Twitter is like if everyone on this forum only posted one liners and every thread was as active as the chat thread. It's designed to overwhelm moderation with fluff
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
They're immensely bad at this, and Twitter is apparently largely run by a group from the "free speech absolutist" crowd. Their own employees sometimes take them to task about it, but little to nothing seems to be done. The other interesting thing here is that if Joshua got a reply that the account/tweet was fine then that means Biz did too, but he, himself, doesn't appear to have mentioned that bit anywhere.
I'm personally of the mind that I'd rather make issues like the one above very public in that I want Biz's and Joshua's tweets to make it around the Internet and rile up a bunch of people. Get enough people yelling at them, and maybe we get some changes for better moderation. I think the "just ignore it" avenue is largely useless and counter-productive. It's like saying "just ignore Fox News" or "just ignore InfoWars" or any other insane news outlet that has driven the right-wing into an unhinged frenzy. You can't ignore it, you've got to fight it in some way, and I think sunlight is the best bet in this case. Make Twitter's investors uncomfortable about what Twitter's allowing and maybe get some traction that way.
I don't see that happening given what the platform has been used for already. Trump used Twitter to spread birtherism and essentially pave the way for his candidacy and eventual victory and the mainstreaming of open bigotry like we haven't seen in decades. And from Twitter's perspective, it's been great for business.
Except that it hasn't. Twitter is hemorrhaging money, has no real path to revenue, and had several acquisition deals killed on the vine thanks to the toxicity of the service.
Good point, but none of that led to them fixing the problem, so making investors uncomfortable doesn't seem like a winning strategy. And the number of total users continues to increase.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
They're immensely bad at this, and Twitter is apparently largely run by a group from the "free speech absolutist" crowd. Their own employees sometimes take them to task about it, but little to nothing seems to be done. The other interesting thing here is that if Joshua got a reply that the account/tweet was fine then that means Biz did too, but he, himself, doesn't appear to have mentioned that bit anywhere.
I'm personally of the mind that I'd rather make issues like the one above very public in that I want Biz's and Joshua's tweets to make it around the Internet and rile up a bunch of people. Get enough people yelling at them, and maybe we get some changes for better moderation. I think the "just ignore it" avenue is largely useless and counter-productive. It's like saying "just ignore Fox News" or "just ignore InfoWars" or any other insane news outlet that has driven the right-wing into an unhinged frenzy. You can't ignore it, you've got to fight it in some way, and I think sunlight is the best bet in this case. Make Twitter's investors uncomfortable about what Twitter's allowing and maybe get some traction that way.
I don't see that happening given what the platform has been used for already. Trump used Twitter to spread birtherism and essentially pave the way for his candidacy and eventual victory and the mainstreaming of open bigotry like we haven't seen in decades. And from Twitter's perspective, it's been great for business.
Except that it hasn't. Twitter is hemorrhaging money, has no real path to revenue, and had several acquisition deals killed on the vine thanks to the toxicity of the service.
Good point, but none of that led to them fixing the problem, so making investors uncomfortable doesn't seem like a winning strategy. And the number of total users continues to increase.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
Will that same website be superficial enough to have a business model focused on sharing half - thoughts with almost strangers?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
They're immensely bad at this, and Twitter is apparently largely run by a group from the "free speech absolutist" crowd. Their own employees sometimes take them to task about it, but little to nothing seems to be done. The other interesting thing here is that if Joshua got a reply that the account/tweet was fine then that means Biz did too, but he, himself, doesn't appear to have mentioned that bit anywhere.
I'm personally of the mind that I'd rather make issues like the one above very public in that I want Biz's and Joshua's tweets to make it around the Internet and rile up a bunch of people. Get enough people yelling at them, and maybe we get some changes for better moderation. I think the "just ignore it" avenue is largely useless and counter-productive. It's like saying "just ignore Fox News" or "just ignore InfoWars" or any other insane news outlet that has driven the right-wing into an unhinged frenzy. You can't ignore it, you've got to fight it in some way, and I think sunlight is the best bet in this case. Make Twitter's investors uncomfortable about what Twitter's allowing and maybe get some traction that way.
I don't see that happening given what the platform has been used for already. Trump used Twitter to spread birtherism and essentially pave the way for his candidacy and eventual victory and the mainstreaming of open bigotry like we haven't seen in decades. And from Twitter's perspective, it's been great for business.
Except that it hasn't. Twitter is hemorrhaging money, has no real path to revenue, and had several acquisition deals killed on the vine thanks to the toxicity of the service.
Good point, but none of that led to them fixing the problem, so making investors uncomfortable doesn't seem like a winning strategy. And the number of total users continues to increase.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
Will that same website be superficial enough to have a business model focused on sharing half - thoughts with almost strangers?
They're immensely bad at this, and Twitter is apparently largely run by a group from the "free speech absolutist" crowd. Their own employees sometimes take them to task about it, but little to nothing seems to be done. The other interesting thing here is that if Joshua got a reply that the account/tweet was fine then that means Biz did too, but he, himself, doesn't appear to have mentioned that bit anywhere.
I'm personally of the mind that I'd rather make issues like the one above very public in that I want Biz's and Joshua's tweets to make it around the Internet and rile up a bunch of people. Get enough people yelling at them, and maybe we get some changes for better moderation. I think the "just ignore it" avenue is largely useless and counter-productive. It's like saying "just ignore Fox News" or "just ignore InfoWars" or any other insane news outlet that has driven the right-wing into an unhinged frenzy. You can't ignore it, you've got to fight it in some way, and I think sunlight is the best bet in this case. Make Twitter's investors uncomfortable about what Twitter's allowing and maybe get some traction that way.
I don't see that happening given what the platform has been used for already. Trump used Twitter to spread birtherism and essentially pave the way for his candidacy and eventual victory and the mainstreaming of open bigotry like we haven't seen in decades. And from Twitter's perspective, it's been great for business.
