
Twitter’s Policy Reboot: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - temp
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/twitters-policy-reboot-good-bad-and-ugly
======
CM30
The biggest issue with the policy (and one which is not really mentioned here)
is enforcement. Doesn't really matter what the policies are, if Twitter is
very, very loose when it comes to actually enforcing them.

For example, I've seen a few people get banned or suspended because they said
something that made a popular user (or in some cases, one a Twitter member of
staff agrees with) uncomfortable, whereas someone who supports said staff
member's political views or has more followers can get away with murder.

For example, there have been people who said something loosely associated with
GamerGate who got suspended until they removed the tweet, whereas certain
journalists and media figures could try and falsely accuse their enemies of
serious crimes and get in no trouble whatsoever. It was also a certain Twitter
employee who got Milo unverified for ridiculous reasons.

Twitter's policy reboot is already worrying, but what it really needs to do is
be even handed with its punishments towards those that break the rule. It
shouldn't matter if you're a nobody or a celebrity with millions of followers;
break the rules, get suspended or banned. It shouldn't matter if your
political views align with Twitter staff or not. Same deal.

Twitter needs to examine what it's policy on freedom of speech and stuff is,
but then also enforce it equally, however unpopular that may be.

~~~
exstudent2
Twitter has also started censoring their search suggestions down the same
political lines you mention. You no longer get auto-suggest for #gamergate or
any Milo related topics.

Ironically they're also blocking #twittercensorship. You can see for yourself
here: [https://twitter.com/search-home](https://twitter.com/search-home)

As far as I know this change wasn't announced (seems to have rolled out over
the weekend in response to the Milo incident). It does not bode well for
freedom of speech on Twitter.

Edit: to clarify the results are still there if you manually do the search,
but the hashtags are no longer in the search suggestions.

------
Grue3
The new Twitter policy is already used to mass-silence activists by dedicated
(paid) teams of trolls.

[http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/01/09/twitters-new-policy-
mi...](http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/01/09/twitters-new-policy-misused-by-
pro-kremlin-accounts-to-attack-top-ukrainian-bloggers-saveuatwi/)

~~~
WillAbides
I'm curious to know how this is happening. Perhaps the people who handle
complaints in Russian and Ukranian are Putin supporters and bring their
personal animosities to work. It would be hard for Twitter to hold accountable
judgement calls in languages management doesn't understand.

~~~
wcummings
>I'm curious to know how this is happening.

Seems pretty straightforward if you believe the claim that the abuse
complaints are coordinated, even if they're "legitimate". Both pro-Ukraine and
pro-Soviet users are violating the new rules, but people are systematically
seeking out and reporting violations on pro-Ukraine twitter accounts and the
same isn't happening to pro-Soviet accounts.

~~~
jqm
Maybe because there aren't actually any Soviets anymore?

------
binarymax
I don't envy Twitter's position right now. They are stuck between (1) trying
to renew their platform to monetize and grow, (2) facing huge amounts of
criticism on how they dont properly handle abuse, and (3) expected to keep
their reputation of openness still left over from the 'Arab spring'.

It is doubtful that they can survive without sacrificing at least one.

~~~
talmand
I think they are well on their way to sacrificing 2 and 3.

------
jaydigital
Quick question to people that know more about these things than I do (pretty
much everyone on HN):

Is there a way that Twitter can prevent users from creating another Twitter
account to continue to send threats and horrible messages?

The worst messages we see on Twitter always seem to be from new accounts with
3 followers, clearly throwaway accounts. Ban one, they start another.

~~~
pjc50
There _really_ needs to be an option that users can turn on to block all @
from people they don't follow. Even temporarily, say for a period of a month
at a time.

I'm also a fan of the "reddit gold" style idea of cheap paid accounts that
don't necessarily have to be paid by the account holder. That would make it
easy to allow people to filter out unpaid unknown accounts and raise the cost
of abuse.

