Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#41

Post by dotnetisnotdead » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #20

iamatworknow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. As I see it there is a sort of give and take rel…

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give…

The harassment from Twitter is everywhere on both sides of the political spectrum though. You're painting a very one sided picture. I'm not attacking you here I'm just saying there is a narrative about the "alt-right" harassing the innocent leftists and it's not the whole picture.

I'm a (democrat) mixed race woman, and I get more harassment and vitriol from "tolerant liberals" when I post anything remotely in support of the president than I ever do from "white supremacists or anti feminists". I have noticed if I don't go right down the party line on an issue, I'm attacked violently. The "N" word I get called frequently is Nazi, not the other.

I'm not trying to say your experiences are invalid, I believe you're experiencing it, but I think assigning it to one political party or movement is inaccurate. It's really just the culture of Twitter, and maybe society in general.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#42

Post by iamatworknow » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #38

iamatworknow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. As I see it there is a sort of give and take rel…

If you were Twitter, why on Earth would you want the accepted answer to anybody's problems to be "don't use Twitter"? Your entire business model is built around getting people to use your service.

And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem, at least not while still remaining an open platform. As long as anyone can sign up, "undesirables" will be among them.

The end user has precisely two options -- use twitter or don't. If using it causes you too much mental anguish, and twitter is incapable of making the experience better for you, then don't use it.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#43

Post by eropple » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

iamatworknow wrote: post #23

eropple wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give…

These people have always existed. They will continue to exist. They will continue to find ways to harass the people they see as easy targets because they find enjoyment in it. Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-arounds. For all of human e…

This post reveals a pretty significant misunderstanding of what Twitter is for marginalized communities. And, as such, this conversation is fruitless.

But one last thing: if it's as abhorrent as you seem to actually think it is, stop caping for them as being something that can't be stopped. Because you help them by doing so.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#44

Post by dotnetisnotdead » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

iamatworknow wrote: post #23

eropple wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give…

These people have always existed. They will continue to exist. They will continue to find ways to harass the people they see as easy targets because they find enjoyment in it. Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-arounds. For all of human e…

I agree with this 100%. These types of people have been around for centuries, the only difference is now they have a mouthpiece and encouragement. Use your block button, it's free.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#45

Post by tomjen3 » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #12

unethical_ban wrote: post #2

Today, the egg, tomorrow, unverified account names. Are they going full Facebook? And filtering out keywords in messages... I suppose that's ok, and certainly their prerogative, but talk about creating more social bubbles. As much as I disagree with the random twits on the site, it reminds me that not everyone is a left-leaning political hobbyist. Hearing things you don't necessarily like is part of being an adult.

Having concerted bombs of right-wing harassment drop on one's head for having the temerity to do something like "be a woman with political opinions" is not part of being an adult. And that's the reality of Twitter right now. This isn't nearly enough; actually showing the trackable legions of smurf-account harassers the door might be beyond Twitter's meager capabilities at the moment (after all, they only have a small…

Do you think Twitter should have a shared default blocklist?

That would kill Twitter almost immediately as everybody is added to the list (if nothing else, as a retaliation for somebody else adding them to the list) or do you mean that they should have the slightly more intelligent blocking features it has (including young accounts and/or accounts with few followers)? Because they are pretty easy to bypass by having a bunch of accounts follow each other and create them well ahead of time (and no Twitter can't prevent this: finding cliques in a graph is NP-Complete, and Twitters graph is crazy big).

Twitter could add many things, but they haven't even figured out that they need to accounts with female names and portraits and user names that ends in a number, even though they are always spammers.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#46

Post by eropple » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

dotnetisnotdead wrote: post #41

eropple wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give…

The harassment from Twitter is everywhere on both sides of the political spectrum though. You're painting a very one sided picture. I'm not attacking you here I'm just saying there is a narrative about the "alt-right" harassing the innocent leftists and it's not the whole picture. I'm a (democrat) mixed race woman, and I get more harassment and vitriol from "tolerant liberals" when I post anything remotely in support…

If Twitter wants to show the alt-left tools the door too, I'm certainly not gonna cape up for them. But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here, and it's not towards the burned Bernie bros. That alt-left doesn't have members of state-blessed media outlets (well, until recently, when cheering on pedophilia became a little too much for them) on campus tours where he'd out trans people with a pack of jackals ready to pounce.

There's a difference of kind here.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#47

Post by notadoc » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

There are massive bot farms on Twitter that are obvious to even casual observers and most of them don't have "egg" accounts anymore. Look at the auto-replies to any political tweet, major news story, or from a popular account, all automated garbage that follows the same template.

Why Twitter ignores the crap which pollutes their product is amazing to me. Maybe they don't want to touch them because it ups the engagement numbers and inflates active users?

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#48

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

iamatworknow wrote: post #23

eropple wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give…

These people have always existed. They will continue to exist. They will continue to find ways to harass the people they see as easy targets because they find enjoyment in it. Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-arounds. For all of human e…

> You can still be a citizen of the 21st century world and not be on social media. It does not put you at any disadvantage to not have a twitter account. If you believe that it would, reconsider your priorities in life.

This is analogous to all those arguments that "If you have nothing to hide, you have ", or, "If you want privacy, you always have the option to become a hermit and live completely off the grid with no contact with friends or family" What if I want privacy and to participate in modern society? Why should I have to choose?

It's the same here: Twitter, for all its faults, is very useful. Why should I have to choose between not using it and enduring a bunch of abuse on it, if Twitter can fix that? To protect the "right" of some anonymous shitheads to have victims be forced to listen to their harassment? Please.

You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward from there. I reject that axiom.

> Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-arounds.

First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough" moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a tolerable level. But even if it were true, it would not be a reason for Twitter not to attempt anything. Again, you're starting from entirely the wrong premises here.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#49

Post by smacktoward » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

iamatworknow wrote: post #42

smacktoward wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were Twitter, why on Earth would you want the accepted answer to anybody's problems to be "don't use Twitter"? Your entire business model is built around getting people to use your service.

And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem, at least not while still remaining an open platform. As long as anyone can sign up, "undesirables" will be among them. The end user has precisely two options -- use twitter or don't. If using it causes you too much mental anguish, and twitter is incapab…

> And that's the problem that twitter needs to come to terms with and attempt to resolve, not the end user. I personally don't have faith that it is a solvable problem

So your advice for Twitter is to throw up their hands and close down their business?

I mean, it's easy for those of us outside the company to say "your product is fundamentally unfixable." But if you're inside the company, and the product as-is has giant problems that are keeping potential new users out and driving existing ones away, you have to try something. Your job literally depends on it.

Maybe the things they're trying now will work, maybe they won't. But as long as Twitter has employees and enough cash on hand to pay them, "just tell people to not use Twitter" is not advice anybody there is going to consider useful.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#50

Post by notadoc » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

vorotato wrote: post #16

james_pm wrote: post #6

Next they'll want proof that the person in the avatar is actually you.

my avatar is a potato, so that would be difficult. Do I just show a potato?

Maybe you'll have to show Twitter your state ID with the official potato picture identifying you as a potato.