Except that it hasn't. Twitter is hemorrhaging money, has no real path to revenue, and had several acquisition deals killed on the vine thanks to the toxicity of the service.
Good point, but none of that led to them fixing the problem, so making investors uncomfortable doesn't seem like a winning strategy. And the number of total users continues to increase.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
Will that same website be superficial enough to have a business model focused on sharing half - thoughts with almost strangers?
Definitely, but served with a side of corporate self righteousness. The Whole Foods of social media.
Twitter is like if everyone on this forum only posted one liners and every thread was as active as the chat thread. It's designed to overwhelm moderation with fluff
Yeah, there's just no realistic way to moderate it all with a live team without resorting to developing the sort of AI that results in a AI that decides to just "ban all humans IRL." This means they're reliant on reporting, like they are now. However, we've clearly seen like with the police department breaking serious rules and getting away with it that Twitter does not have the stones to lay down the law in a fair manner. It doesn't matter who busts the rules, they need to all get slapped around equally. Even if it means pissing off a police department or government official.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
It's really not that easy. Twitter is massively entrenched at this point and trying to get everyone to jump ship is gonna be like trying to get everyone to get off Facebook for Google+. Also, abandoning Twitter to assholes just means we gave them a platform to be assholes on which is never a winning strategy. They need to be deprived of places to be assholes on, not told that they can invade whatever they want and drive people away.
Twitter is like if everyone on this forum only posted one liners and every thread was as active as the chat thread. It's designed to overwhelm moderation with fluff
Yeah, there's just no realistic way to moderate it all with a live team without resorting to developing the sort of AI that results in a AI that decides to just "ban all humans IRL." This means they're reliant on reporting, like they are now. However, we've clearly seen like with the police department breaking serious rules and getting away with it that Twitter does not have the stones to lay down the law in a fair manner. It doesn't matter who busts the rules, they need to all get slapped around equally. Even if it means pissing off a police department or government official.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
It's really not that easy. Twitter is massively entrenched at this point and trying to get everyone to jump ship is gonna be like trying to get everyone to get off Facebook for Google+. Also, abandoning Twitter to assholes just means we gave them a platform to be assholes on which is never a winning strategy. They need to be deprived of places to be assholes on, not told that they can invade whatever they want and drive people away.
Which means twitter needs to get their shit in gear
I lost ~$15.5k when Twitter's stock tanked from the 40s to the 20s. To make it worse, I was leveraged 2 to 1 on that stock.
The problem described in this thread is not the problem I expected to find discussed here. Hateful speech on the internet is not unique to Twitter, nor is it a "Twitter" problem. Anywhere there's a textfield for a user to send text that can be read by other users is vulnerable to trolls and abusive people. This is an internet problem, and in my opinion, not a very interesting discussion. You might as well talk about how we can stop harassment on any social network, which inevitably reaches the conclusion that people are terrible and there's nothing we can really do about it on a massive scale.
Twitter's real problem is bots.
Let me say this, Twitter is a shitty social network for a human. If you are using Twitter as a tool to communicate with people and you're not a celebrity or someone with a very large audience of people or bots who eventually spread your message down to a actual humans, you're doing it wrong.
Twitter is a social network for bots, to follow other bots, to retweet bots, and to like things bots say. In some cases, you may not be dealing with a bot, but you're dealing with a human who has to roleplay so many different accounts or follow a certain script that they might as well be a bot.
This is a problem for Twitter because they are misleading customers who sell advertising on the platform. If Twitter banned all the bots (which is more than half of all active accounts), the platform suddenly seems far less valuable. Suddenly you don't see why you should pay the same price to send an ad to half as many people.
Instagram is having the same problem too, and any social network where ad revenue is tied to huge followings will also have this problem. Getting a huge following is also trivial thanks to bots, so large follower counts are pretty much mandatory for you to even begin having a shot at growing an organic following.
The fact is, having these bots and fake accounts around increases ad revenue, but at the expense of making Twitter hostile to humans. Some of this hostility happens directly, with gangs of bots that have been weaponized to immediately attack someone who dares post a tweet with certain hash tags or phrases. Trump MAGA bots, Nazi bots, BLM bots, whatever... The bots create so much noise that it also becomes harder to distinguish whether you are reading an opinion from a living, breathing, human being or a cold hard piece of code. It also means that human tweets have to compete with bullshit pumped out by bots.
Really just fuck Twitter. Don't use it, unless you are building a bot. Wait for other people to tell you about an interesting tweet. If it's really interesting, you'll hear about it. If it isn't, then you won't need to anyway.
I lost ~$15.5k when Twitter's stock tanked from the 40s to the 20s. To make it worse, I was leveraged 2 to 1 on that stock.
The problem described in this thread is not the problem I expected to find discussed here. Hateful speech on the internet is not unique to Twitter, nor is it a "Twitter" problem. Anywhere there's a textfield for a user to send text that can be read by other users is vulnerable to trolls and abusive people. This is an internet problem, and in my opinion, not a very interesting discussion. You might as well talk about how we can stop harassment on any social network, which inevitably reaches the conclusion that people are terrible and there's nothing we can really do about it on a massive scale.
It's not a unique problem to social media, no - however, they've shown very little initiative to do anything about it. Even You Tube at least knows how to pretend to look like they're doing something here. You Tube.
This would be a very difficult struggle to solve on their platform, but it's never going to go anywhere if the people running it shrug and ignore what's going on. This is how they get potential customers to see them as either Neo nazi sympathizers or the real deal. There is enormous potential for twitter in theory if they try to get their act together, unfortunately....they don't seem that interested in trying. Especially when we already know they have a program to identify whole swaths of Neo Nazis.
Twitter's real problem is bots.