The underlying problem is that comment moderation is a kind of emotional
labour that can be fairly gruelling at times, and it needs suitably paid staff
to do. Attempts at automatically dealing with it are very much like the early
days of spam fighting: not very accurate and constantly shifting. But whereas
spam is broadcast, abuse is targeted.

~~~
madeofpalk
> There really needs to be an option that users can turn on to block all @
> from people they don't follow. Even temporarily, say for a period of a month
> at a time.

Get a blue tick :)

I have the worst source (I think I heard it on a podcast...) but I'm pretty
sure that verified Twitter accounts get an extra notification option to
prevent notifications or messages from non-verified users from appearing. It
basically turns Twitter into a verified-users-only service where you never see
the regular plebs.

~~~
frandroid
That's the behaviour, yeah. Verified accounts live in their own rareified
world. The idea being that high-follower count accounts are probably more
interested in chatting with their peers (most often, celebrities) than with
deal with the deluge of plebeian notifications.

------
danielcarvalho
Should be "threats of violence" not "violent threats". Since people think
anything can be deemed violent nowadays.

~~~
oldmanjay
I don't get nostalgic for much, but one thing I miss about the earlier
internet was everyone's ability to dismiss internet tough-assery as
ridiculous, overblown stupidity. I guess that's the difference between a
pioneer town and a safe space on a university campus.

~~~
s73v3r
Most people didn't have to deal with it on a daily basis, and hardly anyone
had threats that were deemed credible enough to actually happen.

Sorry, but it's not all ridiculous, overblown stupidity anymore. Some of these
people seem stupid enough to actually follow through on their threats.

~~~
oldmanjay
"Seem" is an interesting word here, as well as the phrase "deemed credible."
Both indicate that my point is not being rebutted.

I'm not denying that the scale of the problem has grown to the point that rare
events (someone following through on Internet bluster, in this case) will
occur. I'm simply remembering a simpler time, when people didn't clamor for
the sanitization of their daily Internet lives.

~~~
acdha
Not wanting to receive threats of violence against you or family members is
hardly clamoring for sanitization. Sure, most of those threats aren't actually
going to happen but a real human has the stress of having to evaluate each one
and hoping they didn't get it wrong.

It's also not as if the only two possibilities are “actual stalker attacks
you” and “nothing happens”. SWATing, spamming friends/family/coworker with
hateful propaganda or photoshopped porn, placing embarrassing ads with the
victim's actual contact info, etc. are all things that happen in the real
world and don't require some blowhard to leave their house or risk persecution
anywhere near as much as a serious physical attack would entail.

------
protomyth
The most interesting reveal to me has been the the "verified" flag isn't
really a verification at all.

~~~
golemotron
Especially after the removal of verification from noted cultural theorist Milo
Yiannopoulos.

~~~
_cpancake
Twitter's rules say they can remove your verified status at any time for
violating their ToS. It's pretty obvious that Milo has violated their ToS
many, many times, so he's not verified anymore. Don't know what the big deal
about that is.

~~~
nailer
If he has - and I think he has based on one particular tweet where he said
someone 'deserved to be harassed' \- then he should be banned or suspended.
Not 'unverified'. Not given a link to the ToS without at least one specific
incident.

Conversely, the person whose previously doxxed him - also violating the
Twitter ToS - should be punished too.

Twitter just need to have a concrete set of rules (objective not subjective)
and enforce it consistently regardless of politics or celebrity status.

~~~
hsod
> based on one particular tweet where he said someone 'deserved to be
> harassed'

Apparently that tweet was a joke to a friend (another conservative
commentator).

