
“Did We Create This Monster?” How Twitter Turned Toxic - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.fastcompany.com/40547818/did-we-create-this-monster-how-twitter-turned-toxic
======
cirgue
The iron law of the internet is that, in the absence of constant high-quality
moderation, all discourse eventually becomes toxic. This has been true since
the days of usenet.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Would forcing users to verify their identities and post with their full names
have any effect on the toxicity? What if filters were used to prevent the most
egregious words of hatred? My questions are driving towards this: is it at all
possible to have something like twitter that isn't as toxic, given the right
features?

~~~
jstarfish
If Nextdoor is any indication, posting your name and verified home address
next to your comments still won't stop toxicity.

------
rdtsc
When wasn't Twitter toxic?

It is designed and implemented to breed toxicity. It is optimized for
engagement, but people don't just engage when they are happy and want to share
the joy they also engage when they are angry, upset, want to argue and debate.
So they end up arguing in 140 character short quips and sarcastic remarks.
Which gets other people angry and they respond with more short sarcastic
remarks. How often has anyone said in such an exchange "Oh your witty remark
and calling me an fucking idiot gave me pause, I went back, reevaluated my
position and now I agree with you".

But engagement goes up, and why bother removing bots, they just add more
activity and users. "Oh look we have 330M active monthly users" they can say
to the shareholders. Buy more shares!

There is no mention how they went to RT, a Russian state propaganda outlet and
offered them deals and access to US voters ahead of the 2016 election.
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/twitter-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/twitter-
bans-ads-from-russia-today-and-sputnik-over-election-interference) . Forgot
what Twitter's response was, something like "we do not comment on private
pitch decks". Which pretty much acknowledges it. So they breed and encourage
toxicity then turn around and blast PR how they want more civility and are
protecting democracy.

------
Kequc
So Twitter doesn't censor enough, dunno how much more time or money Twitter
could have spent trying to control the narrative. So the lesson here is that
it's never enough. If you had Twitter completely sanitized there'd be people
who don't understand 'changing the channel' complaining about too many meat-
eaters on the platform.

~~~
jlebrech
censorship basically allowed for trolls, memelords, bots, eggs and shitposters
to thrive because of how they censored wrong-thinkers willing to have a
rational discussion. only those who have nothing to lose are left in the
conversation.

~~~
neolefty
The article argues that it wasn't so much censorship as _poorly-implemented_
censorship.

For example:

> Internally, Costolo complained that the “abuse economics” were “backward.”
> It took just seconds to create an account to harass someone, but reporting
> that abuse required filling out a time-consuming form.

And of course the larger story of a vigilante censor being blocked. Twitter
doesn't want outside forces policing it, but that means it has to police
itself, which it has failed to do at critical moments.

------
xefer
Twitter could start at home by doing something about the sewer that is
"Moments". It ignores words in the "muted" list; it's full of celebrity crap
and the sort of click-bait stuff I loathe.

The whole thing seems to set the tone for the sort of garbage that they talk
about wanting to eliminate.

------
komali2
>Contentiousness grew common: Bhatnagar’s team would want to suspend users it
found abusive, only to be overruled by Gadde and Harvey. “That drove Tina
crazy,” says a source familiar with the dynamic. “She’d go looking for Jack,
but Jack would be at Square, so the next day he’d listen and take notes on his
phone and say, ‘Let me think about it.’

Is it feasible for one person to be an effective CEO of two companies at the
same time? Particular ones that are at the stages Twitter and Square are at?

~~~
WhompingWindows
I'd say this is an example of poor workflow. If you have millions of users of
your product, the CEO must be abstracted far above such mundane decisions.
With someone like Elon Musk, you have a nitty-gritty focused CEO who wants to
get onto the engineering/production floor and tackle the toughest bottlenecks.
If you don't have a dual CEO at his level of expertise, though, I think you're
setting yourself up for problems, especially with aforementioned crappy
workflow.

~~~
hluska
I don't agree. This was about censorship, an issue absolutely vital to the
core Twitter experience. Choosing how/what to censor is absolutely not
mundane.

------
thinkingemote
Im trying to pinpoint when it started going wrong. I think it was when they
changed the third party API usages etc which lead to solutions by others being
cut off - they had to do everything themselves.

But I also think it was the move towards threads and conversations. For a few
years Twitter was mostly one directional . You would post your status, similar
to how you would update your instant messaging away status. Twitter became a
way to follow everyone's posts. Threads didn't exist and replying was not
built in.

After these two changes the company became blind drunk with growth and
celebrity. Oprah moment.