Let me say this, Twitter is a shitty social network for a human. If you are using Twitter as a tool to communicate with people and you're not a celebrity or someone with a very large audience of people or bots who eventually spread your message down to a actual humans, you're doing it wrong.
Twitter is a social network for bots, to follow other bots, to retweet bots, and to like things bots say. In some cases, you may not be dealing with a bot, but you're dealing with a human who has to roleplay so many different accounts or follow a certain script that they might as well be a bot.
This is a problem for Twitter because they are misleading customers who sell advertising on the platform. If Twitter banned all the bots (which is more than half of all active accounts), the platform suddenly seems far less valuable. Suddenly you don't see why you should pay the same price to send an ad to half as many people.
Instagram is having the same problem too, and any social network where ad revenue is tied to huge followings will also have this problem. Getting a huge following is also trivial thanks to bots, so large follower counts are pretty much mandatory for you to even begin having a shot at growing an organic following.
The fact is, having these bots and fake accounts around increases ad revenue, but at the expense of making Twitter hostile to humans. Some of this hostility happens directly, with gangs of bots that have been weaponized to immediately attack someone who dares post a tweet with certain hash tags or phrases. Trump MAGA bots, Nazi bots, BLM bots, whatever... The bots create so much noise that it also becomes harder to distinguish whether you are reading an opinion from a living, breathing, human being or a cold hard piece of code. It also means that human tweets have to compete with bullshit pumped out by bots.
Really just fuck Twitter. Don't use it, unless you are building a bot. Wait for other people to tell you about an interesting tweet. If it's really interesting, you'll hear about it. If it isn't, then you won't need to anyway.
They need a program that can identity and ban bots.
I lost ~$15.5k when Twitter's stock tanked from the 40s to the 20s. To make it worse, I was leveraged 2 to 1 on that stock.
The problem described in this thread is not the problem I expected to find discussed here. Hateful speech on the internet is not unique to Twitter, nor is it a "Twitter" problem. Anywhere there's a textfield for a user to send text that can be read by other users is vulnerable to trolls and abusive people. This is an internet problem, and in my opinion, not a very interesting discussion. You might as well talk about how we can stop harassment on any social network, which inevitably reaches the conclusion that people are terrible and there's nothing we can really do about it on a massive scale.
It's not a unique problem to social media, no - however, they've shown very little initiative to do anything about it. Even You Tube at least knows how to pretend to look like they're doing something here. You Tube.
This would be a very difficult struggle to solve on their platform, but it's never going to go anywhere if the people running it shrug and ignore what's going on. This is how they get potential customers to see them as either Neo nazi sympathizers or the real deal. There is enormous potential for twitter in theory if they try to get their act together, unfortunately....they don't seem that interested in trying. Especially when we already know they have a program to identify whole swaths of Neo Nazis.
Twitter's real problem is bots.
Let me say this, Twitter is a shitty social network for a human. If you are using Twitter as a tool to communicate with people and you're not a celebrity or someone with a very large audience of people or bots who eventually spread your message down to a actual humans, you're doing it wrong.
Twitter is a social network for bots, to follow other bots, to retweet bots, and to like things bots say. In some cases, you may not be dealing with a bot, but you're dealing with a human who has to roleplay so many different accounts or follow a certain script that they might as well be a bot.
This is a problem for Twitter because they are misleading customers who sell advertising on the platform. If Twitter banned all the bots (which is more than half of all active accounts), the platform suddenly seems far less valuable. Suddenly you don't see why you should pay the same price to send an ad to half as many people.
Instagram is having the same problem too, and any social network where ad revenue is tied to huge followings will also have this problem. Getting a huge following is also trivial thanks to bots, so large follower counts are pretty much mandatory for you to even begin having a shot at growing an organic following.
The fact is, having these bots and fake accounts around increases ad revenue, but at the expense of making Twitter hostile to humans. Some of this hostility happens directly, with gangs of bots that have been weaponized to immediately attack someone who dares post a tweet with certain hash tags or phrases. Trump MAGA bots, Nazi bots, BLM bots, whatever... The bots create so much noise that it also becomes harder to distinguish whether you are reading an opinion from a living, breathing, human being or a cold hard piece of code. It also means that human tweets have to compete with bullshit pumped out by bots.
Really just fuck Twitter. Don't use it, unless you are building a bot. Wait for other people to tell you about an interesting tweet. If it's really interesting, you'll hear about it. If it isn't, then you won't need to anyway.
They need a program that can identity and ban bots.
The problem described in this thread is not the problem I expected to find discussed here. Hateful speech on the internet is not unique to Twitter, nor is it a "Twitter" problem. Anywhere there's a textfield for a user to send text that can be read by other users is vulnerable to trolls and abusive people. This is an internet problem, and in my opinion, not a very interesting discussion. You might as well talk about how we can stop harassment on any social network, which inevitably reaches the conclusion that people are terrible and there's nothing we can really do about it on a massive scale.
Twitter is a super-megaphone, and unique in function among social media tools. You just can't accomplish on anything else what you can on Twitter after you have a critical mass of followers; having a dedicated bloc of fascists using that megaphone for their propaganda is indeed a big problem.
And of course you wouldn't think it is an interesting discussion. You're in good company - most straight white dudes in the U.S. don't think hate speech is an interesting or important topic. Go figure that when you don't have skin in the game, suddenly something isn't important.
The state just needs to step-in here, if/when that ever becomes a realistic possibility. There's almost no way the majority of the American public will shun Twitter, because most people have no stakes when it comes to being targeted by the fascist mob. Twitter won't moderate itself, because the upper echelon of the company is no doubt more wealthy white guys who don't care about fascism and/or sympathize with that cause.
There needs to be severe penalties imposed on both the service & users for hate speech, more or less full stop.