Which just illustrates the problem: it's really really hard to regulate speech
fairly

------
afarrell
I've seen multiple people claim that it would be easy for Twitter to ban
harassment on Twitter.

~~~
hobs
The same way it would be easy for crypto companies to build a backdoor, in
that if you dont understand the problem, it is easy to solve.

edit: (and remain secure)

~~~
afarrell
More that it is easy if you don't care about throwing away other things you
value in pursuit of that goal

------
gottam
I don't understand about the scope of this problem, maybe someone can tell me
but is it really that big of a deal? What horrible things are being typed out
that can't possibly be ignored or dealt with in other ways?

~~~
s73v3r
If you're constantly receiving a barrage of horrible, hateful, violent
threats, then it becomes really hard to ignore. Some people may have thicker
skin than others, but really, no one should have to deal with that. And quite
frankly, I see no reason why anyone should be entitled to say those kinds of
things on someone else's platform.

~~~
gottam
I find that hard to believe. Trolls who make threats on the internet (and not
simply having differing opinions) typically make up a very small minority so
they should be manageable by a small ban list (and if they aren't - what kind
of stuff are you spewing out that makes so many people waste their time
getting angry with you?)

It sounds more to me like even after getting banned, the minority of trolls
can just make new accounts and resume their harassment, so the solution here
isn't human intervention but a technical solution to disincentivize trolls
from making new accounts.

~~~
geofft
> Trolls who make threats on the internet

See this thread:

[https://twitter.com/terraloire/status/686591765931921409](https://twitter.com/terraloire/status/686591765931921409)

With the internet being as central to modern society as it is, instead of
simply some USENET servers used by some college kids and bored sysadmins,
there isn't really a distinction between "threats on the internet" and
"threats" any more. (This is not to say that there's no longer a distinction
between "idle threats" and "serious threats", of course, just that whether
they're on the internet is not a determiner of them being idle.)

> (and if they aren't - what kind of stuff are you spewing out that makes so
> many people waste their time getting angry with you?)

"Normal" people get angry when they feel threatened. If you are challenging
the status quo, it's not unusual for people who benefit from the status quo to
get angry at you. This has been true for all of history, and arguing that you
shouldn't upset the supporters of the status quo is quite literally arguing
that Twitter should not be a platform for free speech.

It honestly sounds to me like you're approaching this from first principles /
intuition, instead of any data (or analyses of data, which exist) about how
internet harassment actually works.

~~~
gottam
> instead of simply some USENET servers used by some college kids and bored
> sysadmins, there isn't really a distinction between "threats on the
> internet" and "threats" any more.

The biggest thing that changed is instead of using anonymous handles, people
got into the habit of using their personal information. From the link you
included, that woman has what I assume is her name, her photo, her city, and
her personal website - most of which is likely a gateway for googling more
information. On her actual profile, her latest retweet is millennials
mansplaining or something, one could say she's basically baiting a group of
people she disagrees with, and further down she's calling Ricky Gervais a
"whiny baby" (where does that fit under twitters rules?)

If I was spewing that kind of crap about people with my own name beside it, I
guess I'd be worried about people finding where I live and harassing me too.
It's mind boggling why people do this to themselves.

> It honestly sounds to me like you're approaching this from first principles
> / intuition, instead of any data (or analyses of data, which exist) about
> how internet harassment actually works.

It's why I asked. Maybe it's just that I think of the internet the same way I
did 15 years ago where nobody online ever needs to know your name, age, sex,
height, opinions, political affiliations, favorite food, etc unless you make
it so, and when you want to start over with a clean slate, you can just remake
internet accounts rather than having some dumb crap you said 10 years ago
stick with you forever on google.

------
xyzzy4
I think the only feasible way Twitter could stop abuse is if it charged $100
per signup, and then ban people on the slightest whim. I don't see how
anything else would work. Of course the downsides of a plan like this are so
large that it wouldn't ever be done.

~~~
Kristine1975
The forum Something Awful does something like this: They charge $10 per
signup. When you get banned you have to pay again to get back in.

~~~
scholia
Even $1 would remove a lot of harassment because a lot of people would be less
abusive if thought it would be easier to find them and hold them legally
responsible for their comments.

