
Progress on addressing online abuse - daegloe
https://blog.twitter.com/2016/progress-on-addressing-online-abuse
======
_jomo
Unsubscribing from notifications for a specific conversation is the only
useful feature here. Muting words/hashtags from showing up in your TL would
have been useful. Regarding "online abuse", shared blocklists were much more
useful than locking or suspending accounts, that's not going to help at all.

Also I wonder what exactly falls under 'behavior that incites fear about a
protected group' and 'repeated and/or or non-consensual slurs, epithets,
racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone'. Will
Twitter enforce politically correct tweets? Is NSFW content going to be banned
because it offends some people?

I think it's reasonable to ban calls for violence against individuals, but I
don't think banning all sorts of hateful content is a good idea and it's not
going to help removing it anyway. If people don't want to see certain content,
by all means, let them hide it from their feed and notifications.

~~~
fdsaaf
As long as Twitter applies a double standard to abuse against white men, it'll
be a useless political echo chamber. Allowing "#killallmen" posters to get
away with their drivel while bringing the banhammer on anyone challenging the
SJW narrative is itself taking a strong and IMHO obnoxious political stance.
Twitter is unbearable

~~~
btdiehr
All you need to do is look at the people twitter invite to their conferences,
and associate with at their executive level to know that Twitter will only get
worse in these regards.

------
rsoto
One type of abuse that seems oddly popular here in Mexico is via a trending
topic. I suspect that some kind of mafia group with a lot of followers are
testing their weapons (since creating a trending topic is a very good
business) by insulting women, minorities and even disabled people.

Blocking, muting and reporting users isn't the answer when you have right in
your face a hateful hashtag. You could look for the one who started the
trending topic and report it, but with thousands of mentions, you'll have to
scroll a lot.

I actually thought this "progress" was about reporting trending topics, or
finding the one who started it. And then, once again, we see twitter turning
the blind eye.

~~~
slouch
I don't even know how to see the trending topics while mobile. To say that a
list of topics on a web version of twitter only is worse than targeted abuse
from users seems silly to me. I think it should be trivial to block the
trending topics list from loading in your browser, even.

~~~
rsoto
On mobile, you go to search to see the trending topics.

~~~
slouch
Oh, there it is. When I tap the search icon, I'm tapping again on the input
box immediately to bring up my saved searches, so I'm not focusing on that
trending list (or seeing it most times) because I'm waiting for my saved
searches to appear.

------
newswriter99
"We’re enabling you to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations
you don’t want to see notifications about"

So, instead of fostering more exchange of ideas and information, we're just
going to have a bigger echo chamber to help perpetuate groupthink,
misinformation and convenient lies?

I'm not trying to be rude but does no one else see why this is a problem?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
No one deserves attention merely because they are speaking.

~~~
strictnein
No one is saying that.

------
revx
I'm glad to see that Twitter is responding to what users want and need, and
acknowledging that there's no easy answers here.

Any sort of blocking solution is hard, I think akin to Facebook's "fake news"
problem. There's no easy way to determine what news is "fake" or not. But
giving people tools that they can use to manage their own space in their own
way is an important step forward.

I hope that this will encourage more people to speak out on twitter about
injustice and abuse, since it gives them some ability to shield themselves
from any backlash.

~~~
slouch
Facebook has un-follow and see less from tony. Twitter is just launching mute,
which is similar to un-follow. I'd like both services to offer "don't show me
links from tony" because that's really what I want when I choose "see less
from."

~~~
james_pm
I've been clicking "hide all from xyz" on article shares for a few years now
and almost have all the most popular link sources covered. A blanket setting
to mute article shares from some or all of my friends would be most helpful.
But something tells me that these article shares are a big part of FB's
engagement strategy.

~~~
slouch
Now that I've thought about it, Twitter also has "turn of retweets from Tony"
which is _almost_ turning off link shares.

> for a few years now

Each time I see that option, I think how crazy I could get blacklisting every
FB under the sun. It sounds like you've tried!

------
overcast
I find the easiest way to addressing online abuse, is not using social media,
and installing comment section blockers for browsers. I get the content I
want, and I don't have to be distracted by the nonsense.

~~~
pavel_lishin
This addresses nothing, but merely hides it from your eyes.