~~~
komali2
I like your second theory. I'm thinking about how you can easily avoid absurd
alt-right conspiracy drivel by, for example, never reading Breitbart. But
because NBC articles have a comment section, all the bullshit finds its way
through anyway.

Somebody could make an echo chamber argument at me I guess, but I should be
allowed to filter out absolute falsehoods without being called "unfair and
unbalanced."

------
drefanzor
With free speech, come idiots that abuse it and say hateful things.

These are sacrifices necessary in order to live in a free society.

You can't just take freedom of speech from the people you don't like to listen
to; you would be taking it away from everyone.

~~~
bbctol
Sure, but you don't have to design your platform to incentivize making people
angrier.

------
mc32
One problem is for people to be noticed they have to offer something
compelling, maybe novel, but most of all something which will cause nods or
outrage,

Since most people have nothing significant to say (notable discovery) they
signal which ever way they can. So they dig up nonsense molehills and let
their friends build it into a mountain.

Oh, look, this restaurant is sourcing from this place that my friend just told
me secretly underpays their workers-- most foul. Don't patronize the
restaurant, boycott! (No, I didn't confirm, I don't know if it's true, but
boycott , for justice NAU!!! (Oh I feel a righteous human now))

------
philwelch
Twitter was designed to be toxic and all of the incentives driving product
development led them inexorably to that goal. (Hint: what do flamewars and
harassment look like to your engagement metrics?)

------
overcast
It's just human nature, people are awful in general, and the internet allows
them to bring it to the masses easily, with very few repercussions.

~~~
nemild
I hear this argument a lot, and let me just make one point:

Human nature is really shapeable — and we (as a former product manager in this
space) designed algorithms and product experiences to maximize certain
outcomes that benefit social network bottom lines. Regardless of how good or
bad human nature is, the algorithms prize engagement however they can get it —
I personally believe it surfaces a certain side of humanity, and pushes people
in a certain direction.

If you're a news editor, you actually have a choice to sensationalize all day
because it maximizes short-term profits. After bad things happened (see yellow
journalism, the newspaper circulation wars) — newspapers did cut back a fair
bit. (We can debate whether that was the risk of regulation, or their own
respect for the role they had)

This clearly isn't the social networks' fault alone, but their product choices
do partially influence on how we all behave. On HN, you hear a lot of anger at
journalists for being so click-baity, and the sad part is that every incentive
many journalists face encourages this (from user behavior to profit)

There are tons of examples how bad incentives can warp how people behave, far
beyond "humanity is good" or "humanity is bad". For example, see Hannah
Arendt's Banality of Evil or the Stanford Prison Experiment. More regularly,
see architecture, urban planning, or product management in the Valley, as
disciplines that think deeply about the outcomes they want to encourage.

A more accurate statement I would say is: humanity has certain predilections,
and design choices can influence these dramatically.

(And now I will shill my media literacy for engineers guide — contributions
welcome: [https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-
engineer](https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer) )

~~~
rdiddly
True in general, but the only thing I see about how Twitter is designed, that
has any significant effect of shaping behavior in a negative direction, is the
anonymity, which it inherits from the internet itself. It's no Stanford Prison
Experiment though. _Maaaayyybe_ it's the guards' mirrored sunglasses if you
want to make the analogy. But since the same feature is available to everyone,
including as a protective feature for any would-be "prisoner" or victim, even
that analogy breaks down. I'm just not seeing any power-unbalancing features
that are _inherent_. As with most things, its best features are its worst.

------
username223
Why did this person expect anything else? That's what happens when you connect
everyone in the world and let them shout at each other. It's the reason that
Usenet readers had kill-files since the 1980s. He had the solution right in
his hands:

> “For the most part I found them rather laughable and easily ignored,” he
> says.

------
jlebrech
censorship happened and the platform taking sides with one side made the other
side even more nasty and cryptic in their actions.

