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Twitter- optimised for abuse

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Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#21

Post by peterwwillis »

chroma wrote: post #8

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. Also, it seems unusual to hold Twitter responsible for their users' speech. UI tweaks may reduce the amount of hatred seen, but they are not going to solve this problem. Lastly, I spent some time perusing other posts on this blog. They are not furthering any discussion, to put it…

What exactly do you expect law enforcement to do about hundreds (if not thousands) of threats of violence by anonymous people on the internet? An investigation into the IP address of each tweet?

If she called law enforcement every time she got a threatening tweet or email, there's a good chance the cops would stop taking her seriously. They only have so many man-hours to dedicate to investigations like this, and each one takes a while. In the mean time, she's still subject to more abuse which strains her mental health even more. I wouldn't discount the possibility of serious self-harm in cases like these.

While it would be nice if there were a streamlined process to report threats like these to the police, and a streamlined process for the police to investigate them, there's a more important action here: protecting innocent people. Twitter has the means and ability, and in my view should be a moral imperative, to keep people from harm if they can help it. Twitter can do more to protect people from hate speech and abusive language, which would greatly reduce the suffering of many people.

We don't have to hold Twitter responsible for how their users treat others, but we do have to hold Twitter responsible for how they treat their users - which is to enable their abuse by other users. Can you imagine if ten Starbucks customers were verbally abusing one woman and the Starbucks employees did nothing? At the very least, Starbucks should be expected to call the police on behalf of the victim, just as Twitter should do. Sadly, we don't hold social media companies to the same moral standards as a coffee shop.

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#22

Post by hythloday »

mtrimpe wrote: post #12
chroma wrote: post #8

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. Also, it seems unusual to hold Twitter responsible for their users' speech. UI tweaks may reduce the amount of hatred seen, but they are not going to solve this problem. Lastly, I spent some time perusing other posts on this blog. They are not furthering any discussion, to put it…

Why could we not contribute? At it's core this is about the needs of a very small but important group of users not being addressed. It only took me a few minutes to think of various things we could do to aid them ranging from a UI more optimized for blocking and reporting; services to offer pre-filtering of comments. The one concrete thing that Twitter could do (and should do in my opinion) is helping actual criminal…

"Why could we not contribute?...It only took me a few minutes to think of various things"

That is why we can't contribute.

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#23

Post by digitalengineer »

peterwwillis wrote: post #21
chroma wrote: post #8

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. Also, it seems unusual to hold Twitter responsible for their users' speech. UI tweaks may reduce the amount of hatred seen, but they are not going to solve this problem. Lastly, I spent some time perusing other posts on this blog. They are not furthering any discussion, to put it…

What exactly do you expect law enforcement to do about hundreds (if not thousands) of threats of violence by anonymous people on the internet? An investigation into the IP address of each tweet? If she called law enforcement every time she got a threatening tweet or email, there's a good chance the cops would stop taking her seriously. They only have so many man-hours to dedicate to investigations like this, and each…

>by anonymous people on the internet... Made me smile.

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#24

Post by acdha »

icebraining wrote: post #11
chroma wrote: post #8

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. Also, it seems unusual to hold Twitter responsible for their users' speech. UI tweaks may reduce the amount of hatred seen, but they are not going to solve this problem. Lastly, I spent some time perusing other posts on this blog. They are not furthering any discussion, to put it…

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. They're not mutually exclusive. Twitter should still take all reasonable steps to prevent abuse. I don't think HN has much to contribute. I completely agree; I cringe every time something vaguely related to feminism or gender equality is posted here. I'm not sure if I should flag…

Flag it but after awhile, the moderators will prevent your account from flagging stories or comments.

