6 ms·

Twitter's Dilemma

40 points by davidbarker 12y ago

silentmars 12y ago
Not a single thing about harassment. Why? Does Twitter's technical leadership think the problem is that irrelevant that it's not worth putting on the roadmap? Does the media care so little about it that they don't ask the questions? My view is that Twitter has a big problem with harassment. I want to know what Twitter plans to do about it.
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  I don't mean to be cynical, but mass harassment is a problem for a very small percentage of twitter users. From a business perspective what is the incentive for twitter to solve such a problem?
  - nemo 12y ago
    "From a business perspective what is the incentive for twitter to solve such a problem?" From a business perspective, being perceived as a platform for trolls and harassment is really bad for the brand - even if its a minority of users who are causally throwing out rape threats and other abusive garbage at other users, they are incredibly toxic.
  - MBCook 12y ago
    Morals? Basic humanity? If you're platform is one of the largest online tools of harassment and death threats you have an issue. It's only a matter of time before some lawsuits name them or they get investigated by AGs for negligence/willfully blindness. Either way it DOES drive users away.
- aikah 12y ago
  > My view is that Twitter has a big problem with harassment. I want to know what Twitter plans to do about it. I don't know if Twitter does that,but they could have a function so that people only receive tweets from people they follow at first place,while keeping their tweet public. Anyway, people take twitter way too seriously. It's the internet, anonymous people are going to be mean.
  - ssully 12y ago
    I have had some harsh stuff said to me on the internet, but it doesn't compare to the things high profile twitter users get said at them. It's really easy to dismiss the severity of something when you aren't on the receiving end.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    You may have not noticed yet, but it no longer 1996, where "the Internet" is some weird thing that has little relation to mainstream society. Many, many people cannot just say, "Well gosh, this Internet thing is mean, I will quit it." Their participation is professionally necessary. Twitter is trying to provide a major global platform for conversation. In doing so, they have also accidentally created a smashing tool for organizing and committing harassment and abuse. If they really want to play in the big leagues, they are going to have to solve that.
    - aikah 12y ago
      Internet opinion hardly matters in most cases.People should be paying too much attention on internet drama. Twitter included. If you don't like that,nobody's forcing anyone to use Twitter.
      - wpietri 12y ago
        It's always handy when replies give no sign of having read my comment, let alone thought it through. It saves me the time of writing a real response.
- nemo 12y ago
  I think the article didn't mention it since Twitter has released a number of changes since Dec. to work on improving handling of harassment with the streamlining of the block/report UI, higher prioritization of handling abusive/threatening posts, and new harassment policies. Internally they have been formulating plans to do more. No idea how things will pan out, but Twitter is clearly working on it.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  Dick Costolo talked about it on their most recent call; We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing. We're going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them. Everybody on the leadership team knows this is vital. Whether or not they come up with a solution or prioritize it with their technical team remains to be seen, but I think it's a very good start that the CEO has claimed personal responsibility for the issue. From: http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7982099/twitter-ceo-sent-memo-taking-personal-responsibility-for-the http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7982099/twitter-ceo-sent-me...
  - MBCook 12y ago
    Despite this being s problem for YEARS they are only now admitting it and have only started to take anise reports semi-seriously. So far it looks like too-little-too-late PR and nothing more.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      You don't think they're going to start doing something? I think Twitter realises that they've lost a lot of high-profile people as users because of this. At least for me, one of the great things about Twitter is being able to interact with otherwise inapproachable people (if only due to the friction of sending/replying to e-mail). Even if it's just to make a bad pun. Having that poisoned by people parroting "ethics in video game journalism" makes me pretty sad.
currywurst 12y ago
Dear Twitter, could you please do away with the "insane for 2015" 140-character limit? (Anyone who mentions "legacy clients" can forever hold their peace)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  Maybe someone already mentioned this to you, but 140 characters is pretty much the only unique thing that makes twitter recognizably twitter
  - currywurst 12y ago
    I wonder if that's just a UX issue though. There are already many services which post the first 100-odd characters before continuing onto a link with the full text. Would it be so difficult for Twitter to come up with a native card for longer tweets ?
- supercoder 12y ago
  It's a feature, not a bug.
  - currywurst 12y ago
    Sure! Let's all tweetstorm and (gasp), post screenshots of tweetstorms .. :) ! Now, I didn't mean that character limits be removed completely, but a 250-character limit seems to be a good trade-off.
acheron 12y ago
I would like a social network where I can choose people to "follow", and then I can see when those people post things. That means: 1) Don't show posts from people I don't follow 2) Don't hide posts from people I do follow Facebook gave up on that years ago, and that's probably one of the reasons I've mostly stopped using it. Now Twitter is following in the same footsteps. More and more I'm getting posts showing up in my Twitter timeline that are not from people I follow and weren't retweeted, they are just "person X follows this account, so here's a tweet from it". No! If I cared, I'd have followed it myself. And now all this talk about showing "important" tweets that Twitter thinks I "missed". Stop it! You don't know what I think is important. Again, this is what drove me away from Facebook. (Not even talking about ads/"sponsored tweets" here, though that doesn't help either.)
- stevesearer 12y ago
  As a publisher this is the reason I have put quite a bit more effort into my email newsletter rather than Twitter or Facebook. Twitter is much more about real-time updates and conversation, so it makes sense that it isn't the best medium for letting people know what was recently published. Facebook though seems like a good medium, but apparently the people that like my page don't interact with the content so they don't get to see it in their feeds. Email newsletters are great because people can easily subscribe/unsubscribe at their leisure and I know who is reading them whereas it is pretty much a mystery on other services. From a readers perspective, your comments are exactly why I love instagram so much. I can easily follow/unfollow people and my newsfeed is only filled with posts from people I followed plus the occasional ad. And if I want related material, I can go to the browse page which has posts that are popular in my network. EDIT: I'd love a service that was like a combination of instagram + RSS reader where I could subscribe to both blogs and people and can easily follow/unfollow, and have it not be so fast moving but still see all of the updates that are posted.
  - Galacticus 12y ago
    If you'd 'love it', why don't you marry it?
- aethos 12y ago
Galacticus 12y ago
Twitter: for companies it's a free support platform. It's great! For people? No, unless you like to follow kids or narcissistic adults. In other words, there is no content. But it's great for support purposes.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