~~~
tajen
Probably the best explanation. Besides, our youth is getting used to
censorship workarounds. Most people have two accounts per network. It really
reminds me of a friend from Iran telling me about the underground bar culture
in his country. It’s worrying that we have so much a problem with the opinions
of others that our teenagers routinely rely on Iran-level techniques to
navigate their world.

~~~
wsinks
Can we learn more about the Iran underground bar culture? Or does putting that
here violate that culture? Just curious.

------
michaelfeathers
I think the architecture of social media spaces affects their culture. I wrote
up some observations here:

'Twitter, Reddit, and Conway's Law'

[https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/social-media-
architect...](https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/social-media-architecture-
and-conway-s-law)

------
L-four
If you allow the unwashed masses to communicate with you, you'll be
communicating with the unwashed masses.

------
mizay7
No, its toxic by design.

All the big social networks exist to serve advertisers. They sell users
attention to marketers. This means that their profit is directly dependent on
how much attention they can harvest. So the systems that emerge (consciously
or not) propagate attention grabbing content. This means that trolling and
toxicity which exist to get a reaction get systematically supported. It also
means that the novel and affirming fake news get magnified. It also means that
the lowest common denominator cruelty does best (hey Logan Paul and your
'prankster' cadre).

None of this changes if you want tech and services paid for by your attention
and mind-share. If users actually become customers then the question becomes
what might they spend money on, not just what can we get them to pay attention
to. And that can lead to much more sophisticated behavior. Behavior that
actually reflects our conscious choices as opposed to subconscious impulses.

Check out oalrus.com for my proposal to implement something like that.

------
alexashka
For me, twitter is the least toxic and 'monstrous' of all social platforms
that I've been on.

I'd say the trend of articles on news sites using hyperbole and inflammatory
language in every other headline to bait people into clicking is a far more
serious issue. People on twitter do as they please - journalists need a hard
look in the mirror before throwing stones at entire platforms.

~~~
LargeWu
For me it's the most toxic. I quit before they expanded the character limit,
but the limited format almost completely annihilates the ability to express
nuance. Combine that with everybody else assuming bad faith, it just devolves
into people screaming at each other, often even when they agree.

~~~
coldacid
Having the ability to build a whole thread of tweets now would go a long way
towards providing the nuance that has so far been missing, but almost nobody
even knows it's there, never mind uses it.

------
nukeop
Let this be a lesson to others, the more censorship and the more draconic your
allowed speech rules are, the worse you're off. The quality of overall
discussion is negatively correlated with the amount of censorship.

~~~
danso
HN is the most moderated platform I currently use, but despite its rules and
frequent mod intervention, it seems to have a higher overall quality of
discussion compared to what I can find on Reddit or Twitter.

~~~
exelius
There is definitely a hive mind that is reinforced by the mods here. Reddit is
far worse, but realize that Ycombinator has certain goals as an organization
and if your comments stray into direct opposition, they will delete things. I
don’t think this is an indictment of HN, just highlighting that there is an
implicit bias in every discussion forum.

Discussion is of high quality as long as it remains aligned, which is true 99%
of the time.

~~~
slantyyz
> Reddit is far worse,

I would re-characterize it as "some Reddit subreddits are far worse" \-
because your experience can vary widely. All the subreddits I subscribe to
(hobby and interest related, not news/politics) are actually self-policed very
well. I tend to think the toxic subreddits are actually in the minority even
though they get all the attention.

~~~
nukeop
Reddit is far worse in reinforcing subconscious self-moderation to adhere to
the majority opinion. It's present on Hacker News too, since most people use
the downvote as a "I disagree" button.

~~~
slantyyz
I think it depends on the subreddit. The ones I subscribe to aren't that bad
with respect to downvotes.

------
upofadown
I don't get the "Imposter Buster" thing. Does Twitter verify the user images
somehow? If not, then what extra responsibility do they have to police
pictures over equally misleading text?

Spam is spam. If they were actually spamming then Twitter had every right and
obligation to shut their operation down. Spamming for a good cause does not
make it right.

In general, Joe jobbing against race only works against racists. Who cares
about racists anyway?

~~~
garethsprice
They change the conversation, driving division and influencing opinion.
Propaganda is very powerful, especially when a message appears to be coming
from dozens/thousands of voices.

Look at any controversial tweet these days and the reply thread is full of
inflammatory comments from users with numeric usernames (@Joe154354), blurry
photos (that can't be reverse image searched) and that seem to ONLY post about
political topics and retweet similar voices. Heuristically they are highly
likely to be bots or provocateurs but it's hard to prove as Twitter doesn't
expose much information.

Twitter has a serious bot/troll problem that they are choosing to ignore, and
it is making the discourse on there toxic and untrustworthy. I find myself
avoiding the platform these days as it just leaves me feeling stressed and
sad.

~~~
upofadown
>Propaganda is very powerful, especially when a message appears to be coming
from dozens/thousands of voices.

Well it shouldn't be on an anonymous forum. The only things that count in such
a environment are ideas. Only the first one counts. The same ideas over and
over again just count as a poor signal to noise ratio (which would be the root
problem).

I suspect that we are in some sort of eternal september[1] phase here where
people are being exposed to such environments for the first time. If this sort
of thing is going to be a social problem perhaps we need to teach anonymous
forums in school.

I personally have no interest in Twitter because I have passed the phase in my
life where such a thing would be interesting. That doesn't mean that I think
it is worthless but it seems that there are people who are taking it more
seriously than it deserves.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

