
Twitter refuses to uphold Terms of Service - epi0Bauqu
http://arielwaldman.com/2008/05/22/twitter-refuses-to-uphold-terms-of-service/
======
tptacek
Is this seriously a whole blog post with 190+ comments about what happened
when someone was called a "cunt" on Twitter? Because if that's enough to
launch a blog with, I'm kicking myself for actually trying to come up with
real content.

~~~
Tichy
I assume you have not been a victim of such attacks yourself yet?

What solution do you propose?

~~~
mattmaroon
I've definitely been a victim of such "attacks" (though not on Twitter). The
solution is to be more emotionally stable than a 5 year old and not care if
someone calls you names.

~~~
Tichy
I think it is one thing to receive the odd insult in internet discussions, and
another thing for somebody to do some sort of campaign against you. I don't
know the details of the original problem, but I can imagine that there are
some sorts of online harassment that call for more severe countermeasures than
stableness.

~~~
mattmaroon
Well, I've certainly had campaigns against me. I've had people attack me in
every blog post I wrote for months. Multiple times actually. I just deleted it
knowing that they were spending hours doing that and I was spending seconds
just clicking them away.

I more than anything just felt bad for someone whose life is so shallow and
joyless that they actually care enough to put that much effort into hurting
someone they don't even know because they were offended by some trivial thing
he said on the internet. I have to believe that a person who would undertake
that sort of campaign probably has serious depression and other mental health
issues. I can hardly be upset at them given that. The emotional pain that
they're trying (and failing) to inflict on me is the same they live with every
day.

Short of threats of violence, who really cares? (I've had those too, which I
turned over to the FBI, though nothing really came of that.)

~~~
Tichy
"I more than anything just felt bad for someone whose life is so shallow and
joyless"

Sure, so would I - but does it help much if some insane person tries to
destroy your life? Insane to me means they are pretty much capable of
anything. Glad it worked out well for you, but maybe it is different from
person to person?

I can't really comment further, though, as I haven't had something like that
happen to me.

~~~
mattmaroon
Well, if trying to destroy my life means saying bad stuff about me on Twitter
and Flickr, who cares? If they're capable of anything, including real world
violence, then banning their Twitter account isn't going to make much
difference in the real world. That's why I'd report any actual threats.

But just people calling me names? I can't find any compelling reason to even
care.

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alex_c
This seems... strange to me. Users are the life and blood of services like
Twitter; I would do everything in my power to keep my users happy and protect
them from harassment. I'd rather lose one abusive user than many good users.

The lawsuit explanation, especially, seems strange. I know threatening to sue
is a common past-time for certain internet users (even though chances are they
don't know what they're talking about and couldn't afford it anyway), but has
anyone ever successfully sued a service for banning them?

~~~
Hexstream
I predict those kinds of problems will only get worse and more numerous on
Twitter because going easy on assholes and not standing up against them for
the benefit of your good users is a great way to send a message that you
"want" more of the former and less of the latter.

Wait until the word spreads. It won't be pretty.

~~~
raganwald
This is exactly what Paul was talking about with respect to Trolls in a public
forum. Right or wrong, difficult or easy, it is this simple: if the incentives
favour the trolls and disfavour the polite users, the trolls drive the polite
users out.

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forgotmyaccount
Nobody here fucking gets it.

If Twitter moderates any legal content, they are no longer protected under the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a communications service provider and are
instead a publisher, which makes them directly liable for any user's libelous
statements even if they didn't know about them.

~~~
raganwald
So how does Flickr get away with moderating content and banning users?

How does Hacker News get away with moderating conetnt and banning users?

How does Reddit get away with moderating content reported as spam?

How do any of these sites get away with banning porn or spam?

~~~
mattmaroon
Yeah, I feel like he must be misunderstanding a law there. Otherwise the
economic viability of much of the web goes out the window.

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nuggien
I can't remember the last time I heard anything positive about twitter. And
yet people are still addicted to it like crack.

~~~
axod
Who is? Seems like only people who blog a lot or are part of the web2.0 social
elite circle.

If I didn't read things like hacker news I would have no idea what twitter
was.

~~~
KirinDave
It's quite popular among some hacker circles. It's generally a useful service.

I'd say the majority of people aren't devoted fanatically to it like the fame-
on-a-budget blogger2.0 crowd is. People like Arrington are so frantic about
Twitter because it's become of their better platforms for building a user
base. When it goes down, their business actually suffers, crazy as that seems.

For me, it's just a sidechannel to organize meetings (like at a conference) or
a place to find/report interesting papers/posts/manuals/libraries. I think the
majority of twitter users are like me in this regard: we aren't defining a
metric of success by how many Twitter followers we have. In this capacity I
find it acceptable, and the downtime is only a minor nuisance that I often
don't notice because I just don't tweet that often.

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menloparkbum
Poor twitter. They can't get a break. I'm surprised that most commenters on
the various sites seem to automatically assume that harassment did occur and
the offending user should be banned. The complaint was lodged by Pownce's
community manager and in no blog post were any of the offending "Tweets"
reposted, so everything seemed a bit fishy to me. I assumed I could just go
view her timeline to judge for myself, but when I tried to do that, twitter
broke.

I hope that chronically broken sites populated by censorship proponents aren't
really the future of the internet. It makes me think sites like YTMND are
actually performing a noble service to humanity.

~~~
motoko
YTMND, as much of a depressing window into humanity, also has some good
artistic content.

Look at <http://ytmnd.com/users/Click/sites>.

Also, YTMND is as "indy" and "legitimate" as a website can be: just some kid
who got lucky making something people liked. This is much unlike the SF echo
chamber.

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humanlever
Twitter's posted a response at [http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/twitter-
enforces-tos-cares-a...](http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/twitter-enforces-tos-
cares-about-users.html)

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andyangelos
Another reason why users should leave Twitter and migrate to other services
like Pownce. Suprisingly, the author of this post is a staff member of Pownce
:)

I noticed an appropriate tweet summarizes this debate: "biz: Yesterday pizza
was sent to Twitter HQ by friendly twitterers and today it's a keg of beer
from @Mister_Robotics THANKS!"

The Twitter staff is apparently content eating pizza, drinking beer, and
spending a freshly minted $15 million.

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xlnt
That cunt should get a life. Jesus Christ, just go die.

Twitter is right. They shouldn't ban people for swearing.

If this guy has a real complaint he should focus on that instead of his
stupid, anti-free-speech complaint.

~~~
krschultz
There is no right to free speech in forums. The forum or a service like
twitter are some one else's property. While you have the right to say what you
want in public, I don't have to let you stand on MY front lawn if you want to
spout hate speech. But if you stand in the street there is nothing I can do
about it. Same thing here, Twitter is under no obligation to allow you to say
what you want, they own the sand box and they set the rules. Apparently they
just don't the gumption to enforce them.

~~~
xlnt
Umm. It's twitter's decision. Twitter decided. This person -- who has a
problem with free expression -- thinks twitter decided wrong. And then
misleads about what happened -- e.g., saying twitter won't enforce ToS when
actually they just don't want free speech banned on their site.

~~~
krschultz
Its not free speech. Free speech is protected by law. By framing it as "free
speech" you are saying anyone against this man is against free speech. He can
say whatever the hell he wants, but it is not protected free speech. All the
people who cry "BUT FREE SPEECH" on the internet whenever someone gets banned
are idiots. The constitution protects you from the government, specifically
the federal government, not from corporations acting within their own rights.
If you can't understand something that basic, then I truly don't value your
opinion.