I'm sure that President Donald Trump is just the tip of the iceberg should we continue down the path of shrugging shoulder and making appeals for the Invisible Hand to bring deliverance.
Is there any evidence of this? I get that if you're yelling at anyone you can get infracted/banned (which is a valid stance for a company to take) but is there any evidence that they are okay if you're yelling or screaming at a minority/woman but not okay with you yelling/screaming at a nazi/fascist? Maybe the Nazi snowflake reports the comment immediately (along with his bots/followers) and it gets removed faster than if one or two people report a single comment?
I'm sure everyone who does pay Twitter the attention it demands has their own favorite story along these lines. Mine is Sargon of Akkad's banning:
Sargon was a dedicated GamerGate fanatic who bought into the Ethics in Games Journalism story, dove into a bunch of the conspiracy theory nonsense and began harassing people online / doxing them (both women & feminist-ally men). This was, according to Twitter, totally fine - people who reported Sargon's activities were told that those activities did not violate Twitter's ToS.
Mr. Akkad wasn't a Nazi sympathizer, though, and when his social media network became flooded with nothing but support from Nazis, he got fed-up and turned away from the GG crowd. When Nazis wouldn't leave him alone on Twitter, he tweeted a whole bunch of gay pornography at them. This resulted in a permanent ban.
It was okay to amplify Nazis (albeit only by proxy), to harass & dox people and to retweet suggestions that Anita Sarkeesian / Brianna Wu be raped, going by Twitter's reactions. It was not okay to tweet out images of dudes having sex with each other at Nazis.
Same user, but different targets for abuse had dramatically different results.
And the number of total users continues to increase.
Not true at all, me.
Despite having the most powerful person in the world as a loyal user, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) failed to add any new monthly active users globally during the June quarter. Even worse, it's now losing users in the U.S.
Twitter reported Thursday that its monthly user base in the U.S. declined to 68 million in the most recent quarter from 70 million in the previous quarter.
Its global user base was 328 million, unchanged from the prior quarter. Analysts had been expecting Twitter to add at least a few million users.
Twitter's stock collapsed as much as 10% in pre-market trading Thursday following the earnings report. The stock had been on the rebound in recent months after Twitter posted surprisingly strong user growth in the first quarter.
Bots are a core feature of the platform as far as I can tell, Twitter has no incentive to ban them.
I genuinely do not understand Twitter. I understand celebrities having accounts as a PR outlet, but beyond that I just don't get it. I was a fairly early adopter of Facebook (.edu days), and later Google+, so I'm not social media averse. But it seems like something that exists outside the realm of most people. I know of 2 or 3 friends who post actively, and it works for them, but they're leaders at local con events, which circles back to the "celebrity" status more or less. If you're well known in a circle, it's impractical to have 10,000 Facebook friends, so sure Twitter blasting makes sense. But nobody on the internet is interested in pictures of my projects around the house or photos of my kids outside of direct friends.
Twitter seems like a shitty platform that is at best indifferent and at worst actively supportive of the worst parts of the internet. I consider it on the same tier with Reddit and 4chan, and like Reddit and 4chan I avoid it as much as I can. I don't have an account, don't visit the page, don't search for tweets. My only exposure to it is here and auto Facebook posts from the aforementioned friends who forward their Twitter posts.
Is there any evidence of this? I get that if you're yelling at anyone you can get infracted/banned (which is a valid stance for a company to take) but is there any evidence that they are okay if you're yelling or screaming at a minority/woman but not okay with you yelling/screaming at a nazi/fascist? Maybe the Nazi snowflake reports the comment immediately (along with his bots/followers) and it gets removed faster than if one or two people report a single comment?
I'm sure everyone who does pay Twitter the attention it demands has their own favorite story along these lines. Mine is Sargon of Akkad's banning:
Sargon was a dedicated GamerGate fanatic who bought into the Ethics in Games Journalism story, dove into a bunch of the conspiracy theory nonsense and began harassing people online / doxing them (both women & feminist-ally men). This was, according to Twitter, totally fine - people who reported Sargon's activities were told that those activities did not violate Twitter's ToS.
Mr. Akkad wasn't a Nazi sympathizer, though, and when his social media network became flooded with nothing but support from Nazis, he got fed-up and turned away from the GG crowd. When Nazis wouldn't leave him alone on Twitter, he tweeted a whole bunch of gay pornography at them. This resulted in a permanent ban.
It was okay to amplify Nazis (albeit only by proxy), to harass & dox people and to retweet suggestions that Anita Sarkeesian / Brianna Wu be raped, going by Twitter's reactions. It was not okay to tweet out images of dudes having sex with each other at Nazis.
Same user, but different targets for abuse had dramatically different results.
These two things are not actually equivalent in any way. Is that the best example someone can come up with?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Bots are a core feature of the platform as far as I can tell, Twitter has no incentive to ban them.
I genuinely do not understand Twitter. I understand celebrities having accounts as a PR outlet, but beyond that I just don't get it. I was a fairly early adopter of Facebook (.edu days), and later Google+, so I'm not social media averse. But it seems like something that exists outside the realm of most people. I know of 2 or 3 friends who post actively, and it works for them, but they're leaders at local con events, which circles back to the "celebrity" status more or less. If you're well known in a circle, it's impractical to have 10,000 Facebook friends, so sure Twitter blasting makes sense. But nobody on the internet is interested in pictures of my projects around the house or photos of my kids outside of direct friends.
Twitter seems like a shitty platform that is at best indifferent and at worst actively supportive of the worst parts of the internet. I consider it on the same tier with Reddit and 4chan, and like Reddit and 4chan I avoid it as much as I can. I don't have an account, don't visit the page, don't search for tweets. My only exposure to it is here and auto Facebook posts from the aforementioned friends who forward their Twitter posts.