It's like fighting neighborhood crime by drawing your curtains.

~~~
overcast
The anonymous nature of the Internet will make this endeavor impossible. No
one is going to be able to get rid of online abuse, ever.

Ignoring/hiding online abuse, is very effective at shutting down the culprits.
If no one is effected, they can't do anything.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'd wager that you are probably not the target of a lot of this abuse, though
- so you likely wouldn't have seen much of it anyway, and wouldn't be as
affected by it. (For instance, I'm betting @imadefood doesn't get a lot of
tweets from eggs calling you any four-letter profanities that begin with "cu".

~~~
overcast
You'd be surprised. imadefood is one of many entities I deal with. There's
always someone that wants to start something. Best just to ignore.

------
asd
It's a start. There will be ways around the mute filters by using alternative
spellings, substituting in similar unicode characters, etc.

There needs to be a "quality" score for a Twitter user and an option to mute
tweets from "low quality" users. Quality could be determined by utilizing an
algorithm similar to Google Page Rank. Retweets, likes, and follows by
"quality" users would be considered in a user's quality rank. Reports of
hateful conduct would be weighted in as well.

It's too bad that it has taken this long for Twitter to even -start- to
address the abuse. They are lucky they have no direct competitors.

~~~
slouch
Is Klout still what it used to be? I can't tell by looking at their homepage.
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/klout](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/klout)

~~~
dylz
At least in my circles I've never seen klout be relevant in any way other than
for shady "sign in with twitter to post your score" spam

------
brandon272
Twitter is an anonymous comment section on steroids. How about some kind of
real user verification beyond email addresses? (i.e. Phone verification) It
could be an optional step, but then provide the ability to ignore any Twitter
content that doesn't come from these more-verified accounts?

~~~
rsoto
As stated previously, there's no easy answer. Even when validating a telephone
number, then everyone would use Twilio to create multiple "validated"
accounts.

~~~
brandon272
Using Twilio to get around the verification may be obvious if you are a HN
reader, but most people have no idea what Twilio is. Phone verification is
certainly not a bulletproof solution, but I have to feel it would help a lot.

And it doesn't have to stop at phone, either. You could multiple levels of
verification, like Airbnb. Then as a user you could further filter how strict
you want your tweet exposure to be.

~~~
dictum
> Using Twilio to get around the verification may be obvious if you are a HN
> reader, but most people have no idea what Twilio is

4chan isn't a bunch of computer illiterate folks, either.

~~~
brandon272
Yep. Phone verification certainly isn't bulletproof. But reducing the deluge
of abusive posts by troll accounts featuring Pepe memes as their profile image
even 10 or 20% would be tremendous, in my view.

------
aethertron
They are right to focus on notifications. That's where the annoying or hostile
crap accumulates (abuse, spam).

I think it would be valuable to split notifications into two areas. Low and
high value notifications. High-value would tend to be stuff associated with
accounts you follow, and maybe unfollowed, verified accounts judged as 'high
quality'. Everything else - interactions from 'randos' \- gets filed as low-
value.

Nothing needs to get hidden from users who want to see every time anyone
interacts with them.

~~~
aethertron
To elaborate: only high value notifications activate OS notifications (i.e.
your phone beeping.)

Low-value notifications simply accumulate in a separate chronological list.
There would be a visual signification in the Twitter UI when you have new
unseen stuff there.

This will make spam accounts that 'like' random tweets, to get people's
attention, less effective.

The downside is it raises a barrier to possibly valuable new connections being
made between strangers. But not a hard barrier. It'll take _some_ extra effort
for a message-recipient to engage - they need to proactively check their low-
value-notifications page.

Twitter would prefer a solution that preserves a high engagement level. So I
don't think they'll adopt my great idea.

Should the Twitter app on my device serve me, or Twitter Inc.? This seems like
a conflict of interest!

Imagining a superior, more harmonious social networking ecosystem: separation
between developers of client interfaces and message-delivering infrastructure.
This is the approach Urbit is trying...

Twitter's free, ad-supported model, is not financially successful. It may not
survive, whether it's disrupted by an alien computing ecosystem or not. In the
course of evolving the microblogging concept, other desirable aspects may die
too, like Twitter's monopoly status (and thus its near-universal reach). Maybe
we'll end up with hundreds of separate networks, with varying user policies
and performance qualities.

------
niftich
I don't really use twitter so I can't picture some of these interactions, but
how can people be getting abusive notifications?

To get abusive notifications, doesn't the unfortunate recipient have to follow
the abuser first?

Does Twitter really allow anyone to @mention anyone else without the
recipients having to confirm it? Or does it in fact notify the recipient with
the full text of the comment, so harassers are exploiting the approval
mechanism?