40 points by davidbarker 12y ago

Not a single thing about harassment. Why? Does Twitter's technical leadership think the problem is that irrelevant that it's not worth putting on the roadmap? Does the media care so little about it that they don't ask the questions? My view is that Twitter has a big problem with harassment. I want to know what Twitter plans to do about it.

hayksaakian 12y ago
I don't mean to be cynical, but mass harassment is a problem for a very small percentage of twitter users. From a business perspective what is the incentive for twitter to solve such a problem?
- nemo 12y ago
  "From a business perspective what is the incentive for twitter to solve such a problem?" From a business perspective, being perceived as a platform for trolls and harassment is really bad for the brand - even if its a minority of users who are causally throwing out rape threats and other abusive garbage at other users, they are incredibly toxic.
- MBCook 12y ago
  Morals? Basic humanity? If you're platform is one of the largest online tools of harassment and death threats you have an issue. It's only a matter of time before some lawsuits name them or they get investigated by AGs for negligence/willfully blindness. Either way it DOES drive users away.
aikah 12y ago
> My view is that Twitter has a big problem with harassment. I want to know what Twitter plans to do about it. I don't know if Twitter does that,but they could have a function so that people only receive tweets from people they follow at first place,while keeping their tweet public. Anyway, people take twitter way too seriously. It's the internet, anonymous people are going to be mean.
- ssully 12y ago
  I have had some harsh stuff said to me on the internet, but it doesn't compare to the things high profile twitter users get said at them. It's really easy to dismiss the severity of something when you aren't on the receiving end.
- wpietri 12y ago
  You may have not noticed yet, but it no longer 1996, where "the Internet" is some weird thing that has little relation to mainstream society. Many, many people cannot just say, "Well gosh, this Internet thing is mean, I will quit it." Their participation is professionally necessary. Twitter is trying to provide a major global platform for conversation. In doing so, they have also accidentally created a smashing tool for organizing and committing harassment and abuse. If they really want to play in the big leagues, they are going to have to solve that.
  - aikah 12y ago
    Internet opinion hardly matters in most cases.People should be paying too much attention on internet drama. Twitter included. If you don't like that,nobody's forcing anyone to use Twitter.
    - wpietri 12y ago
      It's always handy when replies give no sign of having read my comment, let alone thought it through. It saves me the time of writing a real response.
nemo 12y ago
I think the article didn't mention it since Twitter has released a number of changes since Dec. to work on improving handling of harassment with the streamlining of the block/report UI, higher prioritization of handling abusive/threatening posts, and new harassment policies. Internally they have been formulating plans to do more. No idea how things will pan out, but Twitter is clearly working on it.
mikeyouse 12y ago
Dick Costolo talked about it on their most recent call; We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing. We're going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them. Everybody on the leadership team knows this is vital. Whether or not they come up with a solution or prioritize it with their technical team remains to be seen, but I think it's a very good start that the CEO has claimed personal responsibility for the issue. From: http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7982099/twitter-ceo-sent-memo-taking-personal-responsibility-for-the http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7982099/twitter-ceo-sent-me...
- MBCook 12y ago
  Despite this being s problem for YEARS they are only now admitting it and have only started to take anise reports semi-seriously. So far it looks like too-little-too-late PR and nothing more.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    You don't think they're going to start doing something? I think Twitter realises that they've lost a lot of high-profile people as users because of this. At least for me, one of the great things about Twitter is being able to interact with otherwise inapproachable people (if only due to the friction of sending/replying to e-mail). Even if it's just to make a bad pun. Having that poisoned by people parroting "ethics in video game journalism" makes me pretty sad.