Of the origin of the name "Twitter," CEO Jack Dorsey says:
...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was.
Twitter is not a social media platform. It is terrible at fostering relationships, communicating ideas, and encouraging discussion. It is a great publicity tool that allows minority viewpoints to seem bigger than they are.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
+3
Options
VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited October 2017
There are plenty of reasons to use Twitter if you’re not a celebratity. I’ve been able to have direct, meaningful conversations with people in creative spaces I would otherwise never have access to (writers, game designers, etc). It’s also a great newsfeed and one can easily use it to scroll through without interacting with all of the other stuff.
There are programs that can identify bots already; the incentive to do it just isn’t there since that costs money.
That’s actually the rub in all of this; making all of these changes costs a lot of money with no payback; they also likely lose a lot of performance metrics.
All of the hateful conversations drive a tremendous amount of tweets, replies, and retweets; those are the exact metrics they use to sell ads.
I use twitter as a news feed and a method to contact companies both local and not.
I also have a few celebrities that I follow to easily keep tabs on upcoming content.
There is not another platform that does this all in the same space and as cleanly.
I hope there is some change to the moderation that has a meaningful effect but I won't hold my breath.
If a benevolent alien god destroyed Twitter entirely, wiped it from existence right now, that would be a good thing.
It needs to be run by people who actually find statements about burning minorities alive, or telling someone they should be raped and murdered, offensive and immediate ban-worthy. That it isn't is 1) totally unacceptable, and 2) why I won't have anything to do with it. And unless your job requires you to do so, you should consider doing the same IMHO.
And I would go so far as to say that if you willingly continue to use a service because it's convenient, even though that service is the platform for the worst and most disgusting online abuse, because it's not directed at you and people like you? Well there is a word for having advantages like that in society. Just saying. Now that doesn't make anyone a bad person. But Twitter doesn't really give a shit if you use their site begrudgingly or enthusiastically, does it?
Women boycott Twitter seems hugely unfair anyway. Women get all the abuse and they're the ones having to fix it! Men should boycott Twitter as well!
Solar on
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited October 2017
I find that view pretty lacking in nuance.
It ignores that a lot of the conversations about policing in America, trans issues, and more are being driven by people on the platform.
It’s unrealistic; people aren’t going to suddenly abandon Twitter because of this.
I also suspect it’s a double standard; can you, with certainty, say that vanilla is not being used for forums dedicated to Naziism, Racsim, or Sexism? If not, will you be self-banning?
It ignores that a lot of the conversations about policing in America, trans issues, and more are being driven by people on the platform.
It’s unrealistic; people aren’t going to suddenly abandon Twitter because of this.
I also suspect it’s a double standard; can you, with certainty, say that vanilla is not being used for forums dedicated to Naziism, Racsim, or Sexism? If not, will you be self-banning?
Twitter is deliberately allowing Nazis to propagandize and make death threats on their platform, even when notified. You cannot offset that.
+1
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It ignores that a lot of the conversations about policing in America, trans issues, and more are being driven by people on the platform.
It’s unrealistic; people aren’t going to suddenly abandon Twitter because of this.
I also suspect it’s a double standard; can you, with certainty, say that vanilla is not being used for forums dedicated to Naziism, Racsim, or Sexism? If not, will you be self-banning?
Twitter is deliberately allowing Nazis to propagandize and make death threats on their platform, even when notified. You cannot offset that.
None of my post is excusing this; Twitter has a community management problem. As does Facebook, as does Instagram, as does Reddit (all for different reasons). It’s clear that the libertarian approach to these platforms doesn’t work but, as many others have noted, this is an Internet problem that is not specific to Twitter.
Solar’s post is emblematic of a large swath of people in this thread who a) don’t use/understand the platform b) have decided it’s only use is bad and c) totally nuking it as the only solution. That’s a total non-starter.
We need solutions from people who use the platform and understand it and who are interested in seeing this problem fixed.
That’s actually the rub in all of this; making all of these changes costs a lot of money with no payback; they also likely lose a lot of performance metrics.
Sure there would be payback, but it'd require tremendous work to redeem their image, time, spending proper resources on management and monitoring behavior. This would not be an impossible thing for them to do, the crux of the issue is that right now they're going after the Fox News/Breitbart crowd. There are plenty of avenues to explore besides that audience. The question is - are they prepared to do this? As of right now I'm thinking no.
I'm not going to believe this is purely the people in charge being apolitical, when a person runs a business their biases and flaws aren't erased. Their (lack of) actions says quite a lot about where their priorities lie.
All of the hateful conversations drive a tremendous amount of tweets, replies, and retweets; those are the exact metrics they use to sell ads.
Not conversations, they actively chose sides and the "loser" was consistently one side on the political spectrum. Making it a mainstream recruiting ground for white supremacists and literal Nazis.
Surely they can find other tactics to sell ads with that isn't doing this.
wait hang on I just thought of a flaw in that plan
President Donald Trump
...have you looked at "the state" lately? Hey it would be awesome if the Trump administration could severely penalize websites for whatever he considers hate speech, are you serious?
+12
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Metal JaredMulligan WizardRhode IslandRegistered Userregular
wait hang on I just thought of a flaw in that plan
President Donald Trump
...have you looked at "the state" lately? Hey it would be awesome if the Trump administration could severely penalize websites for whatever he considers hate speech, are you serious?
So the crux of the matter is you want government control and censorship when your political party is in control?
From what I've seen in this thread no I don't know it. Firstly the other person was directly requesting for government censorship, secondly The other person mentioned the flaw being the current state not the idea itself.
I'm not okay with people wanting the government to start censoring things. I'm totally cool with people wanting Twitter, a private business, to run their moderation differently, start a boycott, whatever, but I don't think it's a funny meme to say that the only problem with government censorship is the current president.
