Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#51

Post by dotnetisnotdead » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:00 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…

>Stop normalizing evil. Doing so literally-not-figuratively arms those who would do harm to the people among us who need our support. Show them the door, not their victims.

To be completely fair, they will remove people for blatantly racist/sexist/homophobic tweets, and often do, where "f* white males" talk is completely allowed there.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#52

Post by maxerickson » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

bussierem wrote: post #26

27182818284 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just about blocking those that haven't uploaded avatars. Egg users stick out because they have other properties such as New account follows a lot quickly, but doesn't have followers New account that with time never ever tweets, only retweets and follows New account that starts and then immediately follows just a single person ever. All of those are suspicious

>New account follows a lot quickly, but doesn't have followers >New account that with time never ever tweets, only retweets and follows Both of these are also the behavior of people who use Twitter simply as a content stream. They pretty accurately describe how I use Twitter.

So no one will see the tweets you already aren't tweeting?

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#53

Post by iamatworknow » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #43

iamatworknow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Okay, then please, "educate me". I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'm a middle class straight white man and I will freely admit that I don't understand the plight of many minority groups, and certainly not in the context of twitter or other social media. My beliefs are not set in stone, and I have never been dismissive of someone who has the desire to share their experience with me so I have a better understanding. Regardless of my understanding, though, I'm pretty sure I will still feel that removing oneself from a harmful environment is a pretty effective tool, regardless of the type of harm being put upon you.

What I see more often than not in this situation, however, are responses that are dismissive instead of educational -- like saying the conversation is fruitless. I have seen conversations like this come up before, where the "right wing" side, being much less moderate than I am (and I consider myself to be pretty liberal for the record), opens themselves up to learn more about the situation only to be met with responses like "I don't have time for this" or "educate yourself", which is about as effective as telling someone to RTFM. Only the manual is about someone else's beliefs and feelings, and it doesn't actually exist.

So please, if you have the time, tell me what I don't understand.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#54

Post by eropple » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #45

eropple wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think shared blocklists are great. As defaults, probably not. I don't use any shared lists because nobody's going to take a serious run at me, I just don't want to spike my blood pressure seeing the egg/anime smurf accounts well-actually at me.

But I think network-effect block lists are probably a good idea. Nobody who follows Sargon of Akkad or other white-supremacist dorks is somebody I am ever going to want to hear from, so tube their tweets. That sort of thing.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#55

Post by iamatworknow » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #48

iamatworknow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Show me an example of where I said this. What I've been saying is that attempts to programmatically weed out this type of behavior and the accounts that people create to perpetuate it will ultimately be ineffective. What's the difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and just 1, because the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable level of harassment?

>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.

Do you have an example?

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#56

Post by intoverflow2 » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

WillyOnWheels wrote: post #21

arprocter wrote: post #7

Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people messaging celebs who don't follow them back

If you tweet 100s of times the same text at accounts that don't follow you, you're a bot.

Will "Congrats on your 250 like tweet!" count under this?

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#57

Post by eropple » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

iamatworknow wrote: post #53

eropple wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>This post reveals a pretty significant misunderstanding of what Twitter is for marginalized communities. And, as such, this conversation is fruitless. Okay, then please, "educate me". I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'm a middle class straight white man and I will freely admit that I don't understand the plight of many minority groups, and certainly not in the context of twitter or other social media. My beliefs ar…

OK. I apologize for the tone of my comment; most of the time when somebody says what you said, they aren't looking to learn. And that's why people often respond with "educate yourself": because, in 2017, asking to be taught is often a rhetorical and political trap used against activists and marginalized people (how fucked is that?). It is a request for emotional investment that is used intentionally and maliciously by the white-supremacist types to do what I can only describe as gish-galloping at scale. Ask questions, get people who actually care about stuff to give a shit and to expend effort and emotional energy...and then burn it, "I was trolling you the whole time", that sort of thing. As you noted, these people don't have much to live for and wasting their time is okay if they waste other people's time. That's a victory to them.

The common response is "well, do it anyway," but the solution isn't for marginalized communities to be saints. It's for people like you and me to educate ourselves and work on this shit. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of AlterNet-type stuff, but this one encapsulates what I'm trying to say here: http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/black_people_are_not_here_to...

-

A good place to start with regards to why social media matters with regards to marginalized groups (and it's really the obvious one) would be something like Black Twitter; it's a strong, pretty well-defined cultural group that discusses, at a wide and large scale, topics related to being black in America. It's a hugely influential cultural phenomenon and in a lot of ways it serves as a baseline political organization tool for those communities. The idea of telling marginalized people that they should refrain from participating in what is effectively the common social discourse among young people in 2017 because of their literal enemies who troll and harass specifically to make people not participate is...it presses some big red buttons in my head, because (also as a white dude) our space for "common social discourse" is pretty much anywhere we sit down, and that's not the case for others.

The Wikipedia page is surprisingly detailed and I think it's a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#58

Post by iamatworknow » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #49

iamatworknow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gia…

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

When did I start giving twitter advice? Nothing I've said in any of my responses in this thread was a suggestion of how twitter should operate their business. I hope they can get rid of all of the objectionable content and that everyone can be happy. I just don't think it's possible, and that the benefits of using twitter don't outweigh the abuse some people take, so it's not worth using.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#59

Post by dotnetisnotdead » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #46

dotnetisnotdead wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're kidding right? The right says a lot of stupid things...ok TONS of stupid things, but "left leaning media" isn't one of them. These media outlets may not be state blessed, but we have the media on our side, and we have our Jackals for sure. 99% of the media is leaning hard to the left on everything.

The Milo incident is a fine example. While was repugnant and deserved it, that was an absolute media witch hunt, and he was targeted and destroyed by the jackals of the left.

Bill Maher was the arguable catalyst of it, and he said the exact same thing Milo did, and WORSE things in support of pedophilia and we didn't call him out for it. No media blitz, not cancelled events/shows/etc. Nope, Maher is a hero!

All that does is show the "values" we exited Milo with were not true because we don't apply those values to our own people.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#60

Post by intoverflow2 » Wed, Mar 01, 2017, 6:18 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…

> including "automatically block accounts under X days old that @ me"

How can a new user (who isn't a harasser) engage with the Twitter service if they get auto-blocked when they try to engage with anyone on the platform?