currywurst 12y ago

Dear Twitter, could you please do away with the "insane for 2015" 140-character limit? (Anyone who mentions "legacy clients" can forever hold their peace)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hayksaakian 12y ago
Maybe someone already mentioned this to you, but 140 characters is pretty much the only unique thing that makes twitter recognizably twitter
- currywurst 12y ago
  I wonder if that's just a UX issue though. There are already many services which post the first 100-odd characters before continuing onto a link with the full text. Would it be so difficult for Twitter to come up with a native card for longer tweets ?
supercoder 12y ago
It's a feature, not a bug.
- currywurst 12y ago
  Sure! Let's all tweetstorm and (gasp), post screenshots of tweetstorms .. :) ! Now, I didn't mean that character limits be removed completely, but a 250-character limit seems to be a good trade-off.

acheron 12y ago

I would like a social network where I can choose people to "follow", and then I can see when those people post things. That means: 1) Don't show posts from people I don't follow 2) Don't hide posts from people I do follow Facebook gave up on that years ago, and that's probably one of the reasons I've mostly stopped using it. Now Twitter is following in the same footsteps. More and more I'm getting posts showing up in my Twitter timeline that are not from people I follow and weren't retweeted, they are just "person X follows this account, so here's a tweet from it". No! If I cared, I'd have followed it myself. And now all this talk about showing "important" tweets that Twitter thinks I "missed". Stop it! You don't know what I think is important. Again, this is what drove me away from Facebook. (Not even talking about ads/"sponsored tweets" here, though that doesn't help either.)

stevesearer 12y ago
As a publisher this is the reason I have put quite a bit more effort into my email newsletter rather than Twitter or Facebook. Twitter is much more about real-time updates and conversation, so it makes sense that it isn't the best medium for letting people know what was recently published. Facebook though seems like a good medium, but apparently the people that like my page don't interact with the content so they don't get to see it in their feeds. Email newsletters are great because people can easily subscribe/unsubscribe at their leisure and I know who is reading them whereas it is pretty much a mystery on other services. From a readers perspective, your comments are exactly why I love instagram so much. I can easily follow/unfollow people and my newsfeed is only filled with posts from people I followed plus the occasional ad. And if I want related material, I can go to the browse page which has posts that are popular in my network. EDIT: I'd love a service that was like a combination of instagram + RSS reader where I could subscribe to both blogs and people and can easily follow/unfollow, and have it not be so fast moving but still see all of the updates that are posted.
- Galacticus 12y ago
  If you'd 'love it', why don't you marry it?
aethos 12y ago

Galacticus 12y ago

Twitter: for companies it's a free support platform. It's great! For people? No, unless you like to follow kids or narcissistic adults. In other words, there is no content. But it's great for support purposes.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]