~~~
andywood
You can @ anybody. They don't get to confirm / approve. They do see the full
text in notifications.

~~~
niftich
I'm asking because this sounds like a recipe for disaster, which is frankly
what they've been having.

If we accept the notion that Twitter resembles a public bulletin board, then
unpleasant (and potentially, hate) speech can and will come at anyone, and
just like in real life, often the recipient has no methods of recourse other
than trying to disregard it -- not making a value judgment whether this is
fair, but this is how it actually happens. Blatant threats to life and
property can be reported to the authorities, but most real-life verbal
harassment cannot be pre-emptively filtered.

On the other hand, if we respect that each user's timeline, notification
space, and knowledge graph is controlled by the user, unsolicited, unapproved
@mentions are disruptive by nature. But there doesn't seem to be a way in
Twitter right now to disable unsolicited @mentions or make them require the
mentionee's approval.

So Twitter, by its behavior, seems to take the first stance. Why, then, does
any Twitter user have an expectation that abuse targeting them can be limited
by the company?

------
smuss77
It might seem small, but it's a big step in the right direction. Every
block/report on a user/tweets could be rolled up and adjust a spam/abuse score
for that user. That would allow twitter users to set a threshold for users
that show up in their feed (tweets blocked for that user, akin to google's
safe search).

One challenge of this is attempts by groups to harm a user's score by
blocking/reporting non-hate/spam. This requires a block or report to be
weighted by the blocker/reporter's credibility. It's definitely doable, *
Warning Shameless plug* a product I've worked on
[https://www.inversoft.com/products/profanity-
filter](https://www.inversoft.com/products/profanity-filter) handles these
situations well. Without some type of credibility tracking it's usually
incorrect to blindly trust reports/blocks.

~~~
btdiehr
No matter what system is put in place, their are large, determined, and even
some well funded groups which will game any and all systems to modify, censor,
or punish others if you allow them the power to 'group moderate', especially
in the political space - which is a very large part of twitter.

------
mavdi
Twitter really brings out the worst in people. While accounts aren't ID
verified, this sort of abuse won't be affected. Let's just face it, people
really suck behind an anonymity curtain.

~~~
mi100hael
I think the key is that _some_ accounts are verified and _some_ people choose
to use their real names. Bullying seems lower for the average Facebook user
because everyone can see exactly who's calling you a fat loser. And bullying
on 4chan and the like seems pretty low because everyone's anonymous so no one
knows if you're actually fat or not. Twitter is this weird overlap where some
groups share who they really are, but the harassers are free to hide behind
anonymity.

------
helpfulanon
Very happy to see some progress being made. I've been very disturbed by the
rise of coordinated hate group activities like this:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2016/11/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2016/11/11/get-some-of-them-to-kill-themselves-popular-neo-nazi-site-
urges-readers-to-troll-liberals-into-suicide)

~~~
r_smart
Just the combination of the headline and the image below it are enough to get
me to close the tab on this one. I'm getting really tired of the constant
accusations of racism, and this immediately set off my 'upcoming bullshit'
detector.

------
snomad
1) All anti-bias statements should include body-weight / shape. Far too many
people are abused/discriminated against on the basis of their weight.

Referring to this sentence: > Our hateful conduct policy prohibits specific
conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin,
sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age,
disability, or disease.

2\. What steps are you taking to address the seeming divide between left/right
abuse enforcement? For instance, AssassinateTrump was trending for a time.
Will you offer evidence showing that you are banning abusive political speech
from the left and right?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Regarding (2), I think that would be counterproductive. The whole point here
is to signal submission to the establishment.

------
vuanotino
Muting words is dumb. It's not really complicated to write n1gger instead of
nigger.

Suspending accounts is the dumbest, though—the account of an abuser is likely
to be in the block/mute list of hundreds of people. By suspending his account,
the user will just create another and continue annoying the very same people
that had blocked him already.

I wonder who in Twitter, Inc. uses Twitter at all.

~~~
ohyoutravel
A crowdsourced "blocked list" similar to ublock origin for twitter?

~~~
digler999
then you could harass people by falsely getting them on a block list.

~~~
strictnein
I'm already on some block lists. I'll run into some journalists who have me
blocked. Never interacted with them. I hardly interact with anyone, but some
block lists just take the entire list of followers from people and add them.

