebook and Snapchat both have issues with harassment. YikYak had a bad case of it too. I think that if these companies really care about curbing harassment, they would approach each other and tackle the issue together. If someone is trolling on facebook, they probably do it on twitter too. Riot Games (League of Legends) has The Tribunal, where players who harass get judgements handed down from other players. Perhaps social media needs a tribunal of sorts, with participation from Twitter et al to enact "sentences".

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]