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#25

Post by timje1 »

peterwwillis wrote: post #21
chroma wrote: post #8

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. Also, it seems unusual to hold Twitter responsible for their users' speech. UI tweaks may reduce the amount of hatred seen, but they are not going to solve this problem. Lastly, I spent some time perusing other posts on this blog. They are not furthering any discussion, to put it…

What exactly do you expect law enforcement to do about hundreds (if not thousands) of threats of violence by anonymous people on the internet? An investigation into the IP address of each tweet? If she called law enforcement every time she got a threatening tweet or email, there's a good chance the cops would stop taking her seriously. They only have so many man-hours to dedicate to investigations like this, and each…

If I get provably burgled 50 times a month, I wouldn't expect the local police to stop taking me seriously. If anything, I'd expect them to streamline the process of investigating and prosecuting the crimes.

If she was crying wolf multiple times, that's one thing - but the threats against her are undeniable.

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#26

Post by icebraining »

clearly wrote: post #15
icebraining wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. They're not mutually exclusive. Twitter should still take all reasonable steps to prevent abuse. I don't think HN has much to contribute. I completely agree; I cringe every time something vaguely related to feminism or gender equality is posted here. I'm not sure if I should flag…

I'm genuinely interested to hear you say that, why do you cringe? Because it doesn't affect you and you don't perceive there to be a problem? This is clearly a technology story, and I'm interested to hear more from anyone at Twitter how their release process works in this regard. I saw Kent Beck talk at facebook a while back and he spoke about how when working on a site like FB, you literally do have peoples lives in…

I'm genuinely interested to hear you say that, why do you cringe? Because it doesn't affect you and you don't perceive there to be a problem?

No, I cringe because I know there is a problem, and more sexism - which is rampant in these threads - doesn't help. HN as a whole is simply not capable of having a mature discussion about these topics.

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#27

Post by icebraining »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #9

Hey, could we just all agree in advance to not discuss the unnecessarily misleading statements, and probably turn a blind eye to the rest of the somewhat over-the-top stuff too? I'm not clear from this post if there was any contact with Twitter to discuss why the feature in question had been removed. That would always seem like a first step to take. In addition, it seems pretty clear that it's twitter "bug" ( https:/…

realistically, probably a change that nobody thought about or noticed, rather than an actual bug.

What's the difference between an unintended change and a bug?

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#28

Post by ds9 »

chroma wrote: post #8

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. Also, it seems unusual to hold Twitter responsible for their users' speech. UI tweaks may reduce the amount of hatred seen, but they are not going to solve this problem. Lastly, I spent some time perusing other posts on this blog. They are not furthering any discussion, to put it…

When tweets contain obviously criminal threats, law enforcement ought to be able and willing to get whatever information Twitter has on the senders, at least when the target files a complaint, and prosecutors ought to follow up.

How is this so easy in copyright cases and so hard in cases like this? If a few theoretical dollars in royalties count so much more than safety of innocent citizens, things really are upside down in favor of big money.

I realize there are limited LE and prosecutorial resources, and they have to prioritize etc., but threats like these are prosecuted in "real world" cases all the time. And a few convictions in egregious cases (like this), reported in the news, would probably exert a civilizing effect on the lowlife of Twitter (maybe just motivating them to go elsewhere).

Re: Twitter- optimised for abuse

#29

Post by icebraining »

gaadd33 wrote: post #20
icebraining wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of those tweets contain direct threats of violence. They need to be reported to law enforcement, not flagged for Twitter to deal with. They're not mutually exclusive. Twitter should still take all reasonable steps to prevent abuse. I don't think HN has much to contribute. I completely agree; I cringe every time something vaguely related to feminism or gender equality is posted here. I'm not sure if I should flag…

How can Twitter prevent people from posting abusive messages? Should they have some sort of keyword filter that prohibits specific words and regexs that match addresses?

They can't prevent the initial abuse, of course, but they could, at the very least, think about the people who are affected by these attacks before making changes, instead of rolling back only after there's an outcry.

Simple measures, such as banning a whole IP from contacting/following/mentioning the person who reported it, should help a lot. And if they want to allow comments from Tor and other proxies - and I think they should! -, they could allow users to block everyone using them from contacting/following/mentioning them.

In general, they could give a damn, instead of just reacting to criticism.

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