"It's just a joke tho" isn't an acceptable excuse from some jerk on Twitter making death threats just like it's not okay to say about government censorship
I actually agree with you in that I don't want the government censoring us. I was just saying that I think his point was more along the lines of 'the current administration would abuse that power, so if it came to it, the dems would be better suited to the task' which is completely true
I actually agree with you in that I don't want the government censoring us. I was just saying that I think his point was more along the lines of 'the current administration would abuse that power, so if it came to it, the dems would be better suited to the task' which is completely true
No government is suited to the task of thought policing their citizens. Everything is fun and games until your side isn't in charge then it's tyranny.
I actually agree with you in that I don't want the government censoring us. I was just saying that I think his point was more along the lines of 'the current administration would abuse that power, so if it came to it, the dems would be better suited to the task' which is completely true
No government is suited to the task of thought policing their citizens. Everything is fun and games until your side isn't in charge then it's tyranny.
There's a pretty big difference between moderating for 'equal rights for everyone regardless of age, sexual preference, gender, and etc.' and 'these people belong in ovens because of their religion'
Edit: but again, I'm not for government censorship, just twitter censorship!
I actually agree with you in that I don't want the government censoring us. I was just saying that I think his point was more along the lines of 'the current administration would abuse that power, so if it came to it, the dems would be better suited to the task' which is completely true
No government is suited to the task of thought policing their citizens. Everything is fun and games until your side isn't in charge then it's tyranny.
There's a pretty big difference between moderating for 'equal rights for everyone regardless of age, sexual preference, gender, and etc.' and 'these people belong in ovens because of their religion'
Edit: but again, I'm not for government censorship, just twitter censorship!
Obama came into the Whitehouse not a proponent of gay marriage. Let's say he decided to censor that debate when he first got in. Would we have gay marriage now? What if the stupid PATRIOT act was something that Bush wouldn't allow people to speak out about? Or Clinton's don't ask don't tell?
wait hang on I just thought of a flaw in that plan
President Donald Trump
...have you looked at "the state" lately? Hey it would be awesome if the Trump administration could severely penalize websites for whatever he considers hate speech, are you serious?
So the crux of the matter is you want government control and censorship when your political party is in control?
No, even then there's always another Trump around the corner. Relying on "the state" is a terrible idea for a while bunch of reasons. The solution is grassroots collective action, i.e. a boycott, like I've been saying this whole thread
+4
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Metal JaredMulligan WizardRhode IslandRegistered Userregular
wait hang on I just thought of a flaw in that plan
President Donald Trump
...have you looked at "the state" lately? Hey it would be awesome if the Trump administration could severely penalize websites for whatever he considers hate speech, are you serious?
So the crux of the matter is you want government control and censorship when your political party is in control?
No, even then there's always another Trump around the corner. Relying on "the state" is a terrible idea for a while bunch of reasons. The solution is grassroots collective action, i.e. a boycott, like I've been saying this whole thread
Twitter never set out to make a snowman, it was always going to be an avalanche. All the issues with moderation have always been there. It's not like in the very beginning they had moderators and staff paid to develop filters and they just couldn't keep up. It's never been a priority.
As with literally everything else humans do, we are shitty creatures who form mobs and stir up shit when enough are present.
I don't know why Twitter gets some sort of pass for being such a shit environment because it's popular.
The fast that Twitter is pre-revenue means that there is no bottom line to affect, just the amount of time before they sell their API to Google or AT&T or whatever
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'll have no truck with the ridiculous idea that you either hold all speech equally acceptable or none of it and I despise how modern debate so often falls back onto "well it's my right to say it"
I absolutely support the restriction of people's right to make fascist, genocidal declarations about other human beings and I absolutely support the restriction of people's right to say to other people "you should be raped to death" and other such horrifically offensive and threatening comments. I absolutely don't support any restriction of people's right to vocally support LGBT rights, gay marriage, abortion etc etc etc.
Why? Because those are different things! Different things get different reactions! Not every single judgement needs to be axiomatic across all its potential variances! If Twitter banned Nazis then I'd be glad and if it banned feminists I'd be raging, and saying "Twitter should ban Nazis" doesn't mean that I then can't say "and banning these other groups would be wrong" because you're allowed to have different views on different groups and what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do!
I'll have no truck with the ridiculous idea that you either hold all speech equally acceptable or none of it and I despise how modern debate so often falls back onto "well it's my right to say it"
I absolutely support the restriction of people's right to make fascist, genocidal declarations about other human beings and I absolutely support the restriction of people's right to say to other people "you should be raped to death" and other such horrifically offensive and threatening comments. I absolutely don't support any restriction of people's right to vocally support LGBT rights, gay marriage, abortion etc etc etc.
Why? Because those are different things! Different things get different reactions! Not every single judgement needs to be axiomatic across all its potential variances! If Twitter banned Nazis then I'd be glad and if it banned feminists I'd be raging, and saying "Twitter should ban Nazis" doesn't mean that I then can't say "and banning these other groups would be wrong" because you're allowed to have different views on different groups and what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do!
Has... had anybody been saying otherwise? Who are you arguing against here?
Posts
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Good point, but none of that led to them fixing the problem, so making investors uncomfortable doesn't seem like a winning strategy. And the number of total users continues to increase.
It's past time to abandon Twitter to the white supremacists and find a website that cares about stopping death threats and nazi talk rather than wait for them to do something.
Will that same website be superficial enough to have a business model focused on sharing half - thoughts with almost strangers?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Facebook sure does!
Definitely, but served with a side of corporate self righteousness. The Whole Foods of social media.
It's really not that easy. Twitter is massively entrenched at this point and trying to get everyone to jump ship is gonna be like trying to get everyone to get off Facebook for Google+. Also, abandoning Twitter to assholes just means we gave them a platform to be assholes on which is never a winning strategy. They need to be deprived of places to be assholes on, not told that they can invade whatever they want and drive people away.
Which means twitter needs to get their shit in gear
The problem described in this thread is not the problem I expected to find discussed here. Hateful speech on the internet is not unique to Twitter, nor is it a "Twitter" problem. Anywhere there's a textfield for a user to send text that can be read by other users is vulnerable to trolls and abusive people. This is an internet problem, and in my opinion, not a very interesting discussion. You might as well talk about how we can stop harassment on any social network, which inevitably reaches the conclusion that people are terrible and there's nothing we can really do about it on a massive scale.
Twitter's real problem is bots.
Let me say this, Twitter is a shitty social network for a human. If you are using Twitter as a tool to communicate with people and you're not a celebrity or someone with a very large audience of people or bots who eventually spread your message down to a actual humans, you're doing it wrong.
Twitter is a social network for bots, to follow other bots, to retweet bots, and to like things bots say. In some cases, you may not be dealing with a bot, but you're dealing with a human who has to roleplay so many different accounts or follow a certain script that they might as well be a bot.
This is a problem for Twitter because they are misleading customers who sell advertising on the platform. If Twitter banned all the bots (which is more than half of all active accounts), the platform suddenly seems far less valuable. Suddenly you don't see why you should pay the same price to send an ad to half as many people.
Instagram is having the same problem too, and any social network where ad revenue is tied to huge followings will also have this problem. Getting a huge following is also trivial thanks to bots, so large follower counts are pretty much mandatory for you to even begin having a shot at growing an organic following.
The fact is, having these bots and fake accounts around increases ad revenue, but at the expense of making Twitter hostile to humans. Some of this hostility happens directly, with gangs of bots that have been weaponized to immediately attack someone who dares post a tweet with certain hash tags or phrases. Trump MAGA bots, Nazi bots, BLM bots, whatever... The bots create so much noise that it also becomes harder to distinguish whether you are reading an opinion from a living, breathing, human being or a cold hard piece of code. It also means that human tweets have to compete with bullshit pumped out by bots.
Really just fuck Twitter. Don't use it, unless you are building a bot. Wait for other people to tell you about an interesting tweet. If it's really interesting, you'll hear about it. If it isn't, then you won't need to anyway.
It's not a unique problem to social media, no - however, they've shown very little initiative to do anything about it. Even You Tube at least knows how to pretend to look like they're doing something here. You Tube.
This would be a very difficult struggle to solve on their platform, but it's never going to go anywhere if the people running it shrug and ignore what's going on. This is how they get potential customers to see them as either Neo nazi sympathizers or the real deal. There is enormous potential for twitter in theory if they try to get their act together, unfortunately....they don't seem that interested in trying. Especially when we already know they have a program to identify whole swaths of Neo Nazis.
They need a program that can identity and ban bots.
What about the legitimate bots?
Twitter is a super-megaphone, and unique in function among social media tools. You just can't accomplish on anything else what you can on Twitter after you have a critical mass of followers; having a dedicated bloc of fascists using that megaphone for their propaganda is indeed a big problem.
And of course you wouldn't think it is an interesting discussion. You're in good company - most straight white dudes in the U.S. don't think hate speech is an interesting or important topic. Go figure that when you don't have skin in the game, suddenly something isn't important.
The state just needs to step-in here, if/when that ever becomes a realistic possibility. There's almost no way the majority of the American public will shun Twitter, because most people have no stakes when it comes to being targeted by the fascist mob. Twitter won't moderate itself, because the upper echelon of the company is no doubt more wealthy white guys who don't care about fascism and/or sympathize with that cause.
There needs to be severe penalties imposed on both the service & users for hate speech, more or less full stop.
I'm sure that President Donald Trump is just the tip of the iceberg should we continue down the path of shrugging shoulder and making appeals for the Invisible Hand to bring deliverance.
I'm sure everyone who does pay Twitter the attention it demands has their own favorite story along these lines. Mine is Sargon of Akkad's banning:
Sargon was a dedicated GamerGate fanatic who bought into the Ethics in Games Journalism story, dove into a bunch of the conspiracy theory nonsense and began harassing people online / doxing them (both women & feminist-ally men). This was, according to Twitter, totally fine - people who reported Sargon's activities were told that those activities did not violate Twitter's ToS.
Mr. Akkad wasn't a Nazi sympathizer, though, and when his social media network became flooded with nothing but support from Nazis, he got fed-up and turned away from the GG crowd. When Nazis wouldn't leave him alone on Twitter, he tweeted a whole bunch of gay pornography at them. This resulted in a permanent ban.
It was okay to amplify Nazis (albeit only by proxy), to harass & dox people and to retweet suggestions that Anita Sarkeesian / Brianna Wu be raped, going by Twitter's reactions. It was not okay to tweet out images of dudes having sex with each other at Nazis.
Same user, but different targets for abuse had dramatically different results.
Not true at all, me.
Twitter is now losing users in the U.S.
Jack is twitter's CEO
Rrrright.
And how come it took this long before these became a priority? The company was created in 2006.
An announcement of an announcement. Thanks a lot, Churchill.
I genuinely do not understand Twitter. I understand celebrities having accounts as a PR outlet, but beyond that I just don't get it. I was a fairly early adopter of Facebook (.edu days), and later Google+, so I'm not social media averse. But it seems like something that exists outside the realm of most people. I know of 2 or 3 friends who post actively, and it works for them, but they're leaders at local con events, which circles back to the "celebrity" status more or less. If you're well known in a circle, it's impractical to have 10,000 Facebook friends, so sure Twitter blasting makes sense. But nobody on the internet is interested in pictures of my projects around the house or photos of my kids outside of direct friends.
Twitter seems like a shitty platform that is at best indifferent and at worst actively supportive of the worst parts of the internet. I consider it on the same tier with Reddit and 4chan, and like Reddit and 4chan I avoid it as much as I can. I don't have an account, don't visit the page, don't search for tweets. My only exposure to it is here and auto Facebook posts from the aforementioned friends who forward their Twitter posts.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
These two things are not actually equivalent in any way. Is that the best example someone can come up with?
Of the origin of the name "Twitter," CEO Jack Dorsey says:
Twitter is not a social media platform. It is terrible at fostering relationships, communicating ideas, and encouraging discussion. It is a great publicity tool that allows minority viewpoints to seem bigger than they are.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
There are programs that can identify bots already; the incentive to do it just isn’t there since that costs money.
That’s actually the rub in all of this; making all of these changes costs a lot of money with no payback; they also likely lose a lot of performance metrics.
All of the hateful conversations drive a tremendous amount of tweets, replies, and retweets; those are the exact metrics they use to sell ads.
I also have a few celebrities that I follow to easily keep tabs on upcoming content.
There is not another platform that does this all in the same space and as cleanly.
I hope there is some change to the moderation that has a meaningful effect but I won't hold my breath.
It needs to be run by people who actually find statements about burning minorities alive, or telling someone they should be raped and murdered, offensive and immediate ban-worthy. That it isn't is 1) totally unacceptable, and 2) why I won't have anything to do with it. And unless your job requires you to do so, you should consider doing the same IMHO.
Women boycott Twitter seems hugely unfair anyway. Women get all the abuse and they're the ones having to fix it! Men should boycott Twitter as well!
It ignores that a lot of the conversations about policing in America, trans issues, and more are being driven by people on the platform.
It’s unrealistic; people aren’t going to suddenly abandon Twitter because of this.
I also suspect it’s a double standard; can you, with certainty, say that vanilla is not being used for forums dedicated to Naziism, Racsim, or Sexism? If not, will you be self-banning?
Twitter is deliberately allowing Nazis to propagandize and make death threats on their platform, even when notified. You cannot offset that.
None of my post is excusing this; Twitter has a community management problem. As does Facebook, as does Instagram, as does Reddit (all for different reasons). It’s clear that the libertarian approach to these platforms doesn’t work but, as many others have noted, this is an Internet problem that is not specific to Twitter.
Solar’s post is emblematic of a large swath of people in this thread who a) don’t use/understand the platform b) have decided it’s only use is bad and c) totally nuking it as the only solution. That’s a total non-starter.
We need solutions from people who use the platform and understand it and who are interested in seeing this problem fixed.
Sure there would be payback, but it'd require tremendous work to redeem their image, time, spending proper resources on management and monitoring behavior. This would not be an impossible thing for them to do, the crux of the issue is that right now they're going after the Fox News/Breitbart crowd. There are plenty of avenues to explore besides that audience. The question is - are they prepared to do this? As of right now I'm thinking no.
I'm not going to believe this is purely the people in charge being apolitical, when a person runs a business their biases and flaws aren't erased. Their (lack of) actions says quite a lot about where their priorities lie.
Not conversations, they actively chose sides and the "loser" was consistently one side on the political spectrum. Making it a mainstream recruiting ground for white supremacists and literal Nazis.
Surely they can find other tactics to sell ads with that isn't doing this.
...have you looked at "the state" lately? Hey it would be awesome if the Trump administration could severely penalize websites for whatever he considers hate speech, are you serious?
So the crux of the matter is you want government control and censorship when your political party is in control?
PSN: SoulCrusherJared
From what I've seen in this thread no I don't know it. Firstly the other person was directly requesting for government censorship, secondly The other person mentioned the flaw being the current state not the idea itself.
I'm not okay with people wanting the government to start censoring things. I'm totally cool with people wanting Twitter, a private business, to run their moderation differently, start a boycott, whatever, but I don't think it's a funny meme to say that the only problem with government censorship is the current president.
"It's just a joke tho" isn't an acceptable excuse from some jerk on Twitter making death threats just like it's not okay to say about government censorship
PSN: SoulCrusherJared
No government is suited to the task of thought policing their citizens. Everything is fun and games until your side isn't in charge then it's tyranny.
PSN: SoulCrusherJared
There's a pretty big difference between moderating for 'equal rights for everyone regardless of age, sexual preference, gender, and etc.' and 'these people belong in ovens because of their religion'
Edit: but again, I'm not for government censorship, just twitter censorship!
Obama came into the Whitehouse not a proponent of gay marriage. Let's say he decided to censor that debate when he first got in. Would we have gay marriage now? What if the stupid PATRIOT act was something that Bush wouldn't allow people to speak out about? Or Clinton's don't ask don't tell?
PSN: SoulCrusherJared
No, even then there's always another Trump around the corner. Relying on "the state" is a terrible idea for a while bunch of reasons. The solution is grassroots collective action, i.e. a boycott, like I've been saying this whole thread
A+!
PSN: SoulCrusherJared
As with literally everything else humans do, we are shitty creatures who form mobs and stir up shit when enough are present.
I don't know why Twitter gets some sort of pass for being such a shit environment because it's popular.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I absolutely support the restriction of people's right to make fascist, genocidal declarations about other human beings and I absolutely support the restriction of people's right to say to other people "you should be raped to death" and other such horrifically offensive and threatening comments. I absolutely don't support any restriction of people's right to vocally support LGBT rights, gay marriage, abortion etc etc etc.
Why? Because those are different things! Different things get different reactions! Not every single judgement needs to be axiomatic across all its potential variances! If Twitter banned Nazis then I'd be glad and if it banned feminists I'd be raging, and saying "Twitter should ban Nazis" doesn't mean that I then can't say "and banning these other groups would be wrong" because you're allowed to have different views on different groups and what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do!
Has... had anybody been saying otherwise? Who are you arguing against here?